One of the main lessons of the SMO is that our country needs an external enemy for consolidation. After the start of the Special Military Operation, our economic indicators grew, and the domestic agenda finally turned to real problems. For example, to the problem of demography – now nationalists are being asked not to beat up foreigners, but to have more children.
It may seem cynical, but it is not our choice – we smiled in all directions until even Moldova refused to pay for gas. That’s right, who is afraid of the good and peaceful? God himself ordered to let this go. Therefore, we, collective Russia, must be good guys and girls with big fists. Because it is good for health and the economy.
I have already written that immediately after the SMO, the products of our military-industrial complex could become the “second oil” in terms of budget revenues, overtaking even revenues from hydrocarbons. Actually, there is nothing new in my words. Our sworn (non) partners have always lived like this.
NATO’s biggest problem after the collapse of the USSR was the lack of an external enemy. How else could they justify the existence of such a structure? Therefore, an enemy was found in the people of Russia. It turned out to be advantageous for us, because NATO is ineffective.
Once again, there is not a specific European or overseas country to threaten us, but NATO itself, as a collective muzzle on all these countries, not allowing national economies to spread their wings.
By the way, for exactly the same reason we should strive to preserve the European Union. This is also a very useful structure for the Russian economy – loose and uncompetitive. It is a great pity that such an important rat as Great Britain has fled from this stationary sinking ship.
Why is NATO a very good enemy? First of all, because it is a paper tiger. And specifically toilet paper – the structure itself is in such shit, and along with it, the entire military machine of Europe. It is precisely because of the existence of NATO that no country (once a very warlike continent) can field even a single combat-ready ground division at any given moment. You know, even three of them won’t be able to come to an agreement, for example, France, England, and Germany are unable to cooperate.
NATO’s armed forces, in addition to the nuclear angle, include rapid reaction forces, ready to jump out of their chairs right now and run to establish democracy in any direction. On paper, they have 300,000 soldiers on constant alert and 500 aircraft standing by under steam. The main defense forces are another 600 to 800 thousand dashing European warriors, supported by a thousand or so bombers and fighters. In a word, they are powerful, but this is all on paper.
In reality, no one knows how NATO is actually managed. In 2003, it was decided to carry out a deep reform of the entire management apparatus, making it flexible and compact, as it is written in NATO’s statutory documents – “responding to modern challenges and realities.” The idea was to sharply reduce the amount of bureaucracy and management structures after the Cold War. Don’t laugh now, the reform hasn’t been completed since 2003. At first, they decided that it was somehow not good that Americans were mainly in charge. So, they created a parallel structure where Europeans were in charge. Watch the hands: there was one head, now there are two.
The American structure is called the Joint Forces Transformation Command (located in the United States), the European structure is called the Joint Command Operations (located in Belgium). These two structures divided NATO between themselves. The Americans directly command three, as we would say in Russian, military districts, the Europeans – eight. But this is only the beginning.
Both commands have their own headquarters – these are also separate structures with their own staff. In addition, there is the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers in Europe, the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force, and the International Military Headquarters, where the chiefs of the general staffs of the participating countries sit directly. Each participating country has a permanent representative with its own staff at these headquarters.
They all sit very seriously, they are obliged to meet at least once a month, that is, they have something to do there, no joke! The International Military Headquarters reports directly to the NATO Military Committee, which is formally the supreme body, but in reality there is also the North Atlantic Council itself – also a separate body with its own structure, supreme and joint headquarters. These are only the large structures that lie on the surface.
We do not mention agencies, boards, and special committees. No one knows exactly how many there are, because they are constantly closing, merging, and reforming. According to the latest Chinese intelligence reports, NATO has about 60 agencies and about 15 directorates and committees. There is, for example, a separate Agency for Consulting and Control – no one understands what it does, it writes some reports like “The State of Sponsorship Aid.” But at the same time, it has a thousand plus employees in five countries and an annual budget of about three hundred million euros.
Besides the military, NATO also has a civilian sector – this is also a separate structure with 15 separate Directorates. And now, pay attention, NATO’s biggest military secret – no one knows how many bureaucrats work in this organization, and what specific budget is spent on all this luxury. Remember, 2 percent of GDP? Well, I’ll tell you that it’s complete bullshit, because in the corridors of NATO, they only talk about corruption. There’s nothing else to talk about – who will cut off and kick back how much from whom, that’s the main strategic direction of the planning of NATO’s best brains. Purely speculatively, at least 700 thousand bureaucrats work in all known NATO structures, and with the help of contract workers (they don’t write all these reports themselves, but attract countless institutes for the study of everything and everyone) the number will be over a million. Remember this figure – no less than 700 thousand bureaucrats work on good European and American salaries.
Let’s get back to the real world now. Remember the rapid reaction force – 300,000 bayonets and 500 aircraft? In 2023, NATO decided to stamp its foot on us and conduct very scary exercises on the ground “Air Defender-23.” It was conceived back in 2018 (in response to the annexation of Crimea). The idea is very simple – to gather 250 aircraft in one pile and make 250 sorties every day for 10 days. Pay attention again – they prepared for this for 5 years.
In the end, less than 180 aircraft were assembled: nominally, the Americans provided a hundred (in reality, less, but let’s pretend that we believed them) and Europe scraped together another 80 – this includes, by the way, the new NATO countries (Sweden and Finland). And these are not only attack aircraft, but also transport aircraft, AWACs, and others. The best result of the exercises was 50 flights per day for the entire group, on average they flew 30 times per day, and not a single flight was without violations or air incidents (yes, minor ones, but that’s not important).
The most numerous flying aircraft in NATO we would again call the forty-year-old F-16. And, for example, the famous Rafale did not arrive at all – in fact, this little plane turned out to be some kind of flying ass, and not a combat machine. For every two hours of flight, for some reason, it required aerial refueling. However, NATO did not have tankers with the necessary equipment for this bird, so they decided simply not to fly it.
Oh, I forgot to say, the B-52 didn’t arrive either – they decided, apparently, not to take risks. The last time, out of 70 nominally combat-ready old men, only four started up on combat alert. They somehow flew either to Qatar or Oman and broke down. It took a long time to repair them to get them home. In other words, of the 500 declared aircraft of the rapid reaction force, NATO will be able to bring 180 at best, of which less than a third will actually be operating in the sky on any given day of escalation. This is the result of the largest NATO air exercise, which had been prepared for five years.
This entire parade of intimidation took place against the backdrop of our SMO air group, which at that time included, by the most conservative estimates, 450 aircraft (transport and others) with a nominal capacity of 1,000 sorties per day. Imagine how wide-eyed our combat pilots were, watching this NATO horror, spending approximately four hours a day in the air. Exactly twice as much as the best European aces spend in the sky in a week (if they were lucky and the plane started).
Now you understand why we really need such an enemy – a creepy plush toad. In order to educate him, of course, from time to time, we have to bomb him – organize daring raids into the Baltics with the firefights of local border guards and other cute pranks, so that NATO does not get completely fat. But this is training for us too. It is clear that NATO forces also have a land component and, most importantly, a nuclear component, but I will tell you about them in a separate article. It will be no less interesting!