NATO’s Hairline Fissures Part 1: Ukraine Membership?

NATO is seeing hairline cracks within its unity over how to defend Ukraine as Russia threatens to widen the war beyond its current boundaries and conventional weaponry.

by Thaddeus G.McCotter for American Greatness

In response to an earlier instance of Russian aggression, in his July 25, 1961, “Report to the American People on the Berlin Crisis,” President John F. Kennedy warned: “If there is one path above all others to war, it is the path of weakness and disunity.”

Today, it is a warning that must not go unheeded by NATO, as the alliance sees hairline cracks within its unity over how to defend Ukraine, and the Russian aggressor threatens to widen the war beyond its current boundaries and conventional weaponry.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded after World War II to defend the United States and our Western European allies against Soviet aggression and prospective invasion. After the fall of the communist regime, NATO spent the next three decades or so expanding its membership ranks into Eastern Europe, combating terrorism, and engaging in an existential search for a new role in defending the free world.

Yet, Russian revanchism has never rendered NATO’s primary purpose antiquated. Under Mr. Putin’s direction, Russia has invaded Georgia, Crimea, and now Ukraine—all in what the Russian Vozhd has designated his nation’s “near abroad.” Such Russian aggressions and further territorial ambitions have had a roborant effect upon NATO, refocusing it upon its original and never-discarded mission of defending its members from the self-perceived once-and-future eastern imperial empire.

As for the Russian perspective, be it during the Soviet Union or the present Russian Federation, NATO has always remained the primary and immediate obstacle to its expansionist aims. It is no exaggeration to assert that if Mr. Putin could accomplish one goal to ensure the security of Russia and the implementation of its imperial aims, it would be the destruction of NATO.

As a military matter, however, it is not within Russia’s military power to defeat NATO. Echoing what President Lincoln said about the military defeat of the United States, only NATO can defeat NATO. Again, it will not be because of Russian military arms. It will be because NATO is not only a military alliance. NATO is also a political alliance. In the current response to Russia’s criminal invasion of Ukraine, politics appears to be NATO’s Achilles heel.

Mr. Putin knows it and is cagily pitting his NATO antagonists against each other.

The first hairline fracture in NATO’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was the decision not to offer the besieged nation membership in the western alliance. The reason is elementary: under the NATO treaty’s Article 5, “collective defence means that an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies.” Thus, if the Russian invasion is still occurring during Ukraine’s ascension into the NATO alliance, its other members would be considered at war with Russia. Little wonder NATO prefers to continue to collectively defend Ukraine in a proxy war against Russia rather than issuing a catastrophic collective declaration that the allied nations are being attacked by and in a state of war with Russia.

Not wanting to declare World War III, NATO is less than enthralled with Ukraine’s request for membership. As the Kyiv Post headline reports, “some in the West have asked President Zelensky not to pressure individual allies to support a definitive, prescribed timetable for Ukrainian accession.”

In NATO’s membership, the “some” would be the U.S. and Germany:

“The United States and Germany are urging President Volodymyr Zelensky not to demand the ‘impossible’ – a clear timeframe for Ukraine’s acceptance into NATO at the Alliance’s summit, the British newspaper The Telegraph reported on May 28, citing its own sources.

Of course, where there are “some,” there are “some others.” Per the Kyiv Post: “Several member countries, including Estonia, the UK, Poland, Canada, Lithuania, and France, are advocating for increased support for Kyiv, potentially extending into Ukrainian territory.”

In a military and political alliance where there are “some” and there are “some others,” the inevitable occurs: “However, according to [The Telegraph’s] sources, before the NATO summit in Vilnius in July 2023, countries that support Ukraine’s accession to the alliance put strong pressure on other members on this issue, which led to a split in the military bloc.” [Italics, mine.]

On cue, up slithers Mr. Putin to ratchet up the pressure on this hairline fracture in the NATO alliance: “Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Kyiv’s accession to the Alliance would threaten Moscow and not increase Ukraine’s security, as it would create ‘additional tension in the international arena.’”

Why, again, is NATO wary of Ukraine joining the alliance?

“At the NATO summit in Washington, which will be held from July 9 to 11, Ukraine will not be offered anything that would allow the country to move forward on the path to membership because of fears that the alliance could be drawn into a war with Russia.”

As both a military and political organization, NATO was able to diplomatically paper over the dispute and place in abeyance an ultimate determination regarding Ukraine’s membership.

“The Telegraph writes that at the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., alliance leaders will offer Ukraine what is now being called a ‘bridge’ or ‘path’ to membership to demonstrate support for the process. The support package being discussed now will emphasize ‘Ukraine’s ability to choose its own future’ and demonstrate that the ‘path to membership is getting shorter….’”

