Two NATO apparatchiks, Chicago Council on Global Affairs head and Obama’s Ambassador to NATO (2009-2013) Ivo Daalder, and former NATO Secretary General and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, released a memo “To the Leaders of the Free World” on June 9, proposing the adoption of “an Economic Article 5 among democracies” modeled on NATO’s Article 5, so that “economic coercion” by “authoritarian countries” against one democracy would require counter-measures by all. The immediate prospects for the as-yet-to-be-formed “alliance of democracies” which would adopt such an “Economic Article 5” are not looking so good right now, but the desperate intent to force Western allies into a bloc decoupled from the rest of the world is clear. (http://www.thechicagocouncil.org/research/policy-brief/memo-economic-article-5-counter-authoritarian-coercion)
The Queen’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), for its part, issued a call for devious Western minds to come up with “creative and nuanced” proposals for how to best steal Russia’s frozen assets and hand them over to Ukraine, “without inviting comparison with the autocracies the West supposedly stands against,” or handing the Russians a “propaganda victory,” should a court rule such an action illegal. The June 7 call to action, “From Freeze to Seize: Creativity and Nuance Is Needed,” was co-authored by Tom Keatinge, the head of RUSI’s Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies, and research fellow Maria Nizzero.
