For Secretary of State Lloyd Austin, history doesn’t exist, only the NATO narrative. “Once again, let’s remember a key point,” he declared in his opening remarks during a press conference in Brussels, yesterday, following the conclusion of the two-day NATO defense minister’s meeting. “Putin’s war is not the result of NATO enlargement. Putin’s war is a cause of NATO enlargement, and NATO is more resolute and more capable than ever.” Never mind that NATO was already 1,000 km closer to Moscow than during the Cold War long before Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the beginning of the special military operation in February 2022. No. Austin holds that Putin is the evil aggressor and NATO is all goodness and light.
Such is the shallowness of Western ruling elites. So, there is no surprise that Austin rejected Putin’s peace proposal yesterday. “Putin has occupied—illegally occupied sovereign Ukrainian territory,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “He is not in any position to dictate to Ukraine what they must do to bring about a peace. I think, you know, that’s exactly the kind of behavior that we don’t want to see. We don’t want to see a leader of one country wake up one day and decide that he wants to erase borders and annex the territory of his neighbor.”
“Putin can end this war today,” Austin went on. “You know, he started this war with no provocation. He’s lost—he’s had some, you know, hundreds of thousands of troops wounded and killed in this unjust and unprovoked invasion. He could end this today if he chose to do that. And we call upon him to do that and to leave Ukrainian sovereign territory.”
