The United States has been a superpower for decades, but new information suggests that US empire is in decline, Scott Ritter reported for OpEdNews. At a February 2021 meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Lloyd Austin, the US Secretary of Defense, called on NATO to spread operational expenses more evenly among the organization’s members. The current system requires countries who deploy forces to pay for them as well. The US also sought deployment of NATO troops in the Pacific, an area formerly controlled by solely US forces.
With only nine out of its twenty-eight members meeting the two percent GDP spending requirement established in 2014, NATO is in a financial predicament. However, Ritter reported, these financial struggles run deeper than NATO. US policymakers are unwilling or unable to fund occupation of the Baltics and Poland in order to stave off Russian aggression. “The only nation capable of providing the kind of sustainable, trained, and equipped combat power necessary to fight a viable ground combat campaign against Russian forces in either the Baltics or Poland is the United States. As things stand, the US is unwilling and unable to foot the cost,” Ritter, a longtime critic of the US military, wrote.
Poland and the Baltics are not the only places in need of NATO support. The US also “raised the possibility of enlisting NATO in the Pacific,” Ritter wrote. Ritter interpreted the US request as intended to secure future military support from NATO in the event of military conflict with China. “The pivot toward defining Russia and China as a potential adversary,” Ritter wrote, “is drawn less from any real threat posed by either nation, but rather from the insecurity of a United States in decline.”
Ritter’s article has been republished by a number of independent websites, including RT, TheAltWorld, Information Clearing House, and the Ron Paul Institute.
Source: Scott Ritter “NATO’s Expanding Role Hides the Reality of a US Empire in Decline,” OpEd News, February 23, 2021, https://www.opednews.com/articles/NATO-s-Expanding-Role-Hide-by-Scott-Ritter -Allies_America_International_Militarization-210223-541.html.
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