In the Spring of 1949, only 67 years ago the North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington.

To day it has 28 member countries and is one of the longest surviving collective defence organizations of the world.

The Alliance has undergone a transformation, adapting to the new circumstances and should no longer be seen merely as a military Alliance with a defensive character, but as a political one as well, gathering the nations that share common democratic values and respect for human rights and the rule of law.

If you are like me I could not name the 28 countries that make up Nato membership.

However I would say that I am not far wrong in saying that it’s an US lead organisation that to day acts as a thorn in Putin’s side. Nor could I name it present Commander without Googling.

The supreme Allied Commander is an Army General named Curtis Michael ” Scap” Scaparrotti according to Google.

He ruffly has access to 3 million active duty troops, 24,000 military aircraft, 800 oceangoing warship, not forgetting a standing command structure of over 10,000 professionals in Europe. All useless against a cyber attack.

The point of the alliance was to deter Soviet aggression by guaranteeing that an attack on any NATO nation would be taken as an attack on all NATO nations.

These days it is seen as a good way to become connected to the US, Canada, and countries of the EU.

The world has seen many changes since the inception of NATO. It has served to symbolize the connection between North America and Western Europe.

The risks that the world must face today are connected primarily with proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the possibility of a rogue state or even a non-state entity acquiring such weapons.

To the view of NATO “from the other side.”

NATO appears determined, for the first time in its history, to intervene beyond its borders, even militarily, in those cases where atrocities are being committed, as was the case in Yugoslavia, in order to promote peace and stability. The intervention in Kosovo demonstrated to the world that the Alliance was ready, without a specific mandate from the U.N. Security Council, to carry out a large-scale military confrontation.

In 1990, the then 14 European members of NATO spent around $314 billion on defense collectively.

In 2015, the alliance’s now 26 European members are expected to spend around $227 billion on defense. So while European membership in NATO has nearly doubled since 1990, defense spending by Europeans has gone down by 28 percent since then.

In a few months we face a conundrum with Trump’s recent statements on the U.S. contribution to NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.“we are getting ripped off by every country in NATO, where they pay virtually nothing”

The question is will Nato stay relevant to world peace.

NATO can remain a vital part of our international security apparatus only if we are careful about what we want it to be and do.

We should start by looking at our global security needs, asking what instruments best meet those needs, rather than looking at NATO and asking what role we might devise for it.

We also must engage our allies in meaningful conversation about where NATO fits into their national priorities.

Finally, we have to consider the outlook of NATO’s neighbors, friend and foe.

International terrorism represents a growing concern to the western world, while drug trafficking in Asia is rampant.

In addition, ethnic conflict in Europe, as is witnessed right now in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, is a destabilizing factor with possible spillover effects for other countries.

All these threats are new and NATO has had to take them into consideration when drafting its new strategic Concept in 1999.

Since then the United Nations has hitherto failed to carry out its primary function namely to maintain peace and security and to facilitate the peaceful settlement between nations.

The reasons for this failure is because the five principal powers who are permanent members of the Security Council have the right to veto their decisions.

The primary aim of the Atlantic Alliance on the other hand is based on the elementary principal underlying most societies, namely, the incontestable right of self-defence. .

This right in an International field can only be exercised by collective action guaranteed by a treaty of mutual assistance, and organised in advance.

NATO’s essential purpose is to safeguard the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.

So how does Nato act as a preventive to war.

It is the world’s largest power, establishing the hegemony  of the allied west over the rest of the world.

Article 5 of the Treaty NATO’s founding treaty – states that an armed attack against one or more of them all be considered an attack against them all.  Or under a UN mandate, alone or in cooperation with other countries and international organizations.

The end of the Cold War and, consequently, the absence of the Soviet threat, did not render NATO obsolete.

international reality has changed between 2001 and 2015

In light of NATO’s character as a political forum of democratic nations, expansion to incorporate those states that had authoritatively been excluded from it and pushed into the arms of the Soviet Union seems a logical consequence.

Russia however worries about that, as well as the new identity and tasks that NATO has awarded itself. Russia opposes expansion mainly because she fears that the West is trying to isolate her in the corner of Europe, deprive her of her privileged relationship with her former satellites and undermine her national interests.

This is why she is so fiercely opposing enlargement to include the Baltic States and Ukraine.

