‘Judging Freedom’: Russia’s Info War vs NATO

Although the Information War that Moscow has advanced against the NATO decision to raise military budgets of Member States to 5% of GDP was indeed one of the topics in today’s chat with Judge Andrew Napolitano, we did not go into any depth because other subjects took precedence, including the fast deteriorating relations between Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation and what that tells us about the occasional brutishness of Moscow; Emanuel Macron’s two hour phone conversation with Vladimir Putin yesterday; the killing and wounding of civilians in Donetsk City yesterday caused by a French-built Storm Shadow medium range missile fired by Ukrainian forces; an appreciation of the situation on the front lines in Donbas, where the Ukrainians are losing ground but remain in control of the discipline of their troops and continue fighting despite the cut-off of American military supplies; and why Mossad may not be the world’s greatest intel agency but a very near sighted bunch that is no better than peers in Washington or London.

I regret that there was not sufficient time to go into what I consider to be a serious mistake by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and President Putin in describing the rise in military budgets as leading to a ‘catastrophic collapse’ of NATO.

The mistake is that it is not for Moscow to say this to Western audiences. It is for Western journalists to say this on their own.  And they are doing that without any ‘help’ from the Kremlin. Today’s ‘New York Times’ has on the front page of its print edition in Europe an opinion piece by a guest writer who argues that it is a mistake for Europe to try to escape from ongoing deindustrialization by investing heavily in European military production. The author says that the hopes that such massive spending will free Europe from its dependence on the USA for its defense and will revitalize European economies are ‘delusory.’

On the other hand, when the Kremlin calls for the West to undo the plans for higher military budgets, saying this is self-destructive, it gives a bad name to all of those in the West who are saying precisely that on our own. We instantly become ‘stooges of Moscow.’