NATO Vassal States Suffering Stockholm Syndrome

By Robert Billyard
July 16, 2018 "Information Clearing House" -


  Stockholm syndrome applies to individuals held in a hostage situation. After a period of time they become resigned to their captivity and go into an alliance with their captor.  It is similar to prisoners incarcerated for so long they don’t want to leave prison. Prison becomes their “natural” home and they develop a fear of true freedom and the larger world.

So too is it with countries and it apples to NATO’s vassal states.

NATO was formed after WWll as a defense alliance to counter the threat of the now defunct USSR.  The  Warsaw Pact was the USSR equivalent defense alliance and was disbanded in 1991 with the collapse of the USSR. NATO should have also been disbanded but in the spirit of American triumphalism it had a new role to play.  It would continue to be dominated by the US and become part of its globalized war machine.

 Europe was liberated from Hitler’s Germany only to be colonized by American imperialism. NATO was then, as it is today, an effective way for the US to control Europe. Controlling Europe also prevents it from forming a pact with Russia as this would constitute a power bloc and challenge to US dominance.

In  Brussels PM Trudeau makes the pompous claim that NATO is as relevant today as it was when founded… “The meeting tomorrow will be an opportunity for all of our countries to rededicate ourselves to NATO, to demonstrate that it’s actually important, that it actually does important things, and that the collection of values and rules that it was brought in to defend 75-plus years ago are just as relevant today as they ever were,” Trudeau said.

This is the same Trudeau who fired his most senior cabinet minister and former party leader.  Global Affairs minister Stephane Dion was send packing as he had some ideas for a more independent Canadian foreign policy. With the arrival of Trump, Dion had to go to appease Washington.  Dion was replaced with the hardline Russia phobic Chrystia Freeland. In step with the vociferous Western anti-Russian propaganda mill both Trudeau and Freeland  take cheap shots at Russia on a regular basis.( “vociferous” is the operative word here as the vilification of Russia in the West is so pandemic as to be suspect- just  fake news gone ballistic.)

As Trudeau marches off to Brussels he does so as a novice colonial manager in obedient service to the power elites. He is not a power broker but a power groupie. Like the leaders of other NATO vassal states he sacrifices the good of his country to the greater glories of a defunct and utterly corrupt Empire. They all suffer Stockholm syndrome.

Trump on the other hand is the ultimate power broker who glories in the bullying exercise of it and he is utterly contemptuous of weakness in others-he feeds on it.  The Empire practices the most invidious self-serving parasitism as it feeds off friend and foe alike.  Trump is so brazen he is already threatening to  raise defense spending for NATO members from the present 2% of GDP to 4%. 

NATO is only relevant as a one-time defense alliance now serving the Empire as part of its global militarism. NATO is not a defender of countries but a destroyer. It talks defense but it is all offence. NATO vassal states are willfully ignorant of the existence of the Wolfowitz Doctrine and the Program for the New American Century. They ignore that the US has the entire globe divided into military command zones, that they have almost a thousand bases spanning the globe. The US and its NATO vassal states account for over 65% of global annual military spending. 

Little wonder Trump is desperate to have his vassals cough up more cash. His country is in imperial overreach with big bills to pay.

NATO as a defence alliance is a charade. To play the game there has to be a designated villain 

and Russia fills the bill. As it did in Cold War l the US is playing the oldest and most tiresome

 of games again in Cold War ll- Divide and Conquer. The US is a warfare state, much like the

 Roman Empire. To sustain endless militarism there must be endless warfare and an endless

 supply of enemies- mostly concocted. The world must be divided into good and evil. There can be

 no detente, no genuine multilateralism.  Progressivism is blocked and bled to death by the 

wages of war. We squander our futures to the craven stupidity of endless war.

For this craven stupidity to flourish there must also be a pandemic of Stockholm syndrome. Legions become afflicted.  Starting with our  politicos, it is scoured into the propagandist brains of the media, garnished with the gibberish of our stupefied intellectual elites, and drilled into an indifferent public.

This is the “psychological alliance “of doom. Left unchallenged it forecloses the future. The existence of NATO is all about very big lies, hostage taking and extortion with the death knell of Western civilization sounding in the distance.

Robert Billyard is a visual artist and writer with a particular interest in history, politics and world affairs. He reads widely on these subjects and has been a nomadic blogger for fifteen years. With the activation of canadianviews-ymo.ca, he now has a virtual home.

This article was originally published by " Canadian Views" -

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.