Category Archives: NATO

BEIRUT, LEBANON (5:05 P.M.) NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that NATO will help the Libyan government build effective defence and security institutions in the northern African country, speaking to press in Brussels, Thursday, following a meeting with Prime Minister of the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) Fayez Al-Sarraj earlier that day.

Stoltenberg said that it is essential to find a political solution to the Libyan crisis and that therefore NATO has agreed to help the northern African state. He explained that a team of NATO experts recently met with Libyan government representatives to discuss what we can do to help you build an effective defence and security institutions in Libya, including a modern Ministry of Defence, a joint military staff, and intelligence services under civilian control.

The NATO Secretary General added that the main purpose of the meeting today [was] to make sure our experts will sit down as soon as possible, hopefully within a few weeks.

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Libya has been wracked by security issues since former President Muammar Gaddafi was ousted from power in 2011, with international diplomats making a plea to stop hostilities between the LNA, led by General Khalifa Haftar, and the GNA, in a bid to avoid escalation between the two sides.

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ADAZI MILITARY BASE, Latvia (AFNS) -- Saber Strike 17, a month-long exercise including 11,000 U.S. and NATO military members from 20 countries, wraps up June 24.The exercise took place in various regions in the Baltics and Poland beginning May 28.

Saber Strike 17 is this years iteration of a long-standing Joint Chiefs of Staff-directed, U.S. European Command-scheduled, U.S. Army Europe-led cooperative training exercise.

Participating nations included Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom.

This years key training objective was to exercise with NATOs enhanced Forward Presence Battlegroups as part of a multinational division, while conducting an integrated, synchronized, deterrence-oriented field training exercise designed to improve the interoperability and readiness of participating nations armed forces.

Less than one year ago, our alliance said we were going to transition from assurance to deterrence, said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the U.S. Army Europe commanding general. One of the manifestations of that transition was the creation of the eFP Battlegroups. In less than one year, these battlegroups are exercising already in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. That is an amazing accomplishment for our great alliance.

Deterrence means you have to have the capability to compel or defeat a potential adversary, he continued. You have to demonstrate that capability and the will to use it, and these exercises are that demonstration.

Key training events of the exercise included a convoy by Battlegroup Poland from Orysz, Poland, to southern Lithuania; a maritime prepositioned offload of pre-staged supplies and equipment in Latvia; a Marine amphibious assault in Latvia; two combined arms live-fire exercises, one each in Poland and Lithuania; an air assault by the British Royal Marines at the Polish and Lithuanian border; and a river crossing in the same area.

If you would like to have skilled soldiers, you have to train every day, said Maj. Gen. Leonids Kalnins, the Latvian army chief of defense. If you would like to be safe as a state, you have to find allies; but if you would like to be the winner and create a great future for all countries, for all society, you have to participate in such exercises as this one.

The Saber Strike program facilitates cooperation between the U.S, allied, and partner nations to improve joint operational capability in a variety of missions and prepare participating nations and units for future operations while enhancing the NATO Alliance. During the exercise, U.S. and NATO distinguished visitors attended a demonstration of the joint and combined capabilities of the U.S. and NATO at Adazi Military Base, Latvia.

One of the visitors was Nancy Bikoff Pettit, the U.S. ambassador to Latvia, who spoke about the importance of the exercise.

I think exercises like this send a very strong message, Bikoff Pettit said. Its not only the U.S. who is interested in security and defense here in the Baltic region, its all of our NATO allies working together.

This exercise demonstrates what happens when many NATO allies come together to cooperate and demonstrate the interoperability that we have, she continued. We are really pleased with the quality of the exercises.

Saber Strike 17 promotes regional stability and security, while strengthening partner capabilities and fostering trust. The combined training opportunities that it provided greatly improve interoperability among participating NATO Allies and key regional partners.

The U.S. is here, Hodges said. Were going to continue to participate in exercises; American soldiers love serving with Latvian soldiers. This is a great place to train and were excited about doing that for as [long] as I can see.

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By Andrius Sytas | SUWALKI GAP, Polish-Lithuanian border

SUWALKI GAP, Polish-Lithuanian border U.S. and British troops have carried out the first large-scale NATO defensive drill on the border between Poland and Lithuania, rehearsing for a possible scenario in which Russia might try to sever the Baltic states from the rest of the Western alliance.

The frontier runs for 104 km (65 miles) through farmland, woods and low hills, in an area known as the Suwalki Gap. If seized by Russia, it would cut off Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Over two days, U.S. helicopters and British aircraft took part in exercises that also involved troops from Poland, Lithuania and Croatia in a simulated defense of the potential flashpoint.

"The gap is vulnerable because of the geography. It's not inevitable that there's going to be an attack, of course, but ... if that was closed, then you have three allies that are north that are potentially isolated from the rest of the alliance", U.S. Lieutenant General Ben Hodges told Reuters.

Russia denies any plans to invade the Baltics, and says it is NATO that is threatening stability in Eastern Europe by building up its military presence there and staging such war games.

But Hodges, who commands U.S. forces in Europe, said it was crucial for the alliance to show it was ready.

"We have to practice, we have to demonstrate that we can support allies in keeping (the Gap) open, in maintaining that connection," he said.

GAME CHANGER

Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in the Black Sea has changed NATO's calculations, seeing Russia increasingly as an adversary. Before then, no forces from other alliance members were stationed in the Baltic states; now four battlegroups totaling just over 4,500 troops have been deployed in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

The Poles have been pushing other NATO allies to use some of these troops to secure the vulnerable Suwalki corridor and deter potential Russian aggression. But while 1,500 troops took part in this weekend's exercises, a Lithuanian commander cautioned that it would take more to defend the gap in the event of a genuine conflict.

"This is only a small-scale drill compared to what would be needed in case of a real attack, but it is important for us because it shows that allies share our worries", said Brigadier General Valdemaras Rupsys, head of Lithuania's land forces.

Simulating a covert insertion of forces, three American helicopters landed in a field in rural Lithuania on Saturday, startling grazing horses and cows, in an area several hours' drive from where a U.S. battalion is stationed at Orzysz base in Poland.

"The training helps present a credible defense force that hopefully will deter aggression, but if not, we'll be prepared to move to defend the borders of NATO," said Lt. Col. Steven Gventer, who leads the U.S. battlegroup in Orzysz.

NATO officials believe Moscow will hold its own exercise in Russia and Belarus on a much greater scale in September, possibly involving 100,000 troops, under the codename "Zapad" (West). Baltic officials believe Moscow will also rehearse an attack on the Suwalki Gap during Zapad.

"I think it's important for the soldiers to train on land that they may have to defend some day," said Major General John Gronski, deputy commander, U.S. Army Europe, observing the exercise in Lithuania.

(Reporting by Andrius Sytas; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

WASHINGTON North Korea has carried out another test of a rocket engine that the United States believes could be part of its program to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile, a U.S. official told Reuters on Thursday.

