Category Archives: NATO

By Lt Col Tyson Wetzel and Barry Pavel

Faced with the shocking images of Russian military forces indiscriminately shelling civilians across Ukraine, Western countries are under mounting pressure to find new ways to help Ukrainians defend themselves. As the Atlantic Councils military fellows concluded in their latest assessment, Russian forcesdespite seriously stumbling during their first week of combat in Ukrainestill pose a perilous threat as the Kremlins invasion proceeds.

While the Biden administration is working closely with NATO allies and European partners to respond to the invasion diplomatically and economicallyas well as pledging billions of dollars in military aid to Ukrainemany analysts also are advocating specific ideas for how Western leaders can do more to bolster Kyivs defenses. Clearly, if the United States and its allies and partners are going to increase their support for Ukraine, it must happen immediately. But such action also must be carefully considered, and its relative benefits in terms of effectiveness must be weighed against the potential risks of escalating the conflict to a war between Russia and NATO.

With that in mind, on March 3 the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security conducted a survey of thirty-seven national security experts, including a former ambassador to Russia and top NATO official, former senior officials at the US National Security Council and Defense Department, retired and active-duty military personnel, and experts across the Atlantic Council. We asked them to evaluate eleven options, all primarily military in nature, that the United States and NATO could take to strengthen Ukraines defenses. The result is a strategic risk calculator for policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic to assess the possible risks and benefits of boosting their military assistance to the Ukrainian government.

We presented our survey respondents with eleven options that span humanitarian assistance, the transfer of military equipment to Ukraine, and even covert and overt military actions within the country. The description of each option included a basic concept of operations and purpose.

These options were evaluated on two criteria:

Defined as the chance that the option helps prevent the collapse of the Ukrainian military, using the following assessment score:

Defined as the chance that the option leads to a direct NATO-Russia armed conflict, using the following assessment score:

For every option, we calculated the average score across all survey respondents on the effectiveness and escalation measures. Based on how each option scored on these measures, we then gave it an overall designation of significantly positive, slightly positive, neutral, slightly negative, or significantly negative. We calculated this net rating by subtracting the average effectiveness score by the average escalation score as a proxy for the balance our experts felt the option struck between offering effective support for Ukraine and managing the risks of escalation. We also asked survey respondents to rank each option using these two criteria and offered them the opportunity to provide additional comments describing their assessment and recommendations for improving or modifying the option. Our results are plotted in our effectiveness versus risk matrix below:

A fluid environment

This war, like all others, is dynamic and highly unpredictable. The pressures on, and the perceived interests of, NATO nations, Russia, and Ukraine will ebb and flow over time as the battle evolves. We would therefore expect the ways in which respondents score these military options to shift as the major parameters of the war, and the associated impact on the key interests of the parties involved, change.

In particular, it is very likely that images of mass humanitarian suffering and widespread killing of innocent civilians by the undisciplined and oftentimes unprofessional Russian military forces will exert even greater pressure on the United States and NATO allies to act more forcefully. This is why the Wests perception of the relative balance of risks may well change over the course of this conflict.

Mobile version: Expand to view

The opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or impliedin this articleare solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US governmentagency.

View original post here:
What are the risks and benefits of US/NATO military options in Ukraine? Our strategic risk calculator has answers. - Atlantic Council

Russian leader Vladimir Putin has suggested that he would consider using nuclear weapons if confronted with a NATO military response in Ukraine, or if faced with a direct threat to his person or regime. If the war spreads to a NATO country like Estonia or Poland a direct US-Russia confrontation would take place, with a clear danger of runaway nuclear escalation.

The world is therefore arguably now closer to nuclear conflict than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. So what would a full-scale nuclear exchange look like in reality? Is it truly global Armageddon, or would it be survivable for some people and places?

Many scientists have investigated this question already. Their work is surprisingly little known, likely because in peacetime no one wants to think the unthinkable. But we are no longer in peacetime and the shadows of multiple mushroom clouds are looming once again over our planet.

The latest assessment of Russian nuclear military capability estimates that as of early 2022 Russia has a stockpile of approximately 4,477 nuclear warheads nearly 6,000 if retired warheads are included. The US maintains a similar inventory of 5,500 warheads, with 3,800 of those rapidly deployable.

The explosive power of these weapons is difficult to comprehend. It has been estimated that about 3 million tons (megatons or Mt) of TNT equivalent were detonated in World War II. For comparison, each of the UKs Trident submarines carries 4 megatons of TNT equivalent on 40 nuclear warheads, meaning each submarine can cause more explosive destruction than took place during the entirety of World War II.

In 1945 the US attacked the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs, giving us two real-world examples of the effects of nuclear weapons on human populations.

A total of 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 73,000 in Nagasaki died instantaneously or within five months due to the nuclear blast, intense radiant heat from the fireball and ionizing radiation.

Many people caught within 1km of ground zero were carbonized by heat rays, and those up to 1.5km away suffered flash burning with large areas of skin later peeling off. Some, especially those inside buildings, were reduced to white bones as all flesh was vaporized by the intense heat.