While temporarily papering over this hairline fracture in NATO’s alliance, what is not getting shorter but is widening is another fissure over Ukraine, one that is even more pressing and dangerous: Ukraine’s use of NATO weapons on enemy targets in Russia.

We will explore this issue next week in the second and final part of our series on NATO’s divisive debates over Ukraine.

Things Worth Remembering: ‘You Must Punish the Foes Within Your Gates’

 In the fourth century BC, the great orator Demosthenes gave a speech about democracy that still holds true today.

This week we turn to Demosthenes, who, like Pericles and Cicero, is one of those speakers who resound through the ages. Consider, for a moment, how rare that is—a statesman who died 300 years before Christ speaking to us across the millennia. 

Most speakers these days seem barely able to speak across a day or week.

Demosthenes became one of the greatest orators in Athens in the fourth century BC by, among other things, studying those who came before him, talking with pebbles in his mouth, and running while reciting verse.

He also grasped the importance of speaking simply and striking an emotional chord—both of which shine through in the speech I want to focus on this week, “On the Chersonese.”

The historical context here is complicated, so I will mention it in brief.

The Athenians had, for some time, been interested in occupying the Thracian Chersonese, now Gallipoli, because it was located along their corn ship route connecting the Aegean Sea and what was then Byzantium (and became Constantinople and later, Istanbul). 

An array of Greek city-states had vied for control of the territory for ages. After the so-called Social War of 357—which pitted Athens against the less powerful city-states of Chios, Rhodes, and a few others—the Athenians were once more in possession of it.

But their rival, King Philip of Macedon, was interested in it too—leading to a sort of historical pileup not entirely dissimilar to the events leading up to World War I, in which one event triggers another and another and another. (Among the many events was the birth, in 356, of Philip’s son, who would become Alexander the Great, and had a complicated relationship with Athenian democracy.)

First, the king of Thrace—a region that encompassed the Chersonese—was assassinated. This was followed by a series of treaties and territorial carve-ups, but the question of ultimate control was left unsettled. 

Meanwhile, the Athenians won over the mercenary leader Charidemus, and in 342 they sent troops to the Chersonese to reclaim their stake in the territory. Philip attempted to play the role of arbitrator, gave up on that, and sent his own troops into battle.

This prompted the Athenian general Diopeithes to invade Thrace, which prompted Philip to demand of the Athenians that they withdraw from Cardia, the largest town in the Chersonese.

I trust all this is clear. But if it isn’t, then that is fine. It wasn’t entirely clear to the Greeks either. 

Philip, after all, had many sympathizers in Athens. Just as we’ve become accustomed to officeholders and other so-called elites in the United States offering Kremlin talking points in defense of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or defending Hamas’s barbaric murder of Jews, so too were there senators in ancient Athens who took the side of Philip against Diopeithes—those who did not see things as clearly as we might have hoped. 

After all, it is certainly true that the Athenians—like present-day Americans—had their many problems. They had been led astray by war. There had been a coup, and then a restoration of the old polis, or democracy. But Athenians seemed exhausted, and they seemed to have lost sight of their founding ideals, why those ideals were so important, or what might replace them. 

They seemed not to grasp that Philip posed a dire threat to what was, at that point, the greatest experiment in self-government ever—the same experiment that, a century before, had bequeathed to the world Socrates and Plato and, more recently, Aristotle, among countless other writers, poets, tragedians, historians, astronomers, mathematicians, and so forth, the people who had literally led the world out of Plato’s allegorical cave of darkness.

It is important to think about this for just a moment: for tens of thousands of years, human beings had lived under kingdoms and despots, and then, for a variety of historical, political, and cultural reasons, along came Athens—and the birth of Western civilization. The whole story of how we came to be is obviously more complicated than that, but the starkness of that divide—before and after Athens—is truly remarkable. Indisputably so.

Demosthenes, in any event, was not confused about who was right and wrong, or what was at stake, offering an extraordinary reply to Philip that we are lucky enough to have in full. This is a miracle itself, when you think of all that was lost in libraries and places of record between his time and ours.

In his speech, he successfully argued to the Athenians that they should not repudiate Diopeithes for standing up to Philip.

First, Demosthenes draws in his audience by establishing his credentials, arguing that he can be trusted. “I shall speak freely,” he says, “for indeed, I could not speak otherwise.” 

He adds: “In Heaven’s name, when I am pleading for your best interests, allow me to speak freely.”