SEOUL North Korea said on Friday the death of U.S. university student Otto Warmbier soon after his return home was a mystery and dismissed accusations that he had died because of torture and beating during his captivity as "groundless."

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NATO war game defends Baltic weak spot for first time

In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, U.S. president George H. W. Bush through his secretary of state James Baker promised Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev that in exchange for Soviet cooperation on German reunification, the Cold War era NATO alliance would not expand one inch eastwards towards Russia. Baker told Gorbachev: Look, if you remove your [300,000] troops [from east Germany] and allow unification of Germany in NATO, NATO will not expand one inch to the east.

In the following year, the USSR officially dissolved itself. Its own defensive military alliance (commonly known as the Warsaw Pact) had already shut down. The Cold War was over.

So why hasnt NATO also dissolved, but instead expanded relentlessly, surrounding European Russia? Why isnt this a central question for discussion and debate in this country?

NATO: A Cold War Anti-Russian Alliance

Some challenge the claim that Bushs pledge was ever given, although Baker repeated it publicly in Russia. Or they argue that it was never put in writing, hence legally inconsequential. Or they argue that any promise made to the leadership of the Soviet Union, which went out of existence in 1991, is inapplicable to subsequent U.S.-Russian relations. But its clear that the U.S. has, to the consternation of the Russian leadership, sustained a posture of confrontation with its Cold War foe principally taking the form of NATO expansion. This expansion hardly receives comment in the U.S. mass media, which treats the entry of a new nation into NATO much as it does the admission of a new state into the UNas though this was altogether natural and unproblematic.

But recall the basic history. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed in April 4, 1949, initially consisting of the U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Portugal, as a military alliance against the Soviet Union, and principally the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

It was formed just four years after the Soviets stormed Berlin, defeating the Nazis. (As you know, Germany invaded Russia six months before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor; the U.S. and USSR were World War II allies versus the fascists; the key victories in the European warMoscow, Stalingrad, Kurskwere Soviet victories over the Nazis; that U.S. soldiers only crossed the Rhine on March 22 as the Red Army was closing in on Berlin, taking the city between April 16 and May 2 at a cost of some 80,000 Soviet dead. If you dont know these things, youve been denied a proper education.)

In the four-year interim between Hitlers suicide and the formation of NATO, the two great victors of the war had divided Europe into spheres of influence. The neighboring Soviet Union had contributed disproportionately to the fascist defeat: over eight million military and over 12 million civilians dead, as compared to the far-off U.S., with losses of around 186,000 dead in the European theater and 106,000 in the Pacific.

It might seem strange that the lesser hero in this instance (in this epochal conflict against fascism) gets all the goodies in the battles aftermath: the U.S. created a bloc including Britain, France, Italy, most of Germany, the Low Countries, Portugal, and most of Scandinavia, while the Soviets asserted hegemonyor tried toover their generally less affluent client states. But the Soviets were not in any case interested primarily in drawing the richest nations into their fold; were that the case, they would not have withdrawn their troops from Austria in 1955.

Rather Russia, which had historically been invaded many times from the westfrom Sweden, Lithuania, Poland, France, and Germany multiple timeswanted preeminently to secure its western border. To insure the establishment of friendly regimes, it organized elections in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and elsewhere. (These had approximately as much legitimacy as elections held under U.S. occupation in Iraq or Afghanistan in later years, or at any point in Latin America). They brought the Eastern European peoples republics into existence.

The U.S. and British grumbled about the geopolitical advances of their wartime ally. In March 1946 former British Prime Minister Churchill while visiting the U.S. alluded to an iron curtain falling across Europe. (Perhaps he was unwittingly using the expression that Josef Goebbels had used just thirteen months earlier. The German propaganda minister had told a newspaper that if the German people lay down their weapons, the Sovietswould occupy all of EuropeAn iron curtain would fall over this enormous territory) Very scary.

But the U.S. was working hard at the time to consolidate its own bloc in Europe. In May 1947 the U.S. CIA forced the Italian and French governments to purge Communist members of cabinets formed after electoral successes the previous year. (The U.S. had enormous clout, bought through the $ 13 billion Marshall Plan begun in April 1947, designed to revive European capitalism and diminish the Marxist appeal.)

The CIA station chief in Rome later boasted that without the CIA, which funded a Red Scare campaign and fomented violent, even fatal clashes at events, the Communist Party would surely have won the [Italian] elections in 1948. (Anyone who thinks Soviets rigged elections while the U.S. facilitated fair ones as a matter of principle is hopelessly nave.)

Meanwhilebefore the establishment of NATO in April 1949the U.S. and Britain had been fighting a war in Greece since 1946 on behalf of the monarchists against the communist-led forces that had been the backbone of the anti-fascist movement during the World War II. The Communists had widespread support and may well have won the civil war if the Soviets had only supported them. But observing the understanding about spheres of influence agreed to at Yalta and Potsdam, Stalin refused appeals for Soviet aid from the Greek (and Yugoslav) Communists. The Greek partisans surrendered in Oct. 1949, six months after the formation of NATO. (But NATO was in fact not deployed in this military intervention in Greece, seen as the first Cold War U.S. military operation under thebroadly anticommunistTruman Doctrine.)

Just a month after NATO was formed, the pro-U.S. leaders in west Germany unilaterally announced the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany. (The pro-Soviet German Democratic Republic was declared only six months later. As in Korea, the Soviets promoted reunification of occupied sectors. But the U.S. was intent on establishing client states, and dividing nations if necessary to stem Soviet inroads. This was also the case with Vietnam.)

Four months after the creation of NATO the Soviets conducted their first successful nuclear test. The Cold War was underway in earnest.

NATO was thus formed to aggressively confront the USSR and exploit fears of a supposed threat of a westward Soviet strike (to impose the Soviet social system on unwilling peoples). That threat never materialized, of course.The Soviets cordoned off East Berlin from the west by the Berlin Wall in 1961 to prevent embarrassing mass flight. But they never invaded West Germany, or provoked any clash with a NATO nation throughout the Cold War. (Indeed, in light of the carnage visited on Europe since 1989, from civil wars in the Balkans and Caucasus to terrorist bombings in London, Madrid and Paris to the neo-fascist-led putsch in Ukraine last year, the Cold War appears in retrospect as a long period of relative peace and prosperity on the continent.)

Comparing U.S. and Russian/Soviet Aggression during the Cold War

NATO expanded in 1952, enlisting the now-pacified Greece and its historical rival, Turkey. In 1955 it brought the Federal Republic of Germany into the fold. Only thenin May 1956, seven years after the formation of NATOdid the Soviets establish, in response, their own defensive military alliance. The Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance (Warsaw Pact) included a mere eight nations (to NATOs 15): the USSR, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Albania.

Warsaw Pact forces were deployed only once during the Cold War, to crush the reform movement in Czechoslovakia in 1968. (They were not used during the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, occurring five months after the founding of the alliance. That operation was performed by Soviet troops and loyalist Hungarian forces.) The Czechoslovakian intervention occasioned Albanias withdrawal from the pact, while Romania protested it and refused to contribute troops. Thus practically speaking, the Warsaw Pact was down to six members to NATOs 15. The western alliance expanded to 16 when Spain joined in 1982.

