Mission creep: NATO's strange evolution from Yugoslavia to Zelenskyy

 

Mission creep: NATO's strange evolution from Yugoslavia to Zelenskyy

 

     I am totally loving the Balkans right now -- me and about one million other frantic tourists.  It took my bus eight and a half hours just to travel the 85-mile stretch of road between Albania and Dubrovnik because every single Adriatic beach town along the way was inundated with wall-to-wall traffic as a gigantic army of half-naked tourists hit the beaches of Montenegro and Croatia.

     Lovely beaches.  

     Tourists from all over the world, armed with flotation devices, Speedos, picnic supplies and small children, obstinately stood between me and Dubrovnik.  And then my bus broke down due to overheating caused by the AC struggling against 100-degree weather and the bus had to be towed.

     However.

     It was all worth the effort because the ancient city of Dubrovnik is totally beautiful.  Wish you were here!  And NATO also used to wish that it was there.  Back in 1991, NATO also fell deeply in love with Dubrovnik.  And Kosovo.  And Sarajevo.  Yes, the former Yugoslavia was NATO's first real love affair with mission creep.

     President Eisenhower once said that NATO would be a big success only if it made itself obsolete -- because it would have been successful in stopping all European wars.  President Reagan agreed.  "NATO will go not even one inch further than Germany," he promised Gorbachev before the Berlin Wall came down.  Poor NATO.  It had successfully worked its way out of a job.

     But wait!  Perhaps NATO could still stir something up in Yugoslavia!   And by using its new "humanitarian intervention" shtick for the very first time, NATO got to bomb the hell out of Kosovo.  The game was back on!  And after that it was easy to claim "humanitarian intervention" in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Albania, Turkey, Yemen, Somalia and to even fly jet fighter planes over America after 9-11.  And of course NATO's latest mission-creep triumph is Ukra$ne.  Who can forget all those hundreds of billions of dollars that Americans happily gave to Voldemort Zelenskyy?  "We're ba-ack!" cries NATO.

     But, like I said, there is one thing that NATO and I have in common.  We both truly love Dubrovnik.  I love Dubrovnik because it is the most fabulous example of medieval architecture ev-ah.  NATO loves it because Game of Thrones was filmed here -- and NATO simply adores villains like Joffrey Baratheon.

     Luckily for me, I got to spend all day in Dubrovnik yesterday -- happily soaking up all of its ancient unique and wonderful medieval history, eating chocolate gelato and trying to find a "Mother of Dragons" T-shirt.  Mother of Dragons?  That would be me!  (Just ask some of my daughters.) 

PS:  I betcha anything that NATO is currently foaming at the mouth to get further involved in its creepy mission-creep toward Russia, China, Gaza and Iran. 

PPS:  How come that, everywhere I go here in the former Yugoslavia, I am the only one wearing a keffiyah?  You would think that here, more than almost anywhere, folks would be supporting the anti-genocide resistance movement in Gaza because first the Serbs were slaughtered here and then the Bosnians and Kosovars.  But no.... 

      And speaking of resistance, how come those brave resistance fighters who struggled against fascism in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia were called heroic partisans -- while the brave resistance fighters who struggle against fascism in Zionist-occupied Palestine are called terrorists?  Just asking.

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