Everyone will have lots to say about this. We don’t yet. We may use a multi-pronged spectrum with which to evaluate this statement by former Dutch PM and current head of NATO in Europe once there is more information about Mark Rutte’s speech as seen below. (Albeit paraphrased as the speech was not public but in a closed event from yesterday’s Munich Security Conference offshoot in Berlin. But clips are circulating)
Below an actual segment of his talk:
This BBC analysis of his talk has some wonderful jingoism:
Russia could attack a Nato country within the next five years, the Western military alliance’s chief has said in a stark new warning.
“Russia is already escalating its covert campaign against our societies,” Mark Rutte said in a speech in Germany. “We must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured.”
He echoed similar statements about Russia’s intentions made by Western intelligence agencies, which Moscow dismisses as hysteria.
Rutte’s warning comes as US President Donald Trump tries to bring an end to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022.
Earlier this month, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said his country was not planning to go to war with Europe, but it was ready “right now” if Europe wanted to – or started a war.
But similar reassurances were given by Moscow in 2022, just before 200,000 Russian troops crossed the border and invaded Ukraine.
Putin has accused European countries of hindering US efforts to bring peace in Ukraine – a reference to the role Ukraine’s European allies have recently played in trying to change a US peace plan to end the war, whose initial draft was seen as favouring Russia.
But Putin was not sincere, Nato’s secretary-general said in the German capital, Berlin.
Supporting Ukraine, he added, was a guarantee for European security.
“Just imagine if Putin got his way; Ukraine under the boot of Russian occupation, his forces pressing against a longer border with Nato, and the significantly increased risk of an armed attack against us.”
The BBC article gets way more intense after that. Its essentially the scene from Gone with the Wind when Rhett Butler tries to explain to the Gentlemen of the South, that the North has cannon factories and munitions factories and the South as a code of honour and some swords. So is Rutte’s pitch Face value” Or a narrative attack? Or a pitch for funding and power for NATO? I dunno yet.
One arm of one vector of analysis might be the UFO/UAP/Alien attack narrative that has appeared a couple of times on MSM US media such as 60 Minutes, and alleged counter-media such as Tucker Carlson. In other words, it is a grand cover to justify massive power gabs and reductions of human rights and individualism overall in Europe, or, it might be a face value threat of a grand scale war with a Nuclear power who will, if cornered, use them.
But there are other vectors as well. And I don’t know them yet. So wait and see. But taking it at face value seems to be the lowest probability answer, if not for the intended warnings, certainly for the reason these actions will be taken, if they are. This also may explain the sudden rise in the price of precious metals on top of other things like QE (Quantitative Easing) back in play in the USA.
But listening to that short clip of him directly, it could be interpreted as merely stumping for money and authority. ‘His organization is important and needs full power to recruit and equip’ in other words. Which would actually fall under the banal. Russia is where his 2 minutes of hate is directed, and everyone in Europe has to get ready to sacrifice their rights and quality of living to stand up to that threat. My guess is that would be where the ball is circling and ready to drop.
As we often do, we note that 1984 seems to have a pretty good description of the difference between wars as we knew them, and wars as they are and will be under a communist state:
In past ages, a war, almost by definition, was something that sooner or
later came to an end, usually in unmistakable victory or defeat. In the
past, also, war was one of the main instruments by which human societies
were kept in touch with physical reality. All rulers in all ages have tried
to impose a false view of the world upon their followers, but they could
not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair military
efficiency. So long as defeat meant the loss of independence, or some other
result generally held to be undesirable, the precautions against defeat
had to be serious. Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or
religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when
one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four. Inefficient
nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for
efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was
necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly
accurate idea of what had happened in the past. Newspapers and history
books were, of course, always coloured and biased, but falsification of
the kind that is practised today would have been impossible. War was a
sure safeguard of sanity, and so far as the ruling classes were concerned
it was probably the most important of all safeguards. While wars could be
won or lost, no ruling class could be completely irresponsible.
But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous.
When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity.
Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or
disregarded. As we have seen, researches that could be called scientific
are still carried out for the purposes of war, but they are essentially a
kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not important.
Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer needed. Nothing is
efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police. Since each of the three
super-states is unconquerable, each is in effect a separate universe within
which almost any perversion of thought can be safely practised. Reality
only exerts its pressure through the needs of everyday life–the need to
eat and drink, to get shelter and clothing, to avoid swallowing poison or
stepping out of top-storey windows, and the like. Between life and death,
and between physical pleasure and physical pain, there is still a
distinction, but that is all. Cut off from contact with the outer world,
and with the past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in interstellar
space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and which is down.
The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars
could not be. They are obliged to prevent their followers from starving
to death in numbers large enough to be inconvenient, and they are obliged
to remain at the same low level of military technique as their rivals; but
once that minimum is achieved, they can twist reality into whatever shape
they choose.
The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is
merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant
animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of
hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It
eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the
special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will
be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups
of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and
therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another,
and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are
not fighting against one another at all.
The war is waged by each ruling
group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make
or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society
intact. The very word ‘war’, therefore, has become misleading. It would
probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to
exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the
Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been
replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same
if the three super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree
to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For
in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever
from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly
permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This–although the vast
majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense–is the
inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.
[Bold is mine, although frankly the entire segment should be read till understood.]
We are not saying the above is exactly what is going on with Rutte and NATO. But it is a vector of consideration. It makes more sense than that Russia, who is in no need of Lebensraum, and in fact, kinda the opposite. They need more people for the room they already have, would attack the rest of Europe to take its territory. Viktor Orban describes the conflict with Ukraine as a regional and fraternal battle that the West under normal circumstances would ignore. Considering the West is in fact ignoring at least a couple of dozen of other wars, with far more heinous reasons and actions, Orban’s view deserves thought.