Between 1945 and 1991 (when the Warsaw Pact and the USSR both dissolved themselves), the U.S. had engaged in three major wars (in Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf); invaded Grenada and Panama; and intervened militarily in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Cuba, Cambodia, Laos, Nicaragua, Haiti and other countries.

During that same period, the Soviets invaded eastern European nations twice (Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968), basically to maintain the status quo. Elsewhere, there was a brief border conflict with China in 1969 that killed around 150 soldiers on both sides. And the Soviets of course invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to shore up the secular regime faced with Islamist opposition. Thats about it. Actually, if you compare it to the U.S. record, a pretty paltry record of aggression for a superpower.

That Islamist opposition in Afghanistan, as we know, morphed into the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the group founded in Iraq by one-time bin Laden rival Abu Musab al-Zarqawi thats now called ISIL or the Islamic State. Referred toalmost affectionatelyby the U.S. press in the 1980s as the Mujahadeen (those engaged in jihad), these religious militants were lionized at the time as anti-communist holy warriors by Jimmy Carters National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Brzezinski told the president six months before the Soviets sent in troops that by backing the jihadis the U.S. could induce a Soviet military intervention. The U.S., he declared, had the opportunity of giving the USSR its Vietnam War and could now bleed the Soviets as they had bled the U.S. in Vietnam.

(Linger for a moment on the morality here. The Soviets had helped the Vietnamese fight an unpopular, U.S.-backed regime and confront the horrors of the U.S. assault on their country. Nowto get back, as Brzezinski out itthe U.S. could help extreme Islamists whose minds are in the Middle Ages to induce Soviet intervention, so as to kill conscript Soviet boys and prevent the advent of modernity.)

The anti-Soviet jihadis were welcomed to the White House by President Ronald Reagan during a visit in 1985. Reagan, perhaps already showing the signs of Alzheimers disease, trumpeted them as the moral equivaent of Americas founding fathers. This is when the great bulk of U.S. (CIA) aid to the Mujahadeen was going into the coffers of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a vicious warlord now aligned with the Taliban. One of many former U.S. assets (Saddam Hussein included) who had a falling-out with the boss, he was the target of at least one failed CIA drone strike in 2002.

Thus the Soviets one and only protracted military conflict during the Cold War, lasting from December 1979 to February 1989 and costing some 14,000 Soviet lives, was a conflict with what U.S. pundits have taken to calling Islamist terrorism.

The Soviets were surely not facing anticommunists pining for freedom as this might be conceptualized in some modern ideology. The enemy included tribal leaders and clerics who objected to any changes in the status of girls and women, in particular their dress, and submission to patriarchal authority in such matters as marriage.

The would-be Soviet-backed revolutionaries faced religious fanatics ignorant about womens medical needs, hostile to the very idea of public clinics, and opposed to womens education, (In fact the Soviets were able to raise the literacy rate for women during the 1980sa feat not matched by the new occupiers since 2001but this was mainly due to the fact that they maintained control over Kabul, where women could not only get schooling but walk around without a headscarf.)

Those days ended when the Soviet-installed regime of Mohammad Najibullah was toppled by Northern Alliance forces in April 1992. Things only became worse. Civil war between the Pastun Hekmatyar and his Tajik rivals immediately broke out and Hekmatyars forces brutally bombarded the capitalsomething that hadnt happened during the worst days of the Soviet period.

As civil war deepened, the Taliban emerged, presenting itself as a morally upright, Sharia-based leadership. Acquiring a large social base, it took Kabul in September 1996. Among its first acts was to seize Najibullah, who had taken refuge in the UN compound in the city three years earlier, castrate him, and hang him publicly, denying him a proper Muslim burial.

Just as the neocons were crowing about the triumph of capitalism over communism, and the supposed end of history, the Frankensteins monster of Islamism reared up its ugly head. There were no tears shed in western capitals for Najibullah. But the Taliban were viewed with concern and distaste and the UN seat remained with the former Northern Alliance regime controlling just 10% of the country.

How the Cold War Encouraged Radical Islam

Surely the U.S.which had packed up and left after the Soviet withdrawl, leaving the Pakistanis with a massive refugee problem and Afghanistan in a state of chaoshad bled the Soviets, and anyone daring to ally with them. And surely this experience contributed to the realization of Brzezinskis fondest wish: the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But it also produced Islamist terrorism, big time, while the U.S.having once organized the recruitment and training of legions of jihadis from throughout the Muslim world to bleed the Sovietswas and is now obliged to deal with blow-back, and in its responses invariably invites more terror.

Is it not obvious that U.S. military actions against its various terrorist targets in the Greater Middle East, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya have greatly swelled the ranks of al-Qaeda branches as well as ISIL?

And does not the course of events in Afghanistanwhere the Kabul government remains paralyzed and inept, warlords govern the provincial cities, the Supreme Court sentences people to death for religious offenses, much of the countryside has been conceded to the Talibs and the militants are making inroads in the northconvince you that the U.S. should not have thrown in its lot with the jihadis versus the Soviet-backed secular forces thirty-five years ago?

In a 1998 interview by Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn Brzezinski was asked if he regretted having given arms and advice to future [Islamist] terrorists.

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isnt a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

In other words, winning the contest with Russiableeding it to collapsewas more important than any risk of promoting militant Islamic fundamentalism. It is apparent that that mentality lingers, when, even in the post-9/11 world, some State Department officials would rather see Damascus fall to ISIL than be defended by Russians in support of a secular regime.

NATO to the Rescue in the Post-Cold War World

Since the fall of the USSR, and the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact, what has NATO been up to? First of all, it moved to fill a power vacuum in the Balkans. Yugoslavia was falling apart. It had been neutral throughout the Cold War, a member of neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact. As governments fell throughout Eastern Europe, secessionist movements in the multiethnic republic produced widespread conflict. U.S. Secretary of State Baker worried that the breakup of Yugoslavias breakup would produce regional instability and opposed the independence of Slovenia.

But the German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and Chancellor Helmut Kohlflushed with pride at Germanys reunification and intent on playing a more powerful role in the worldpressed for Yugoslavias dismantling. (There was a deep German historical interest in this country. Nazi Germany had occupied Slovenia from 1941 to 1945, establishing a 21,000-strong Slovene Home Guard and planting businesses. Germany is now by far Slovenias number one trading partner.) Kohls line won out.

Yugoslavia, which had been a model of interethnic harmony, became torn by ethnic strife in the 1990s. In Croatia, Croatians fought ethnic Serbs backed by the Yugoslav Peoples Army; in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs quarreled over how to divide the land. In Serbia itself, the withdrawal of autonomy of the provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina produced outrage among ethnic Albanians. In 1995 images of emaciated Bosniak men and boys in Serb-constructed prison camps were widely publicized in the world media as Bill Clinton resolved not to let Rwanda (read: genocide!) happen again. Not on his watch. America would save the day.