Perhaps we have become jaded to such appeals. Perhaps the Athenians were too. Nevertheless, there is an urgency and a frankness about Demosthenes’ appeal.

But it is in the following passage that Demosthenes truly hits his stride.

“Now there are some who think they confute a speaker the moment they ask, ‘What then ought we to do?’ ” he says. “To these I will give the fairest and truest answer: not what you are doing now.”

One can hear in his words the same appeal to reason, the same sense of urgency, the same moral vision, that informs those in the West watching what is unfolding in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, and the Taiwan Strait and wondering: When will the grown-ups stand up? When will we do what must be done?

Demosthenes goes on: “I will not, however, shrink from going carefully into details; only they must be as willing to act as they are eager to question. First, men of Athens, you must fix this firmly in your minds, that Philip is at war with us and has broken the peace.”

Ah, yes, just as Vladimir Putin is at war with the Pax Americana, just as the jihadists intend to overthrow Western civilization from within and without, Philip was already at war with Athens—whether the Athenians liked it or not. They could pretend otherwise. They could appease or look away or hope for the best. Or they could fight.

“But if anyone thinks that all this means great expense and much toil and worry, he is quite correct,” Demosthenes concedes. Then, he comes in for the all-powerful blow: “But if he reckons up what will hereafter be the result to Athens if she refuses to act, he will conclude that it is to our interest to perform our duty willingly.”

And finally: “You must needs bear in mind that this is a life-and-death struggle, and the men who have sold themselves to Philip must be abhorred and cudgeled to death, for it is impossible to quell the foes without, until you have punished those within your gates.”

 

X22, And we Know, and more- June 2nd

 

Still Flying High, WWII Plane That Led D-Day Operation Heads to Normandy

 Max Gurney, 102, of San Diego is a proud member of the small contingent of surviving veterans who will witness the historic event.

Excuse the length... A lot to cover... R.V.

OXFORD, Conn.—High above the muddy Hudson River, the D-Day Squadron had flown nearly 100 miles in tight formation to reach the towering spires of New York City.

Straight ahead, the mirror-blue One World Trade Center—Manhattan’s tallest building at 1,776 feet—rose majestically above a drab sea of skyscrapers.

Just beyond was the Statue of Liberty, with its torch of freedom reaching toward the clouds.

The five World War II-era aircraft banked left to get a better look at Lady Liberty perched on its island pedestal in the New York Harbor just before the return flight to Connecticut.

Eighty years ago, the view from the squadron’s C-47 troop transport aircraft, named That’s All, Brother, looked much different as it flew into a world war raging about 3,500 miles across the Atlantic Ocean.

The massive airborne operation took place in the pre-dawn hours of June 6, 1944—D-Day. That’s All, Brother was the first of hundreds of paratroop transport planes to deliver their human cargo over the heavily fortified beaches of Normandy, France.

At least 10,000 Allied soldiers (nearly 4,500 Americans) were killed or wounded during the land, air, and sea invasion on D-Day, and at least one-quarter of these casualties were airborne troops. Germany’s losses were between 4,000 and 9,000 men, either killed or wounded.

The military operation was the beginning of the end of the war in Europe.

The May 17 flight over New York City was a trial run for the D-Day Squadron’s 2024 Legacy Tour, which will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the historic invasion and the 75th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift in Wiesbaden, Germany.

On May 18, the squadron took to the skies once again from Oxford, Connecticut, this time on a transatlantic flight across the “Blue Spruce Route” used during World War II.

According to the D-Day Squadron, the Blue Spruce Route “refers to the ferry and refueling navigational path from North America to Europe that was leveraged during the war.”

“The significant undertaking aims to honor the courage and sacrifice of the Greatest Generation, promoting the enduring legacy of freedom and democracy they fought for,” it stated.

Five of the 11 aircraft in the squadron will complete the 3,000-nautical-mile journey to England and France in six days. Each plane will consume 36 gallons of oil and more than 1,600 gallons of fuel. The entire journey will require 80 crew members.

A collection of DC-3-type aircraft will lead the way with scheduled stops in Canada, Iceland, the UK, and France.

About 60 World War II veterans will be honored with a symbolic flight of these aircraft during ground ceremonies in Normandy on D-Day, June 6.

Max Gurney, 102, of San Diego is a proud member of the small contingent of surviving veterans who will witness the historic event.

“I’m very thrilled,” he told The Epoch Times in a phone interview. “I hope to meet some of these other veterans. For the time being, I don’t know who they are. It will be a return to the past.”

