NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, used to be the butt of a popular joke: No Action, Talk Only. There is still quite a bit of talk, but as its Madrid summit that ended on Thursday revealed, the 30-member body is fast becoming an organisation of some dangerous talk.
Nato's strategic vision should disturb the world to no end. In that blurred vision of its future, the United States-led European security body has Russia as enemy number one.
One wonders how long Nato can ignore a geographical and political entity as large as Russia, not to mention the geopolitical challenges that come with both. Until Russian President Vladimir Putin is removed from power?
We know for sure that Washington is working towards this as it has done in the past in many places around the world. But is this what Brussels desires, too? A regime-changing Nato?
The US and the European Union are fond of accusing Russia and China of subverting the rules-based world order. But isn't organising a coup to replace elected leaders a subversion of the rules-based world order?
What guarantee is there that the next Russian president wouldn't dream the dream of Peter the Great? It is remarkable that Nato hasn't yet named China as its enemy, but its language at the Madrid summit sure suggests that it's ready to do so.
Is this why it is scaling up from 40,000 troops to over 300,000? And shipping more heavy weaponry to the eastern flank? This is the language of warmongers, not peacemakers.
These aren't nations looking to end the war in Ukraine. These are nations being pushed by their large military complexes to fight a long war there.
And perhaps begin a war or two elsewhere. Once Russia is done with, what next? China? Is this what Asian Nato is all about? Is a perpetual war Nato's survival strategy? It must prove to the world that it isn't.
One way to do this is to seek to find the causes that led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Therein lies the key to the end of the war.
Yes, there are causes. Contrary to what is being expounded in the Western media, even by respectable mainstream ones such as The Economist, The Financial Times and The Guardian, Putin didn't just decide to bomb Ukraine on Feb 24 because he fancied it to be part of the former Soviet Union.
It was a developing story for some years. And the plot was hatched in Washington years before the invasion, which ended with a regime change in Ukraine engineered by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Pro-US regime is okay, but not a pro-Russia regime it seems. The American public may not have known this before, but US scholars like John J. Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs have through their op-eds made sure that they know this now.
To be fair, the clandestine regime change in Kyiv wasn't the doing of US President Joe Biden, but the push to make Ukraine a Nato member definitely is his handiwork.
True, Russia started the invasion and, to that extent, it must be held responsible. And it must be held responsible, too, for the manner in which it is conducting the war.
So must the US and Nato be held responsible for their central role in the conduct of the Ukraine proxy war.