Or rather: NATO would save the day! Far from being less relevant after the Cold War, NATO, Clinton claimed, was the onlyinternational force capable of handling this kind of challenge. And thus NATO bombed, and bombedfor the first time ever, in real waruntil the Bosnian Serbs pleaded for mercy. The present configuration of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a dysfunctional federation including a Serbian mini-republic, was dictated by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and his deputy Richard Holbrooke at the meeting in Dayton, Ohio in November 1995.

Russia, the traditional ally of the Serbs, was obliged to watch passively as the U.S. and NATO remapped the former Yugoslavia. Russia was itself in the 1990s, under the drunken buffoon Boris Yeltsin, a total mess. The economy was nose-diving; despair prevailed; male longevity had plummeted. The new polity was anything but stable. During the Constitutional Crisis of September-October 1993, the president had even ordered the army to bombard the parliament building to force the legislators to heed his decree to disband. In the grip of corrupt oligarchs and Wild West capitalism, Russians were disillusioned and demoralized.

Then came further insults from the west. During Yeltsins last year, in March 1999, the U.S. welcomed three more nations into: Czechoslovakia (later the Czech Republic and Slovakia), Hungary, and Poland. These had been the most powerful Warsaw Pact countries aside from the USSR and East Germany. This was the first expansion of NATO since 1982 (when Spain had joined) and understandably upset the Kremlin. What possible reason is there to expand NATO now? the Russians asked, only to be assured that NATO was not against anybody.

The Senate had voted to extend membership to Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia in 1998. At that time, George Kennanthe famous U.S. diplomat whod developed the cold war strategy of containment of the Soviet Unionwas asked to comment.

I think it is the beginning of a new cold war, averred the 94-year-old Kennan. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever It shows so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expansion advocates] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians arebut this is just wrong.

NATO Versus Serbia

In that same month of March 1999, NATO (including its three new members) began bombing the Serbian capital of Belgrade, the first time since World War II that a European capital was subjected to bombardment. The official reason was that Serbian state forces had been abusing the Albanians of Kosovo province; diplomacy had failed; and NATO intervention was needed to put things right. This rationale was accompanied by grossly exaggerated reports of Serbian security forces killings of Kosovars, supposedly amounting to genocide.

This was largely nonsense. The U.S. had demanded at the conference in Rambouillet, France, that Serbia withdraw its forces from Kosovo and restore autonomy to the province. Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic had agreed. But the U.S. also demanded that Belgrade accept NATO forces throughout the entire territory of Yugoslaviasomething no leader of a sovereign state could accept. Belgrade refused, backed by Russia.

A senior State Department official (likely U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright) boasted to reporters that at Rambouillet we intentionally set the bar too high for the Serbs to comply. . . . The Serbs needed a little bombing to see reason.Henry Kissinger (no peacenik) told the press in June: The Rambouillet text, which called on Serbia to admit NATO troops throughout Yugoslavia, was a provocation, and excuse to start bombing. Rambouillet is not a document that an angelic Serb could have accepted. It was a terrible diplomatic document that should never have been presented in that form.

The U.S. had obtained UN approval for the NATO strikes on Bosnia-Herzegovina four years before. But it did not seek it this time, or try to organize a UN force to address the Kosovo problem. In effect, it insisted that NATO be recognized as the representative of the international community.

It was outrageous. Still, U.S. public opinion was largely persuaded that the Serbs had failed to negotiate peace in good faith and so deserved the bombing cheered on by the press, in particular CNNs senior international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, a State Department insider who kept telling her viewers, Milosevic continues to thumb his nose at the international communitybecause hed refused a bullying NATO ultimatum that even Kissinger identified as a provocation!

After the mass slaughter of Kosovars became a reality (as NATO bombs began to fall on Kosovo), and after two and a half months of bombing focused on Belgrade, a Russian-brokered deal ended the fighting. Belgrade was able to avoid the NATO occupation that it had earlier refused. (In other words, NATO had achieved nothing that the Serbs hadnt already conceded in Rambouillet!)

As the ceasefire went into effect on June 21, a column of about 30 armored vehicles carrying 250 Russian troops moved from peacekeeping duties in Bosnia to establish control over Kosovos Pristina Airport. (Just a little reminder that Russia, too, had a role to play in the region.)

This took U.S. NATO commander Wesley Clark by surprise. He ordered that British and French paratroopers be flown in to seize the airport but the British General Sir Mike Jackson wisely balked. Im not going to have my soldiers start World War III, he declared.

I think it likely this dramatic last minute gesture at the airport was urged by the up-and-coming Vladimir Putin, a Yeltsin advisor soon to be appointed vice-president and then Yeltsins successor beginning in December 1999. Putin was to prove a much more strident foe of NATO expansion than his embarrassing predecessor.

Cooperation Meets with Provocation

Still, recall how two years laterafter 9/11, 2001, when the U.S. invoking the NATO charter called upon its NATO allies to engage in war in AfghanistanPutin offered to allow the alliance to transport war material to Afghanistan through Russian territory. (In 2012 Foreign Minister Lavrov offered NATO the use of a base in Ulyanovsk to transport equipment out of Afghanistan.) This Afghan invasion was only the third actual deployment of NATO forces in war, after Bosnia and Serbia, and Moscow accepted it matter-of-factly. It even muted its concerns when the U.S. established military bases in the former Soviet Central Republics of Uzbekistan and Kirghizia.

But in 2004, NATO expanded againto include Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all of which had been part of the USSR itself and which border Russia. At the same time Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia were admitted, along with Slovakia, which had become separate from the Czech Republic. Russians again asked, Why?

In 2007 the U.S. began negotiating with the Poles to install a NATO missile defense complex in Poland, with a radar system in the Czech Republic. Supposedly this was to shoot down any Iranian missiles directed towards Europe in the future! But Moscow was furious, accusing the U.S. of wanting to launch another arms race. Due largely to anti-militarist sentiment among the Poles and Czechs, these plans were shelved in 2009. But they could be revived at any time.

In 2008, then, the U.S. recognized its dependency Kosovo, now hosting the largest U.S. Army base (Camp Bondsteel) outside the U.S., as an independent country. Although the U.S. had insisted up to this point that it recognized Kosovo as a province of Serbia (and perhaps even understood its profound significance as the heartland of Serbian Orthodoxy), it now (through Condoleezza Rice) proclaimed Kosovo a sui generis (one of a kind) phenomenon. So forget about international law; it just doesnt apply.

In this same year of 2008, NATO announced boldly that Georgia and Ukraine will become members of NATO. ThereuponGeorgias comical President Mikheil Saakasvili bombarded Tskhinvali, capital of the self-declared Republic of South Ossetia that had resisted integration into the current Republic of Georgia since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. In this instance Russia defended South Ossetia, invading Georgia. It then recognized the independence, both of South Ossetia and of the Republic of Abkhazia, from Georgia. (This may be seen as a tit-for-tat response to the U.S.s decision to recognize Kosovos independence from Serbia six months earlier.)