Permanent peace cannot be achieved only by confrontational methods and for sustainable peace reconciliation is important in conflict ridden countries.

For NATO, failure in Afghanistan will raise doubts on its ability to successfully complete a mission.

It’s certainly false to say that most of the other NATO members pay “virtually nothing.” The Us annual direct contribution is under $500 million a year.“The volume of the US defense expenditure effectively represents 73 per cent of the defense spending of the Alliance as a whole,”Trump has raised the specter of America puling out of the military alliance if the Europeans don’t pick up a bigger share.

On paper, members say they will put at least 2 percent of their GDP into their militaries. In practice, only five do: the United States, the United Kingdom, Greece, Estonia and Poland.

By NATO’s count, total defense spending of all NATO members stood at about $900 billion in 2015 in current dollars. The United States’ share was about $650 billion. Do the math, and the percentage comes to about 72 percent.

there is no easy way to separate America’s military spending in Europe from its global military strategy.

that NATO’s military resources defy easy description. There are two ways to quantify them and both are incomplete.

The statistics show the military spending of the NATO countries from 2009 to 2016. The military expenditure of Germany in 2010 totaled up to 40.66 billion U.S. dollars.The statistic shows the U.S. military spending in the years 2000 to 2015. In 2000, the U.S. military spending was about 301.7 billion U.S. dollars.

( An AI Halloween thought –  one minute read)

Hundred of thousands of jobs are going to be automated. We are already seeing examples, with little resistance politically or for that matter no one else.

Machine learning and automation is being introduced into decision-making process and in the very near future powerful AI Algorithms will be making decisions that we know nothing about.

Looking at the state of the world and the lack of intelligent leaders perhaps it will be a good thing.

The danger is that the programmers of the algorithms even if they know what the algorithm is designed to do by the time it has completed its deep learning network’s training they will have no idea, and because of the modified it has learned on the way there is no guarantee whether it will consistently yield good results.

Take for instance, if a deep learning AI used in Law enforcement started displaying racist behaviour, it will be impossible to figure out why.

We are becoming more and more relying on Ai to the point that we are not going to notice when its behaviour or priorities start developing sub- optimal results.

Most of us now have computers in the palms of our hands, and instead of using them to expand our minds, or even help make decisions in society most people use them for likes on social media.

There is no doubt that technology is a necessity for survival but if we don’t do something to ensure that it does not take over our lives by dehumanizing ourselves they will be used 90% for greed.

You might as well bar code our arms and get it over and done.  If we don’t have the entitlement to know how an institution arrived at a conclusion – even if an AI did the concluding.

Human beings are creating a new breed of intelligence: it would be irresponsible not to try to understand it.

Will it be the case that we love and marry robots without knowing why.

It is time to pass laws making all people who create Al accountable for what they do.  The trouble is we can’t rely on self-regulation and we can’t trust Capitalism institutions to pass and enforce AI laws. 

We must create a new Institution that is totally transparent not run by any AI Algorithms but by the values that apply to us all.

The likelihood of this happening is Zero. It could be Tootwit Toohow for all of us.

( A four-minute read)

Is there hope for resolution or are we looking at another 10 years, or more, of conflict?

These days with hyper communication we have become desensitized to the suffering of others. We are moved only for a fleeting moment by pictures of children dying or starving but feel totally helpless to contribute to any resolutions.

What we call the “Syrian conflict” is today really the conglomeration of micro-conflicts for which solutions cannot be found in the halls of the General Assembly of the United Nations. 

As it stands, Putin has taken the initiative on Syria, with the West slowly coming to terms with the fact that Assad is the lesser of two evils compared with ISIL, and that he still has some role to play in the war against ISIL.

Assad’s future is Putin’s ace card in the game over Ukraine, and he will continue to support Assad until he is able to get some serious concessions over sanctions and Crimea.

The one thing that is probably working in Syria’s favour is the weariness of all its neighbours of the conflict and the negative impact it is having on them, including the endless flow of refugees. An estimate that 3.8 million refugees, half of them children, have crossed the border to find safety in other countries.

In the long-term:

No one knows how Syria’s war will end. 

If it does end there is one thing for sure there will have to be transitional period and the guarantees that must be provided by the regionals to secure a buy-in from all components of the Syrian society.

What is clear is that international divisions over the greatest crisis of the 21st century is contributed to its severity and longevity.