Mr. Gurney was among thousands of young men who enlisted in the Army right out of high school following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

He said that at the time, anti-war sentiment in the United States had been running high. However, Pearl Harbor quickly galvanized public opinion in favor of entering the conflict in Europe.

“There was a complete change of mind, particularly with the students,” Mr. Gurney said. “It was on a Sunday morning. As of Monday and Tuesday, there was a fantastic unity in the country—particularly among the young people.

“It was a pivotal moment for the country. The reasoning changed. The necessity to support the war against the Germans and the Japanese was very sharp. There was no dissent.

“As you can imagine, my mother was particularly taken aback by the events. She always encouraged me to be as careful as all mothers today toward their sons and children.”

Born in Germany, Mr. Gurney grew up in New York City and served with the U.S. Army signal corps in North Africa during the war.

He considers himself a “lucky survivor.”

“The Germans had been extremely active, although we believed they couldn’t win the war,” he said. “They fought to the very end.”

After the war, Mr. Gurney spent the next 45 years working at Pan American World Airways. He said the DC-3 (the civilian version of the C-47) ranked as one of the most reliable aircraft during peacetime.

In war, it was a dependable workhorse.

Piloted by Lt. Col. John Donalson, That’s All, Brother led more than 800 C-47s that carried more than 13,000 paratroopers to drop zones on D-Day in 1944.

The airplane served in other large-scale operations, including Dragoon, Market Garden, and Varsity, before returning to the United States to be sold to the commercial market in 1945 after the war ended.

The airplane had many owners over the decades that followed, and its historical significance was lost.

Two U.S. Air Force historians eventually rescued the airplane from a scrap yard in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. A few years later, the Commemorative Air Force (CAF) acquired the airplane and restored it to its original 1944 khaki-green paint scheme and working condition.

“How do you put a price on history like this—the lead plane on the D-Day invasion?” CAF member and head of maintenance Ray Clausen, of San Antonio, said.

“This is physically the first [aircraft] of the actual paratroop invasion.”

Built by the Douglas Aircraft Co., the DC-3 began its long and storied career as a civilian aircraft in the 1930s. The company made more than 600 DC-3s before converting to military production of the C-47 Skytrain in the United States and the Dakota in the British Royal Air Force in 1943.

The propeller-driven airplane has two 1,200-horsepower engines and can reach a cruising speed of more than 200 miles per hour. The range of the DC-3 is nearly 1,500 miles on a single tank of fuel.

 

An estimated 164 DC-3s are still delivering cargo today.

While the C-47 Skytrain military version carried up to 18 paratroopers at a time, That’s All, Brother had more electronic equipment on board, limiting payload to a dozen paratroopers for each drop.

“For some reason, after the war, [That’s All, Brother] was brought back to the United States,” Mr. Clausen told The Epoch Times. “They found it sitting in the boneyard over at Oshkosh airport.”

Twenty years ago, Mr. Clausen volunteered to clean aircraft parts for the CAF so he could “just be around planes.”

“I was a gearhead as a kid and showed a mechanical aptitude. They suggested I get a mechanic’s license, which I did,” he said.

His work eventually brought him to That’s All, Brother as the aircraft’s lead mechanic.

“The planes were designed and built to be robust,” Mr. Clausen said. “If we stay ahead of it and do a lot of preventive maintenance, it’s actually a very cooperative and easy plane to fly.

“If you ignore things and let a problem go, it'll come back and bite you in a bad way. Parts are hard to find, and they’re expensive.”

Parked near the runway at Waterbury-Oxford Airport, That’s All, Brother was ready to make history once again, flying with the D-Day Squadron on the eve of the invasion’s 80th anniversary.

A seasoned mechanic, Mr. Clausen said there are no words to describe the way he feels about the plane.

“I get choked up thinking about it. It’s such an honor,” he said, his arm resting on the massive left wing. “I have a connection to it. It’s really thrilling to be a part of this.”

Visitors at the Oxford Airport were able to view the five vintage aircraft up close and listen as World War II reenactors explained the crucial role each airplane played during and after D-Day.

“Boy, it’s surreal sometimes—to know that we kind of fill the shoes of the veterans that didn’t come home,” Scott Fischer, dressed in the World War II uniform of a 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion paratrooper, said.

“It’s kind of an honor—a sense of pride. We appreciate what they went through and what we have today because of them. A lot of people have forgotten that.”

“When I put on this uniform, I’m not Scott Fischer,” the Fairfield, Connecticut, resident said. “Scott Fischer is a different guy. He owns a business. He works his tail off.

“I play the part—I am the part. I embrace it, and I enjoy it. And I try to get everybody else to grab that magic.”