It was a six-day war, resulting in about 280 military fatalities (including 100 on the South Ossetian-Russian side) and about 400 civilian deaths. And there has been no Russian war since. Crimea was not invaded last year but simply seized by Russian forces in place, with general popular support. And theres little evidence that the regular Russian military is confronting Ukrainian state forces; ethnic Russians are doing so, receiving no doubt support from cousins across the historically changeable border. But the charge of a Russian invasion of Ukraine is a State Department talking pointpropaganda automatically parroted by the official press sock-puppet pundits, not a contemporary reality.

Georgias Saakasvili perhaps expected the U.S. to have his back as he provoked Moscow in August 2008. But while he received firm support from Sen. John McCain, who declared We are all Georgians now, he received little help from the George W. Bush State Department wary of provoking World War III. Georgia was not yet a NATO member able to cite the NATO charters mutual defense clause

Saakasvili left office in 2010 and is now under indictment by the Georgian courts for abuses in office. After a brief stint at the Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy in 2014, he acquired Ukrainian citizenshiplosing his Georgian citizenship as a resultand (as one of many examples of how crazy the current Kiev leadership including Yatsenyev and Poroshenko can be) was appointed governor of Odessa last May!

Given the debacle of 2008, countries such as Germany are unlikely to accept Georgian admission any time soon. They do not see much benefit in provoking Russia by endlessly expanding the Cold War defensive alliance. Still, Croatia and Albania were added to NATO in 2009, in the first year of the Obama administrationjust in time to participate in NATOs fourth war, against Libya.

Again there was no reason for a war. Colonel Gadhafy had been downright cordial towards western regimes since 2003, and closely cooperated with the CIA against Islamist terrorism. But when the Arab Spring swept the region in 2011, some western leaders (headed by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, but including the always hawkish Hillary Clinton) convinced themselves that Gadhafys fall was imminent, and so it would be best to assist the opposition in deposing him and thus get into the good graces of any successors.

The UN Security Council approved a resolution to establish a no-fly zone for the protection of civilians from Gadhafys supposedly genocidal troops. But what NATO unleashed was something quite different: a war on Gadhafy, which led to his brutal murder and to the horrible chaos that has reigned since in Libya, now a reliable base for al-Qaeda and ISIL. Russia and China both protested, as the war was still underway, that NATO had distorted the meaning of the UN resolution. Its unlikely that the two Security Council permanent members will be fooled again into such cooperation.

We can therefore add the failed state of Libya to the dysfunctional states of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Afghanistan, to our list of NATO achievements since 1991. To sum up: Since the collapse of the USSR, the U.S. and some allies (usually in their capacity as NATO allies) have waged war on Bosnian Serbs, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, while striking targets in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere with impunity. Russia has gone to war precisely once: for eight days in August 2008, against Georgia.

And yet every pundit on mainstream TV news tells you with a straight face that Putins the one who invades countries.

What Is the Point of NATO Expansion?

So while NATO has expanded in membership, it has showing a growing proclivity to go to war, from Central Asia to North Africa. One must wonder, what is the point?

The putative point in 1949 was the defense of Western Europe against some posited Soviet invasion. That rationale is still used; when NATO supporters today speak in favor of the inclusion of Lithuania, for example, they may state that, if Lithuania had remained outside the alliancethe Russians would surely have invaded by now on the pretext of defending ethnic Russians rights, etc.

There is in fact precious little evidence for Russian ambitions, or Putins own ambitions, to recreate the tsarist empire or Soviet Union. (Putin complained just a few days ago, We dont want the USSR back but no one believes us. Hes also opined that people who feel no nostalgia for the Soviet Unionas most citizens of the former USSR young enough to remember it say they dohave no heart, while those who want to restore it have no brains.)

As NATO expanded inexorably between 1999 and 2009, Russia responded not with threats but with calm indignation.

Putins remarks about the dissolution of the Soviet Union being a geopolitical tragedy, and his occasional words addressing the language and other rights of Russians in former SSRs, do not constitute militarist threats. As always the neocons cherry-pick a phrase here and there as they try to depict Putin as (yet) another Hitler. In fact the Russians have, relatively speaking, been voices of reason in recent years, Alarmed at the consequences of U.S. actions in the Middle East, they have sought to restrain U.S. imperialism while challenging Islamist terrorism.

In August 2013 Obama threatened to attack Syria, ostensibly to punish the regime for using chemical weapons against its people. (The original accusation has been discredited by Seymour Hersh among others.) Deft intervention by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and the refusal of the British House of Commons to support an attack (insuring it would not, like the Iraq War, win general NATO endorsement), and domestic opposition all helped avert another U.S. war in the Middle East.

But its as though hawks in the State Department, resentful at Russias success in protecting its Syrian ally from Gadhafys fate, and miffed at its continued ability to maintain air and naval facilities on the Syrian coast, were redoubling their efforts to provoke Russia. How better to do this than by interfering in Ukraine, which had not only been part of the Soviet Union but part of the Russian state from 1654 and indeed was the core of the original Kievan Rus in the tenth century?

NATO had been courting Ukraine since 1994five years before the alliance expanded to include Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Kiev signed the NATO Membership Action Plan in 2008 when Viktor Yushchenko was president, but this was placed on hold when Viktor Yanukovych was elected in 2010. Enjoying the solid support of the Russian-speaking east, Yanukovich won what international observers called a free and fair election.

Yanukovich did not want Ukraine to join NATO: he wanted a neutral Ukraine maintaining the traditional close relationship between the Ukraine and Russia. This infuriated Victoria Nuland, the head of the Eurasia desk at the State Department, who has made it her lifes project to pull Ukraine into NATO. This would be NATOs ultimate prize in eastern Europe: a country of 44 million well-educated people, the size of France, strategically located on the Black Sea historically dominated by the Russian Black Sea Fleet. An ethnically divided country, with a generally pro-Russian and Russian-speaking east, and a more western-oriented Ukrainian-speaking west with an unusually vigorous and fiercely anti-Russian neofascist movementjust there waiting to be used.

Nuland, a former Cheney aide whose neocon worldview drew Hillary Clintons favorable attention, resulting in her promotion, is the wife of neocon pundit and Iraq War cheerleader Robert Kagan. (Kagan was a founding member of the notorious Project for a New American Century think tank.) The couple represents two wings of incessant neocon plotting: those who work to destroy Russia, and those who work to destroy the Middle East, consciously using lies to confuse the masses about their real goals.

At the National Press Club in December 2013, Nuland boasted that the U.S. (through such NGOs as the National Endowment for Democracy) had spent $ 5 billion in Ukraine in order to support Ukraines European aspirations. This deliberately vague formulation is supposed to refer to U.S. support for Kievs admission into the European Union. The case the U.S. built against Yanukovich was not that he rejected NATO membership; that is never mentioned at all. She built the case on Yanukovichs supposed betrayal of his peoples pro-EU aspirations in having first initialed, and then rejected, an association agreement with the trading bloc, fearing it would mean a Greek-style austerity regime imposed on the country from without.

