According to the latest poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, a US independent fact tank, many NATO countries are reluctant to defend their allies against Russia with the exception of the United States and Canada: over 50 percent of Americans and Canadians would not oppose going to war with Russia.
This trend is really worrisome, according to Dr. Ron Paul, a former Republican congressman and two-time US presidential candidate, and Daniel McAdams, Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Americans' readiness to get involved in a direct military confrontation with Russia could be regarded as a relic of the Cold War, suggested the experts, warning that the US foreign policy course may drag the country into a vicious cycle of interventionism that in its turn would further undermine America's economy and the well-being of its citizens.
"It really does not solve the problem of what the countries are to do with NATO. I am afraid NATO is going to be with us for a long time. I see it as only a tool for our propaganda," Dr. Paul noted.
At the same time, however, the US' opinion of NATO has gone down since 2011, Mr. McAdams remarked, referring to the same Pew Research survey. Only 49 percent of Americans expressed a favorable opinion of NATO, down from 54 percent in 2010 and 2011. On the other hand, the number of those Americans who expressed disapproval of NATO has increased from 21 percent in 2010 to 31 percent in 2015.
Attitudes are changing gradually, and a lot more Americans do not believe the government either, despite all the propaganda from Washington, Ron Paul stated, adding that the Internet is helping people to question more what the US government is doing.
It is remarkable though that lots of NATO-member countries expressed their unwillingness to unleash a war against Russia. Particularly, the population that is the least enthusiastic to go to war with Russia is that of Germany. While Angela Merkel is regarded by many as a lap dog of Washington, the German people are not with her, Mr. McAdams stressed.
While the West is threatening itself with Russia's phantom menace, there is another figure that shows how "militant" the Russians really are, the experts noted.
"We [the United States] are spending [on defense] more than twice as much as the next four countries put together. And Russia is the fourth. There is a country called Saudi Arabia that spends [on defense] more money than Russia," Dr. Paul stressed.
Some people are nearly hysterical about the need to go war, Ron Paul underscored referring to the fake petition to Obama to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against Russia, initiated by Mark Dice, a best-selling author of "Inside the Illuminati."
Ron Paul emphasized that it's the Institute's job to try to inform people about what is really going on, preventing them from blindly following the US' neocon propaganda.