There is no doubt that the posturing and face-saving exercises of the USA and Russia, including growing hostility in host countries and fortress Europe are slowing down the process of reaching any solution.

The United States and its Western allies seem to be trying to salvage whatever they can of their rapidly diminishing influence.

The latest Russian military initiative should have a very significant psychological effect. For the first time since the crisis started, military operations and arming of factions won’t be justified by the need to “push Assad to the negotiating table”.

Debates over whether or not Assad should be part of a transition process miss the point – the conflict is well beyond being solved by his removal.

This means thinking differently both about how we see the conflict and its solution.

Any solution that does not reflect the realities of life inside Syria today and the ecologies of violence that have taken root during the past four years cannot be taken seriously when moving forward.

Both US and Russia’s vision to end the conflict in Syria are divorced from realities.

Assad is not going to voluntarily give up power. Refugees in neighbouring countries will not return home as long as their country is in ruins.

The US and Russian approaches to dealing with the Syrian conflict are a study in contrasts.

The United States’ failed “train and equip” programme has become the butt of jokes in the Middle East.

Putin’s approach is to do all he can to protect the Assad regime. (Russia has vetoed United Nations Security Council resolutions targeting the Syrian government.)

Putin has invested in Assad’s survival, and it is naive to assume that he will be willing to abandon him unless the cost of propping him up dramatically increases.

It is equally unlikely that Russia, Iran and the Assad regime will devote resources to defeating ISIL.

The West looks at the Syrian conflict through three lenses:

First, the security threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL); second, the influx of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees into Europe; and third, there was little public support for another intervention in the Middle East and there is no clear Arab demand for intervention. In the end western countries are doing very little Diplomatic.  All Diplomatic efforts to end or contain the war have gone nowhere with Isis casting a long shadow over the future of Syria in recent months.

Western governments were still dazzled by the speed and drama of the early Arab spring and paralysing by the cold war-style battle lines that split the UN’s top table.

In western capitals counter-terrorism efforts have trumped all other aspects of the crisis.

Neither defeating the jihadis nor forcing Assad to come to the negotiating table now look like realistic prospects.Syria’s bloody stalemate thus seems destined to continue indefinitely“The violent grind is just going to go on and on,”

Talking with Assad will neither defeat ISIL nor achieve a political solution.

Instead, the US, Europe, and their regional allies should talk to his Russian and Iranian sponsors while increasing military pressure on the ground to deny them and Assad a military victory in Syria.

The UN’s possible role in the peace process in Syria is a joke.

Perhaps if we stopped selling arms the world would be a more peaceful place.  As I have said there is a need for a series of difficulties to be overcome before the necessary forces can be raised to end the war.

Any solutions or proposals welcome.

( Five minute Read)

Following the theme of my last post  (Humanity is turning into an Algorithm) this question has been asked by one reader:

There must be a way out of this. 

Let’s look and see if there is a way.

We have set in motion a ‘runaway train’ of success.

The Internet/ the Web/ Wifi/ A world run by Algorithms.

All have and continue to be crucial in the spread of great innovations, the rise of world wealth, and even the dissemination of democratic concepts and ethical values and the defeat of oppressive regimes.

However in the world leadership terms it has led to an unrealistic evaluative process that consistently sets aside long-term problems and consequences in order to try to achieve some short-term successes, so as to survive reelection in two, four or six-year cycles.

With a knock effect on our other great strength : World Capitalism:

It might be the most successful economic system possible, but has also become one of shorter and shorter cycles of evaluation. CEOs, companies, stocks, profits and debits change at an ever more accelerated pace in response to the demands of stockholders and the market.

And hopefully on to our World Leaders that may recognize that they are not addressing the real problems, but they rationalize their actions with the argument that they must first politically survive in order to later address the hard problems and sacrifices. Of course, they usually don’t ever actually get around to addressing the fundamental problems later, either because they don’t make it through the initial crisis or because, even later, they are not willing to risk sacrificing their own position (or “career”) with needed measures that usually require tough sacrifices by the population.

As a result all our World Organisations are suffering from a similar disease, combined with being unable to act due to lack of financing.

The result is a growing burden of multiple long-term problems in the decades to come. I am sure I don’t have to list them. 

Thus, our brilliant communication, information, and transport systems, which will be remembered as the hallmark of our age, are also a point of great fragility.

It will be short-term thinking and decision-making that is the most universal factor leading to collapse of Society as a whole.