From November 2013 crowds gathered in Kievs Maidan to protest (among other things) Yanukovichs change of heart about EU membership. The U.S. State Department embraced their cause. One might ask why, when the EU constitutes a competing trading bloc, the U.S. should be so interested in promoting any countrys membership in it. What difference does it make to you and me whether Ukraine has closer economic ties to Russia than to the EU?

The dirty little secret here is that the U.S. goal has merely been to use the cause of joining Europe to draw Ukraine into NATO, which could be depicted as the next natural step in Ukraines geopolitical realignment.

Building on popular contempt for Yanukovich for his corruption, but also working with politicians known to favor NATO admission and the expulsion of Russian naval forces from the Crimean base theyve had since the 1780s, and also including neo-fascist forces who hate Russia but also loath the EU, Nuland and her team including the ubiquitous John McCain popped up at the Maidan passing out cookies and encouraging the crowd to bring down the president.

It worked, of course. On Feb. 22, within a day of signing a European-mediated agreement for government reforms and new election, and thinking the situation defused, Yanukovich was forced to flee for his life. The neofascist forces of Svoboda and the RightSector served as storm troops toppling the regime. Nulands Machiavellian maneuverings had triumphed; a neocon Jew had cleverly deployed open anti-Semites to bring down a regime and plant a pro-NATO one in its place.

It seemed as though, after 14 years of expansion, NATO might soon be able to welcome a huge new member into its ranks, complete the encirclement of Russia and, booting out the Russian fleet, turn the Black Sea into a NATO lake.

Alas for the neocons and liberal interventioniststhe new regime of Nulands chosen Arseniy Yatsenyuk and his Svoboda Party allies immediately alienated the eastern Russian-speaking population, which remains up in arms making the country ungovernable, even as its economy collapses; and the notion of expelling the Russians from Sevastopol has become unimaginable.

But what do NATO planners want? Where is all the expansion and reckless provocation heading?

Russia: an Existential Threat?

First of all, the NATO advocates, however often they repeat that Were not against Russia, this isnt about Russia, do indeed posit an enduring Russian threat. Thus General Sir Adrian Bradshaw, the most senior British officer in NATO, stated last February that Russia poses an obvious existential threat to our whole being. Gen. Joseph Votel, head of the U.S. Special Operations Command told the Aspen Security Forum in July that Russia could pose an existential threat to the United States.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) warned Obama to sign a military appropriations bill because Russia poses an existential threat to the U.S. Philanthropist George Soros (who likes to finance color revolutions) wrote in the New York review of Books in October that Europe is facing a challenge from Russia to its very existence.

These are wild, stupid words coming from highly placed figures. Isnt it obvious that Russia is the one being surrounded, pressured and threatened? That its military budget is a fraction of the U.S.s, its global military presence miniscule in relation to the U.S. footprint?

But anyone watching the U.S. presidential candidates debatesand who can perceive the prevalence of paranoia about Russia, the unthinking acceptance of the Putin as Hitler theme, and the obligatory expression of determination to make America more strongcan understand why the expansion of NATO is so horribly dangerous.

People who do not think rationally or whose minds are twisted by arrogance can look at the maps of NATO expansion and think proudly, This is how it should be! Why would anyone question the need for nations to protect themselves by allying with the United States? Its alliances like NATO that preserve peace and stability in the world.

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NATO: Seeking Russias Destruction Since 1949

The leader of the Afghan Taliban said on Friday that a planned U.S. troop surge will not end the protracted war in the country and vowed to fight on until a full withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan.

The remarks by Maulvi Haibatullah Akhunzadah came in a message ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan something the Taliban do every year to rally followers.

It also followed a horrific suicide car bombing claimed by the Taliban in Afghanistan's Helmand province that targeted Afghan troops and government workers waiting to collect their pay ahead of the holiday.

By Friday, the death toll from that attack rose to 34 people, most of them civilians, provincial government spokesman Omar Zwak told The Associated Press.

In the Taliban message this year, the militant leader seemed to harden his stance, saying the Afghan government is too corrupt to stay on and warning of another civil war in Kabul along the lines of the 1992 fighting when mujahedeen groups threw out the Communist government in Afghanistan and turned their guns on each other. That conflict killed more than 50,000 civilians and gave rise to the Taliban.

The Taliban say they are waging war against the Kabul government and not targeting civilians. In their claim of the Helmand attack, they insisted no civilians died.

Zwak, however said, most of the dead in the attack in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, were civilians, although there were soldiers inside the bank at the time of the explosion. Witnesses said children were among the dozens wounded.

Earlier, the Defense Ministry had urged soldiers to collect their salaries from banks located inside army bases. If they do go to banks elsewhere, they should refrain from wearing their uniforms, the ministry's deputy spokesman Mohammad Radmanish told the AP.

Outside a hospital in Lashkar Gah, Esmatullah Khan, 34, said Friday he had donated blood to help some of the nearly 70 wounded in the attack.

Akhunzadah, the Taliban leader, also boasted of allegedly growing international support, saying "mainstream entities of the world admit (the Taliban) effectiveness, legitimacy and success," an apparent reference to reports of overtures by Russia and China to the Taliban amid concerns of an emerging Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan.

While the IS affiliate's stronghold is in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, the branch has managed also to stage high-profile attacks in Kabul and other cities. The presence of battle-hardened Uzbek militants in the ranks also further worries Moscow.

After urging Afghans to embrace holy war, or jihad, to oust foreign troops, Akhunzadah's rambling message went on to touch upon the conflict between Gulf Arab states and Qatar, saying he was "saddened" by the feud.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt have accused Qatar of supporting extremists, a charge that Doha denies.

Associated Press Writers Kathy Gannon in Islamabad and Abdul Khaliq in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

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Taliban leader: Afghan war will end only when NATO leaves - ABC News

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A Thai worker paints on a large statue of the Goddess of Mercy, known as Guan Yin at a Chinese temple in Ratchaburi province, Thailand. Guan Yin is one of the most popular and well known Chinese Goddess in Asia and in the world. Guan Yin is the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion in Mahayana Buddhism and also worshiped by Taoists

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Russian defence minister's plane 'buzzed' by Nato jet over Baltic Sea - The Independent

Due to the aging of North Atlantic Treaty Organizations collective fleets of rotorcraft, the Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center is leading a team of experts to identify capabilities and technologies needed in future NATO aircraft.

During a NATO Science & Technology Organization Applied Vehicle Technology Panel Specialist meeting in Prague, Czech Republic in October 2015, members met to identify common capabilities needs with a harmonized approach to defining requirements and certification. The group concluded there was a need for a NATO-wide activity to develop a strategy for future rotorcraft in NATO.