Mr. Fischer first took part in a World War II reenactment in 2010, and from there, he was “hooked.”

He said when people forget history, it tends to repeat itself in painful ways.

Centenarian Mr. Gurney has had a lifetime to reflect on the war’s global effects and the fact that as times change, human passions do not.

And so it is in war.

“I think wars don’t solve very much,” Mr. Gurney said. “They end a temporary situation, and the passions, hate, and opposition, they grow proportionally to the world’s population.

“The changes in my lifetime have been gigantic. I try to understand some of the things that are going on today.

“It requires an effort, particularly because of technology.”

Wearing a World War II-era military aviator’s cap and leather jacket, Andrew Bleidner of Connecticut spent days traveling with the D-Day Squadron, gaining knowledge and insight for a narrative film that he’s producing in association with Steven Spielberg.

Mr. Bleidner said the project strikes close to his heart. His grandfather Arthur “Art” J. Negri was a side gunner on a B-17 bomber during World War II and earned the Bronze Star for saving the lives of four servicemen.

“He was a good man,” Mr. Bleidner said. “I’m making this film in tribute to him. It’s about coming together in times of adversity and understanding that type of brotherhood, that type of bond. It’s timeless.”

The National WWII Museum estimates that only 119,550 of the 16.4 million Americans who served and fought in World War II were alive in 2023, a number that diminishes almost daily.

“We have to collect their stories,” Mr. Bleidner told The Epoch Times. “We have to try to preserve as much as we can. If we keep a firm foothold in what the world has been through, then we can move forward. It’s the best way to run.

“We’re not looking to market this film to one person. It’s the human element.”

Up until his death on Dec. 12, 2012, Mr. Bleidner’s grandfather didn’t like to talk about his war experience.

Some things best remain buried in the past.

“You don’t always want to relive those things,” Mr. Bleidner said. “What you do keep with you is that sense of camaraderie and bonding through pain. The simple things are what matter.

“All the way to his death, all he wanted was a Coca-Cola and a bag of potato chips. He used to say: ‘Don’t drink the water [overseas during wartime]. Coca-Cola was a big part of keeping the soldiers happy.’”

Curt Lewis of San Antonio is the designated lead CAF pilot for That’s All, Brother, during the D-Day Squadron 2024 commemorative tour.

“It’s a little bit of a physical experience,” Mr. Lewis said of flying the C-47, with its 96-foot wingspan.

“It’s a bit of a noisy experience. This is a 26,000-pound airplane, all hydraulic controls, with no assist.”

Mr. Lewis said he considers it an honor to be the lead pilot of the same C-47 airplane that led the first airborne wave over Normandy 80 years ago.

The sad part, he said, is knowing there are “fewer and fewer [World War II veterans] every year.”

“The younger guys are 99 years old,” he said.

That’s All, Brother co-pilot John McKiski, 67, of Texas, a retired United Airlines pilot and longtime CAF member, wonders if there will be any World War II veterans still alive five years from now.

“That’s the thing,” he said. “When I was a kid in the CAF 48 years ago, there were World War II guys everywhere. Now, there are not many left. I don’t know how many are going to be in Normandy [in 2024]. The ones who are able will be there.”

“My uncle Don was a glider pilot on D-Day. He later flew C-47s. He was young and left at night, not knowing what was going to happen to him.”

He said that he'll sometimes think about his uncle while soaring above the clouds on buffeting columns of invisible air.

“One of the biggest things is to not let history die,” Mr. McKiski said. “This is a big deal. People sacrificed a lot for this.”

Craig Megargle has been a member of “Easy Company, 506th Band of Brothers Reenactment Unit” for several years. He wears the authentic uniform of an American officer with pride and honor.

And it is with pride and honor that his late father served with the 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment as a paratrooper during World War II.

One day, Mr. Megargle was looking for a fitting way to honor his veteran father. It ended up being a “sort of a bucket list thing” to parachute out of a C-47, he said.

To do that, he first had to earn his “jump wings,” and the rest is family history.

“It was a rush,” Mr. Megargle said of the parachute jump, his voice thick with emotion. “It’s a living history thing. The guys that went before us—my dad—they were the real heroes.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/still-flying-high-wwii-plane-that-led-d-day-operation-heads-to-normandy-5653841?utm_source=PR_article_paid&utm_medium=email&est=wymKfAoA7WFkwSuhHkiQtEoSfr7G13%2FBCmGQHsEaMoPTQ8hUKUf0zKUJpudy%2BGvCslN0&utm_campaign=pr-2024-06-02-ca