NATO's Dwindling "Peace Dividend"- Cognitive Dissonance is Us

 To use the words NATO and Peace Dividend in the same sentence- let alone the same headline is a clear demonstration of the cognitive dissonance that is rampant in our very sick western society.NATO and PEACE don't go together. They are not similar.  They are not comparable. They do not have characteristics that are the same. Therefore NATO could not have a peace dividend.Peace: freedom from disturbance; quiet and tranquility; freedom from or the cessation of war or violence; mental calm; serenity.Globe and MailParatroopers of NATO armies take part in "Swift Response 2017" military drill, a part of "Saber Guardian 2017" exercise, at Bezmer airfield, Bulgaria, July 18, 2017.See NATO paratroopers practicing war. In a drill for war. War is not PEACE. Except for the dead.

"Picking through the avalanche of criticism set off by U.S. President Donald Trump’s diplomatic misadventure through Europe this month, one commentary stands out.John Kerry – former U.S. secretary of state in the Obama administration – launched a 400-word firebomb on Twitter after Mr. Trump’s inflammatory meetings with North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders, in which the President demanded immediate increases in military spending and threatened to pull the United States out of the mutual-defence partnership. Mr. Kerry’s summary of what the President is putting at risk hit the nail on its poignant head.“He diminishes alliances we built to safeguard an economic and strategic force that has allowed millions of people to live in freedom,” he said in a letter posted to Twitter"

An alliance built as a economic and strategic force- that helps some people make a whole lot of money! "Allowed millions" of people to live in freedom?- That is, of course, freedom to exploit the multi billions of humanity. Kerry didn't cite tens of millions or hundreds of millions. Just millions. The .001 percent of the global population that constitute the overlord class. Those who have an ANNUAL yearly income of more then 152 million dollarsThose are the millions of people allowed to live in "freedom' by the NATO world order.

"It’s no accident that Mr. Kerry included the word “economic” in describing NATO’s importance. The President’s antipathy toward his NATO allies – his instincts to shift the United States to a more inward-looking, self-interested and increasingly isolated superpower, while openly courting a powerful traditional foe in Russia – has deep economic implications, in addition to the military and political ones"

Kerry used the word economic because that what NATO is about. It is the strong arm of the monopolistic/predatory global capitalist crowd-  Saying that as a person who is not opposed to  the idea of capitalism - Local business grow local economies. The farmer who sells his crop is a capitalist. But not on the NATO/global scale of capitalism- for multinational conglomerates to control everything- shut down competitors and kill those who dare not comply!

The world order that emerged from the solidarity of NATO’s collection of Western industrial powers, coupled with the collapse of Eastern European communism and the end of the Cold War, fostered a rare global stability that allowed an increasingly internationalized economy to flourish, while reducing the financial burden of increasing militarization. It’s what economists and political leaders referred to hopefully as the “peace dividend” in the early post-Cold War days of the 1990s. It has become so ingrained in the global economy as to be largely taken for granted.

“The benefits of the core logic of NATO are enormous,” says Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. “A world order where two-thirds of world GDP is at least loosely organized in what you might call a Western coalition – this is very stabilizing and very good for economic growth and for international stability writ large, compared with any other model we’ve seen in history. That really is the point on which we should always begin these discussions.

“In that sense, NATO is a fantastic bargain,” he says.

"NATO is a fantastic bargain"- Sure if you're in the overlord class. To everyone else?Not such a fantastic bargain.

Many economists argue that defence is not a particularly productive use of money in an economy; reducing military spending allows more efficient allocation of those resources, finding its way into investment alternatives that can expand economic capacity and improve productivity.Certainly, the slowdown in military spending after the Cold War coincided with the longest postwar economic expansion in history...

Speaks volumes to the fact that military spending is a completely unproductive use of capital and resources .