Just last week, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov referred to NATO’s build-up near Russia’s borders as “counterproductive and dangerous.”
by Deirdre Fulton / CommonDreams
Less than a week after Russia’s foreign minister warned that NATO’s military build-up near Russia’s borders is “counterproductive and dangerous,” the United States is ramping up the deployment of heavy weapons and armored vehicles to NATO member countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
Administration officials told the Times “the additional NATO forces were calculated to send a signal to President Vladimir V. Putin that the West remained deeply suspicious of his motives in the region,” referring to Russia’s ongoing presence in eastern Ukraine.
According to the paper, “the administration plans to pay for the additional weapons and equipment with a budget request of more than $3.4 billion for military spending in Europe in 2017, several officials said Monday, more than quadrupling the current budget of $789 million. The weapons and equipment will be used by American and NATO forces, ensuring that the alliance can maintain a full armored combat brigade in the region at all times.”
The equipment could be deployed in Hungary, Romania, and the Baltic countries, Pentagon officials said.
The Times reports:
The official said the Pentagon wanted a “heel to toe” rotational troop presence in Eastern Europe, meaning that there would always be the equivalent of a brigade in the region. Under a 1997 agreement known as the NATO-Russia Founding Act, both sides pledged not to station large numbers of troops along their respective borders.
Administration officials said they were confident that the new deployments would not be seen as breaching that agreement. In any event, Poland and the Baltic States argue that Russia’s incursion in Ukraine was a clear violation of the act, and that NATO should no longer abide by it.
Nikolay Patrushev, head of the Russian Security Council, highlighted this disconnect in an interview with the Associated Press. “What sort of trust can we talk about?” he asked. “You can see it yourself that NATO is making promises, but it never keeps any of the promises made to our country, it does not take our interests into consideration.”
This is merely the most recent example of saber-rattling on the part of the U.S. and NATO against Russia.
Last week, NATO General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance would step up its military exercises in 2016, “noting that Russian operations near the alliance’s borders have increased dramatically,” the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.
“We see a more assertive Russia to the east…that has shown a will to change borders in Europe,” Stoltenberg said.
Meanwhile, Romania over the weekend announced its desire to station a permanent alliance fleet—including ships from Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Germany, Italy, and the U.S.—in the Black Sea to counter what they see as Russia’s rising involvement in the region.
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Obama is obviously afraid that the economic pressure felt by the population in russia could lead Putin to aggressive moves.
What if Putin ordered huge weapons increases in Mexico along the US-Mexican border? The US is screwing around in Putin’s neighborhood. If European nations on Russia’s border want to stand up to Putin, let them. The US shouldn’t be involved.
Bravo John Lawrence. This is jingoist nonsense that serves nothing, just like our MidEast Policy. Junk instead of serious thought and actions on our behalf. Our Congress has been bought, including the Foreign Policy apparatus. Gorbachev ended the Cold War, not Reagan. We don’ t need to tweak the nose of the only other super power capable of harming us with nuclear weapons. That is not policy, it is just plain stupid. Reagan is dead and so is the Cold War. We don’ t need to graduate to a hot war. These people took over 20 million dead in WWII against an aggressor. Do we really think we are going to scare the Russians with this nonsense? They are not afraid of sabres rattling. Just the sabres.
How come a newspaper promoting “progressive views” is supporting a Fascist like Putin?
Where does the article say SDFP supports Putin? Oh–wait!– it doesn’t.
Putin is not the bad guy he’s portrayed to be by our subservient media whose real masters are terrified of him and all communists because their ill gotten gains are the first things to go when the communists take over. We have been fed every bit of information about the Russians since WWII and most of it is false. We are Russia. Both of our countries were started on animal fir in the 17th Century and became super powers in WWII because we built enough weapons to destroy Hitler and the Reich. The difference was we were essentially a well read democracy and Russia was an illiterate peasant society. Which one wins the race of technology? We are not the shining light we believe we are, nor is Russia the boogie man from the East we were raised with. Putin worked most of his adult life in Intelligence. Creates a mind set of its’ own after a while, secrets are to be kept for the future war, not the economic development of the possessor. It can be Machiavellian. But he is a Russian patriot first and the casualty reports from WWII are not easily forgotten. Neither is the tyranny of Stalin. He killed 30-40 million Russians and citizens during his reign which left a scar in the body politic. It is like another Black Death cutting through society only with government sanction. Better read people than me can guess at what that does to a people and a society. None of it is good and being paranoid