“It’s the economy stupid” and “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” have become the mantras of contemporary democracy. The latter is a sure recipe for collapse.

Today there are few, if any, refuges against international crises of any kind.

Any really helpful response will involved political change to redefine the very nature [of] leadership and its roles and institutions.

So imagine a world without the Internet.

A world without the World Wide Web, Facebook, Twitter or even e-mail. A YouTube that serves up over 100 million videos per day.

It’s almost impossible to imagine a set of circumstances that could cause the Internet to collapse. It would require destruction on such a widespread scale that the loss of the Internet would probably be the least of our worries.

It’s impossible to predict how each government would react; however, it’s not hard to imagine a series of events that could escalate into a conflict.

Rarely can societies in crisis conceive of such great structural changes (and often those might not be accepted by various interest groups). So, the situation just deteriorates at the same, or even at an accelerated, rate.

Much depends on the smooth functioning of the World Wide Web – banking, the financial markets, shopping, shipping, entertainment, medicine, along with so many other facets of the economy and daily life.

Assuming world leaders could maintain order and resist the urge to blow each other up, other problems would surface.

Unfortunately it is us that is driving the ever-shortening cycle of evaluation of political leaders, our explicit promotion of such short-term egocentric values.

We are losing sight of real values because they are being molded by Algorithms on our behalf by Facebook/ Google/ Microsoft/ Apple etc.

Our ability to think and make decisions for ourselves is being manipulated (as they have being and always will be) not by ourselves but by technology called AI that is leading us down the road to technology deserts. With personal data becoming the oil in the machine.

So is the Information Superhighway headed towards a dead-end?

Or is the Internet is destined to collapse under its own weight.

I can say, in general, that the answer to our problems—or at least the first steps—do not lie in the direction of specific economic or political actions.

Rather it must begin with ideology—with a change in general expectations.

What we can hope for is that with a somewhat more controlled level of growth, and with longer-term preparations for change, we can keep responding to the inevitable smaller crises, as they arise, and continue to postpone until later and later the (perhaps ultimately inevitable) end of our civilization.

We need to begin thinking in terms of longer periods, and slower processes, for judging success.

Such an ideology of long-term thinking and lower expectations — a change in world “attitude”— seems to me to be the only way out of the 21st century giant and precarious “bubble” that now is Western civilization.

No society can sustain unlimited growth – none ever has.

So my answer to my readers ( Humanity is turning into an Algorithm) question is yes there is a way out.

The Internet is not unbreakable:

Well apart from every teenager screaming because they can’t log on to Facebook, it all comes down to how much we personally use the Internet and what for.

We are living in an increasingly hyper connected world but if the next great social media shift truly is from centralized, profile-based social networks to decentralized feeds, distributed profiles, and private messaging perhaps we as consumers could start buying locally, enriching our local towns and shops.

We’d could look for local services and sustain local economies by trading within our immediate areas. The political fallout following the collapse of the Internet would not be so devastating.

On the other hand perhaps we would suffer a world-wide recession, stock markets would collapse, millions of businesses go bust and millions of people lose their jobs?

Life without the internet would force people to turn back to grass-roots and socialise and communicate on a very basic level.

A Facebook collapse would be less manageable: Experts estimate one-third of the world’s population will be affected by myopia – nearsightedness.

The eyes are useless when the mind is blind. In one year alone, its estimated that a minimum of €100 billion in VAT fraud are committed online in the European Union alone. Millions of personal data are stolen from everyday citizens, which are then used online to create fraudulent identities.

We need an Algorithm of TRUST.

( One minute read)

The logic is to deter a nuclear attack on the UK because, even if the nation’s conventional defence capabilities were destroyed, the silent submarine would still be able to launch a catastrophic retaliatory strike on the aggressor, a concept known as mutually assured destruction.

Supporters of replacement argue that threats from rogue states and terrorist groups could emerge at any time and a minimum nuclear deterrent is needed to help counter them.

The nuclear defence industry is also a major employer.

Some estimates suggest that up to 15,000 jobs may be lost – as well as considerable expertise – if a new batch of submarines was not commissioned.

Object on ethical grounds say the UK should never be a country that is willing to threaten or use nuclear weapons against an adversary, even in the most extreme circumstances and that the humanitarian consequences of doing that would be so grotesque as to be unfathomable.

