Lessons of the Vilnius Summit

But that does not appear to be the historical fate of this past week’s NATO summit gathering in Vilnius. Such gatherings are invariably celebrated to the galactic edge of boredom for their supposedly “historic” decisions that not even the participants can remember five minutes later: However, the Vilnius summit was historic precisely for the decisions that were not made. And how that came about.

First, the summit agreed on continuing to support Ukraine in its desperate and clearly losing war against Russia. In other words, it took no decision either to drastically step up that support – or to end it. This means that for now the war will go on and the Ukrainian people will continue to bleed young lives.

Second, the gathered leaders did not raise a fingernail towards seeking any end to the slaughter – incomparably the worst that Europe has seen since the end of World War II more than 78 years ago.

Third, they did not move an inch either towards giving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy any real encouragement or reassurance at all towards fast-tracking Ukraine into the Alliance as a full member state.

Fourth, on the contrary, alliance leaders led by US President Joe Biden and British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace went out of their way to pour cold water on the ridiculous Zelenskyy whom they – and so many other cynics and fools – have acclaimed to be a combination of Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill over the past two years.

Zelenskyy true to his mugging, please-the-public and crave the applause nature, drank it all up like a terminal alcohol swigging down the rotgut moonshine. But clearly, Vilnius was a traumatic wake-up call for him.

The President of Ukraine, the acclaimed Hero of the United States Congress, wandered forlorn among the coiffed, impeccably dressed, well-suited Western leaders in his trademark tramp’s clothing looking indeed like a beggar pulled off the Vilnius streets, ignored by all and made to feel it.

Fifth, this experience looks certain to have a profound impact on Zelenskyy. I very much doubt he will make any effort to privately seek an accommodation with Russia at last and end the war he could have stopped in April 2023 when he initially appeared responsive to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s peace offer.

Instead, Zelenskyy heeded the armchair warriors and fake strategists in Washington who cynically cheered him on: Three months and scores of thousands of more lost lives later, his suffering people continue to pay the price.

Sixth, Vilnius was the summit where the supposedly miraculous and heroic US and European unanimity on supporting Ukraine started to unravel in public.

The gaps are cracking all over the place: Even the British, most loyal of America’s European Airstrip puppets, quailed publicly at the prospect of keeping their own arsenals empty and their own military forces stripped to the bone in order to supply more scores of billions of dollars and weapons and aid to the Zelenskyy regime to see it all stolen outright or bungled ineptly in use, as everything has been so far.

Ukrainian soldiers have been exceptionally brave. But they are being sacrificed in their scores of thousands for fantastical conceptions and military operations that are unnecessary, impossible or just downright meaningless.

All the endlessly ballyhoo-ed US military training since 2014 has clearly produced ultimately a European successor to the Afghan National Army: Designed to lose, be bled dry and finally just evaporate in the End Game.

French President Emmanuel Macron is facing at home a ferocious backlash to his ultra-liberal, free trade policies that have impoverished the working classes of France. Nor does Germany, for all its meek obedience as usual to Washington’s commands in public rhetoric, have any stomach to really escalate and provoke a global war without limits.

On the other hand, Poland and its league of tiny mini allies across Eastern Europe remain determined to do just that. And they will continue to give Zelenskyy the illusion that he is not alone.

But the divisions and splits in the Alliance exposed at Vilnius are not suppurating in public. They are infectious: They are not being treated. The new post-Cold War NATO of the past 30 years was weighed in the balance at Vilnius and found wanting. Greater consequences are certain to soon follow.