AMRDECs chief engineer for aviation development, Layne Merritt, proposed a team of experts within the Joint Capability Group-Vertical Lift (NATO Army Armaments Group) eventually titled Next Generation Rotorcraft Capability Team of Experts. Members include JCG-VL, Joint Air Power Competency Center, Allied Command Transformation, STO, and NATO Industrial Advisory Group.

This group was announced at the American Helicopter Society Internationals 73rd Annual Forum & Technology Display in Fort Worth, Texas, May 9-11. AHS Forum is a technical event on vertical flight technology. The three-day meeting included 250 technical papers on every discipline from acoustics to unmanned systems, along with workshops, invited presentations, and discussions by nearly 50 leaders in industry and government.

The mission of the NGRC TOE is to identify and assess current and evolving applicable rotorcraft technologies, force structure implications, force capabilities, together with operational concepts leading to the development of an integrated NGRC. An important element of the assessment is the projection of industrial capability and applied technologies in the time period of interest.

The idea is to baseline across the various NATO organizations before each moves forward with their normal business, Merritt said.

The TOE will meet consistently from 2016 until 2018. The supporting NIAG Study Group runs this May through June 2018 and will seek the collective industry views on the following topics: Force Capability, Force Structure, Technologies, Operational Concepts, and Development & Acquisition Strategies.

The scope of this NIAG study is to focus on the technologies that increase flight performance and mission effectiveness through platform propulsion, rotor design, lift, range, velocity, all weather operations, maintainability, availability and reliability. Other areas of interest are the force structure required to operate and maintain the next generation rotorcraft, as well as the identification of system integration anticipated and recommended methods to reduce complexity and risk.

Ultimately this effort is to assess and roadmap the NATO vertical lift fleet capabilities required for future operations and to maintain interoperability. This assessment will set the stage for nations to potentially partner on a NATO Staff Target/Requirement in order to move forward in a development effort, Dan Bailey, NGRC TOE chairman, said.

The study findings and recommendations will enable NATO and nations to understand and evaluate future rotorcraft capabilities and modernization options, potentially under NATOs Smart Defense Initiative.

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Experts collaborate on NATO aircraft improvements - Theredstonerocket

Even if theArmatawas as dangerous as the British report claims, Russia is not likely to be able to afford the expensive new machine in the huge quantities. Using the British reports own numbers120Armatatanks produced per yearCNA Corporation research scientist MikeKofman, a prominent Russian military affairs expert in Washington, noted it would take nearly 21 years to replace Russias 2500 operational tanks withT-14s. Thats if the Kremlin has the financial wherewithal to buy that manyArmatatankswhich is somewhat dubious.

A British Army intelligence report offers an alarmist assessment of Russias new T-14Armatamain battle tank. Most U.S. defense analysts, however, are much more measured in their analysis of the new Russian machines. While the T-14 will likely be an excellent tank when it becomes operational, it is not quite the revolution that the British claim it to be. Moreover, it is far too expensive to produce in mass numbers.

Without hyperbole,Armatarepresents the most revolutionary step change in tank design in the last half century, states a British Army intelligencereport cited by The Telegraph.

(This first appeared last November.)

But most U.S. assessments suggest thats exactly what the British report is: hyperbole. AsThe Telegraphnotes, the British intelligence document questions the U.K. Ministry of Defenses current defense strategy, which does not call for Great Britain to plan for a new combat vehicle to replace its Challenger 2 main battle tank. Are we on the cusp of a new technological arms race? Has an understandable focus on defeating the single threat ofIEDsdistracted Western military vehicle designers? Challenger 2 [the British tank], with life extensionprogrammes, is currently due to remain in service until 2035. Is it time to rethink? the report asks.

To be sure, the report does have some valid points. The T-14 does have some very impressive features. As a complete package,Armatacertainly deserves its billing as the most revolutionary tank in a generation, the intelligence brief states according toThe Telegraph. For the first time, a fully automated, digitised, unmanned turret has been incorporated into a main battle tank. And for the first time a tank crew is embedded within an armoured capsule in the hull front.

While the report excerpts inThe Telegraphdont mention it, U.S. analysts note that many of the Armatas advanced survivability features are drawn from the Israeli Merkava series. Nonetheless, the Russian seem to have advanced the state-of-the-art in terms of reactive armor and active protection. Indeed, if theRussian Afghanit active protection system worksas advertised, the Armata could prove to be a serious problem for the West if it were ever produced in numbers. However, most Western analystsgovernment and private sectorare dubious about Russian claims that their APS can defeat kinetic energy rounds.

However, even if the Armata was as dangerous as the British report claims, Russia is not likely to be able to afford the expensive new machine in the huge quantities. Using the British reports own numbers120 Armata tanks produced per yearCNA Corporation research scientist Mike Kofman, a prominent Russian military affairs expert in Washington, noted it would take nearly 21 years to replace Russias 2500 operational tanks with T-14s. Thats if the Kremlin has the financial wherewithal to buy that many Armata tankswhich is somewhat dubious.

Kofman noted that the Russians simply do not have the money to afford a huge fleet of T-14 tanks nor has the Armata family completed development. There is an irony to the British report, and similar such publications by military establishments bemoaning their land forces, in that the Russian Ministry of Defense can no more afford to replace its armor fleet with Armatas than anyone else, Kofman said.

Most analysts tracking the Kremlins military developments agree that the principal tank used by the Russian Ground Forces through the 2020s will be the relatively cost effective T-72B3. Even the T-90A is too expensive. In the coming years the principal battle tank that NATO will have to face in Europe is not even the T-90A, it is the T-72B3, which Western counterparts can handle, Kofman said. There are still years of field trials ahead for the Armatatinkering, and changes, with lingering questions on the final version and what the Russian military will ultimately be able to afford in quantity versus for arms expo shows.

Dave Majumdar is the defense editor of The National Interest. You can follow him on Twitter@DaveMajumdar.

Image Credit: Creative Commons.

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Why Russia's Armata Tank May Never Be a Threat to NATO | The ... - The National Interest Online (blog)

In perpetually lamenting the inordinate burden placed on the United States to provide for NATOs budget, President Trump echoes a recurrent criticism of the organizations structure that casts its primary weakness as pecuniary. But this obscures a more significant weakness, one that plays a contributing factor to underspending on NATO expenditures. NATOs validity is undermined not by an overburdened United States weighed down by the strain of high defense spending for ungrateful allies. Rather, it is the unshared security interests of its member states, exacerbated by a ceaseless drive towards membership expansion, that continues to hinder NATO in the absence of recalibration.

The impetus for a staunch, anti-Communist mutual defense pact disappeared with the Soviet state. However, the United States began the process of further expansion, accumulating members with different security interests even as the organizations initial unifying purpose ceased to exist. Instead of states bound in solemn defense against a specific, shared threat, what emerged was an agglomeration of states with varying interests bound together by a vague purpose of defending democracy. This transition, lacking a definitive attempt at providing direction to its overall purpose, has resulted in fragility and confusion. This is demonstrated by the different ways in which NATO members have reacted to various geopolitical flashpoints over the past decade.