The UK should not be spending possibly £40bn on a programme that is designed for uncertainty and indeed that an “uncertain future threat environment” may mean no threats arise and so £40bn would have been spent unnecessarily.

Renewing Trident would show Britain was “committed” to working with Nato allies after voting for Brexit.  Replacing Trident was a Tory manifesto pledge in the general election.

£31bn over the lifetime of the programme, including adjustment for inflation over that period, and an additional £10bn as a “contingency”.

The UK is the only nuclear weapons state that deploys submarines as its sole nuclear weapons delivery platform.

However, critics argue Britain is technically so dependent on the US that in effect Trident is not an independent system. For example, the British Trident missiles are serviced at a port in the Georgia, US, and some warhead components are also made in America.

As part of the renewal, common missile compartment systems that could be fitted into both UK and US submarines are set to be developed as a means of saving money.

HERE IS WHAT THE BEADY EYE THINKS.

A COUNTRY THAT HAS JUST VOTED TO LEAVE AN ORGANISATION (WHICH WAS SET UP TO STOP WARS), HAS NOW WITHOUT A REFERENDUM ADOPTED ON THE VOTE OF 300 ODD MP AND A NON ELECTED PRIME MINISTER TO SPEND £31bn ON A NUCLEAR DETERRENT NEEDS TO HAVE ITS HEAD EXAMINED.

CONSIDERING:

THAT IT CANNOT SUPPORT ITS OWN HEALTH SYSTEM.

That benefits and pensions payouts is around £217 billion 2015/2016, 29% of public spending.

THAT THERE IS IN DESPERATE NEED OF INFRASTRUCTURE, ALTERNATIVE ENERGY, HIGH SPEED TRANSPORT AND HOME BUILDING, NEVER MIND THE ABILITY TO PROVIDE FREE EDUCATION.

THAT IT HAS JUST SEEN ITS MAJOR HIGH TECH COMPANY BOUGHT BY AN JAPANESE.

THAT IT HAS RAMPANT INEQUALITY.

What we clearly see is a country moving at full speed toward a disaster.

As I have said there is no point to a Nuclear Deterrent other than mutually assured destruction.

Here are a few pictures to remind you how has and who could and had their finger on the button.

( A thought )

A new research has found that up to 7 per cent of the people who voted for a Brexit in the EU referendum now regret their choice. 

The referendum was an advisory, non-binding referendum.

It is in fact not legally binding. Parliament doesn’t actually have to bring Britain out of the EU if the public votes for it.

By law, the UK’s legislatures in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland must be consulted before EU laws can be annulled.

The final result was 17,410,742 votes for Leave (51.9 per cent) compared to 16,141,241 for Remain (48.1 per cent), on a turnout of 72 per cent.

Half of those surveyed also felt both the UK’s economy and position in the world had worsened, but almost one in 10 said they did not believe the Brexit would be implemented.

More than 4 million people have signed a petition calling for a second EU referendum but the Government has ruled out another vote on the issue, dubbed a “neverendum” by David Cameron.

The majority of those questioned also wanted a general election to be held before official negotiations on the Brexit begins.

The debate will take place on 5 September at 4.30pm in Westminster Hall.’

The result of the referendum should be challenged.

However the debate in Westminster Hall ‘does not have the power to change the law and won’t end with the House of Commons deciding whether or not to have a second referendum’. Which begs the question, what’s the point?

Remain voters want the government to prioritize staying part of the EU’s single market while Leave voters are keen to end free movement between the UK and the EU and both priorities are likely to be mutually exclusive.

The point is that it is the Youth of England and the Youth of the European Union that have to live with the consequences.

We have reached a stalemate.

It is therefore up to the EU to demand a second referendum.

EU leaders would have to come up with a better deal to keep the UK in the club.

This referendum would then be stepping stone not a leap into the unknown.

There is real concern in Brussels that any more special treatment for the UK could be contagious, a green light to other member states to try the same.

So what!  Every country in the Union has to abide by the rules.

After the Maastricht Treaty was rejected by voters in Denmark a batch of concessions were made, a second vote was held and the Treaty passed.

Let us ask.

Democracy is government “of the people, by the people and for the people” – but the definition of “people” has changed throughout time.

Is it better to spend 7 billion on renewing an obsolete Nuclear deterrent or spend one billion to see if Peace which is at the core of the European Union is worth having.