Contradictory security interests and threat perceptions often stymie effective NATO policy. Within Europe, the view of Russia as a threat diminishes the further west the member in question lies. NATO members also view the global effort against terrorism, including the threat from groups such as ISIL, from differing perspectives. Turkeys unilateral decision in 2015 to shoot down a Russian jet that violated its airspace sent tensions soaring at a time when the United States and other NATO members were coordinating military action with Russia against ISIL. The decision by the United States to aid Syrian Kurds in Raqqa in the fight against ISIL put it at odds with Turkey. Ankara views the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG), which make up a significant component of the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces, as a terrorist group. Coherent, concerted action in the pursuit of these foreign policy goals becomes a languorous task as a result of divergences in member state perceptions.

NATO was never designed to handle every threat facing its members, but rather the primary threat on which they could all agree. A multi-tiered defense system within NATO would be more complicated than the current status quo, but it would be more adaptable to the realities of the post-Cold War era. Those under the overarching umbrella of the alliance would continue to enjoy the right to defense cooperation as the status quo provides. However, both the Article 5 collective defense trigger and deeper military coordination need to be parceled out pending specific agreements between individual member states. The Baltic States, Poland, the United States, and the United Kingdom, for example, could devise a defense pact that explicitly addresses the appropriate collective response to a Russian military attack against any one of these members. As a general rule, if a country is unwilling to come to the aid of another in the event of a certain threat, it should not benefit from protection against that threat. This is less controversial than it seems. Russias absorption of Crimea exposed existent fissures in the willingness of members to come to the defense of one another as mandated by Article 5.

The issue of membership must be considered carefully in concert with determining threats viewed by members as existential. Expansion for its own sake should cease unless new members share the same unwavering commitment to the specifically stated causes for which NATO stands. Increased membership does not equal greater strength, as the validity of an alliance is built upon a willingness to come to the mutual defense of one another. A multi-tier system would allow for the resolution of outstanding conflicts of interest resulting from the addition of its newer members.

In the interim period between the two World Wars, the collapse of the collective security arrangement provided by the League of Nations in the face of fascism and imperialism showed why principle alone is not a basis upon which mutual defense can be practiced. A similar collapse is possible in the event that NATO faces a serious existential threat. The focus on increasing defense contributions as a panacea to NATOs woes is misguided. More defense spending will not make Turkey come to the defense of Estonia in the event of a Russian military invasion of the Baltics. Neither will an increase in Germanys defense budget make it willing to use extra funds to provide lethal military aid to the Ukrainian army in its conflict against Russia. What is needed to clarify NATOs purpose is a framework that accommodates the varied interests of its members, rather than an expectation to throw money at a threat that some may not view as existent or important.

Zach Dickens is a Fellowship Editor at Young Professionals in Foreign Policy (YPFP). Zach received a Master's degree in Diplomacy with a concentration in International Terrorism from Norwich University.

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Disunity in Purpose: NATO's Fatal Flaw | HuffPost - HuffPost

MOSCOW A NATO F-16 fighter jet approached and was then warned away from a jet carrying Russias defense minister, Russian media reported Wednesday, the latest in a string of aerial incidents that have marked rising tensions between the West and Russia.

The incident occurred over the Baltic Sea in northeastern Europe, according to reporters traveling with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, in international airspace crowded with Russian and NATO jets testing one anothers nerve in sometimes dangerous proximity.

But no incidents yet had involved aircraft with high-ranking Russian or U.S. government officials aboard.

NATO confirmed the intercept, saying in an emailed statement that three Russian aircraft, including two fighters, had been tracked over the Baltic Sea. As the aircraft did not identify themselves or respond to air traffic control, NATO fighter jets scrambled to identify them, according to standard procedure, the statement read. NATO has no information as to who was on board. We assess the Russian pilots behavior as safe and professional.

The brush comes after days of close calls over the Baltics, as well as the first downing of a Syrian government plane by U.S. forces in that war-torn country. In response to the shoot-down, Russia said it would begin tracking U.S. aircraft in Syria as potential targets.

[U.S. aircraft shoots down Syrian warplane, Pentagon says]

Despite expectations that relations would warm under President Trump, a vocal admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, geopolitical hot spots from the Baltics to the Middle East have continued yielding tensions where U.S. and Russian military assets are in proximity.

The Ukrainian conflict has also remained a point of tension. The U.S. government on Tuesday introduced new sanctions against Russia, aimed at a shadowy paramilitary group called Wagner accused of fighting in Ukraine and Syria, as well as a company tied to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Putin associate sometimes called Putins chef.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Wednesday that he was canceling an upcoming meeting with the U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, Thomas A. Shannon Jr., in St. Petersburg because of the new round of sanctions, which target 38 Russian individuals and firms.

We regret that Russia has decided to turn away from an opportunity to discuss bilateral obstacles that hinder U.S.-Russia relations, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement Wednesday. ... If the Russians seek an end to these sanctions, they know very well the U.S. position: Our sanctions on Russia related [to] Russias ongoing aggression against Ukraine will remain in place until Russia fully honors its obligations under the Minsk Agreements. Our sanctions related to Crimea will not be lifted until Russia ends its occupation of the peninsula.

Trump and Putin were expected to meet for the first time next month during a Group of 20 summit in Hamburg. The meeting has been highly anticipated, a first encounter between two men who believe they can make use of each other despite a U.S. establishment livid over Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

But on Wednesday, Dmitry Peskov, Putins press secretary, said that there were no plans yet for a meeting.

It has not been prepared in any way for now, and nothing has been planned for July 7 so far, he told journalists, adding that the Kremlin does not rule out a meeting between Putin and Trump on the sidelines of the conference.

Peskov had previously said that the G-20 summit would be a good occasion to meet.

Asked by a Washington Post reporter whether his remarks Wednesday indicated doubt that a meeting would take place, he replied, It is still a good occasion.

There are concerns that the U.S.-Russian tensions could be playing out in the Baltics.

[Russian fighter intercepts U.S. heavy bomber over Baltic Sea]

On Tuesday, the Pentagon said that an armed Russian Su-27 buzzed an American RC-135 reconnaissance plane, closing to a distance of five feet. U.S. officials told Fox News that the maneuver was provocative. Russian officials blamed the pilot of the U.S. spy plane.

On Wednesday, Shoigus jet was bound for the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad when it was intercepted by an F-16, the Russian reports said.

The NATO jet closed in and began flying parallel to Shoigus plane, video shot on board and released by the Defense Ministrys Zvezda news agency showed.

A Russian Su-27 fighter accompanying Shoigus plane then approached from behind and rocked its wings to show that it was armed. Then, the F-16 veered off.

NATO and Russia are building up their defenses in the Baltic region, where former Soviet states (and now NATO members) Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia border Russia.

Since 2016, NATO has deployed four battalion-size battle groups to the Baltic states and Poland as part of what a NATO statement calls the biggest reinforcement of Alliance collective defense in a generation.

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NATO jet approached plane carrying Russian defense minister, reports say - Washington Post