Many survivors, later to become known as hibakusha in Japanese, suffered acute radiation sickness (ARS) from neutron and gamma rays released by nuclear fission in the blasts. Symptoms included bloody diarrhea, hair loss, fever and intense thirst. Many later died. As well as direct radiation from the fireballs they were also exposed to radioactive fallout from the bomb.

The longer-term effects of radiation experienced by the hibakusha have been intensively studied, and include increased levels of leukemia and solid cancers. However, experiencing an atomic bombing was not an automatic death sentence: among the 100,000 or so survivors the excess rates of cancer over the subsequent years were about 850, and leukemia less than 100.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki show that apart from short-term ARS long-term radiation from fallout will be the least of our problems following a nuclear war. Much more serious will be social collapse, famine and the breakdown of much of the planetary biosphere.

Prior to the Ukraine war it seemed very unlikely that the superpowers would confront each other again, so many researchers turned to studying the impacts of more limited nuclear conflicts.

One study published two years ago looked at the likely impacts of a nuclear exchange of about 100 Hiroshima-sized detonations (15 kt yield each) on the most-populated urban areas of India and Pakistan. Each detonation was estimated to incinerate an area of 13 square km, with this scenario generating about 5 Tg (teragrams) of soot as smoke from wildfires and burning buildings entered the atmosphere.

Direct human deaths in this limited nuclear war scenario are not quantified in the study, but would presumably number in the tens to hundreds of millions. The planetary impacts are also severe: as the soot reaches the stratosphere it circulates globally, blocking incoming solar radiation and dropping the Earths surface temperature by 1.8C in the first five years.

This would be a greater cooling than caused by any recent volcanic eruption, and more than any climate perturbation for at least the last 1,000 years. Rainfall patterns are drastically altered, and total precipitation declines by about 8 percent. (These results come from widely-used climate models of the same types used to project long-term impacts of greenhouse gas emissions.)

Food exports collapse as stocks are depleted within a single year, and by year four a total of 1.3 billion people face a loss of about a fifth of their current food supply. The researchers conclude that a regional conflict using <1 percent of the worldwide nuclear arsenal could have adverse consequences for global food security unmatched in modern history.

A2014 study of the same scenario (of a 100-weapon nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan) found that the soot penetrating the stratosphere would cause severe damage to the Earths ozone layer, increasing UV penetration by 30-80 percent over the mid-latitudes. This would cause widespread damage to human health, agriculture, and terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, the researchers wrote. The combined cooling and enhanced UV would put significant pressures on global food supplies and could trigger a global nuclear famine.

If global nuclear famine could result from just 100 nuclear detonations, what might be the result of a fuller exchange of the several thousand warheads held in current inventories by the US and Russia?

One 2008 study looked at a Russia-US nuclear war scenario, where Russia would target 2,200 weapons on Western countries and the US would target 1,100 weapons each on China and Russia. In total, therefore, 4,400 warheads detonate, equivalent to roughly half the current inventories held each by Russia and the US.

Nuclear weapons held by other states were not used in this scenario, which has a 440-Mt explosive yield, equivalent to about 150 times all the bombs detonated in World War II. This full-scale nuclear war was estimated to cause 770 million direct deaths and generate 180 Tg of soot from burning cities and forests. In the US, about half the population would be within 5km of a ground zero, and a fifth of the countrys citizens would be killed outright.

A subsequent study, published in 2019, looked at a comparable but slightly lower 150 Tg atmospheric soot injection following an equivalent scale nuclear war. The devastation causes so much smoke that only 30-40 percent of sunlight reaches the Earths surface for the subsequent six months.

A massive drop in temperature follows, with the weather staying below freezing throughout the subsequent Northern Hemisphere summer. In Iowa, for example, the model shows temperatures staying below 0C for 730 days straight. There is no growing season. This is a true nuclear winter.

Nor is it just a short blip. Temperatures still drop below freezing in summer for several years thereafter, and global precipitation falls by half by years three and four. It takes over a decade for anything like climatic normality to return to the planet.

By this time, most of Earths human population will be long dead. The worlds food production would crash by more than 90 percent, causing global famine that would kill billions by starvation. In most countries less than a quarter of the population survives by the end of year two in this scenario. Global fish stocks are decimated and the ozone layer collapses.

The models are eerily specific. In the 4,400 warhead/150 Tg soot nuclear war scenario, averaged over the subsequent five years, China sees a reduction in food calories of 97.2 percent, France by 97.5 percent, Russia by 99.7 percent, the UK by 99.5 percent and the US by 98.9 percent. In all these countries, virtually everyone who survived the initial blasts would subsequently starve.

Even the 150 Tg soot nuclear war scenario is orders of magnitude less than the amount of smoke and other particulates put into the atmosphere by the asteroid that hit the Earth at the end of the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago, killing the dinosaurs and about two-thirds of species alive at the time.

This implies that some humans would survive, eventually to repopulate the planet, and that a species-level extinction of Homo sapiens is unlikely even after a full-scale nuclear war. But the vast majority of the human population would suffer extremely unpleasant deaths from burns, radiation and starvation, and human civilization would likely collapse entirely. Survivors would eke out a living on a devastated, barren planet.

It was this shared understanding of the consequences of nuclear Armageddon that led to the 1985 statement by then US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. This statement was reaffirmed by Presidents Biden and Putin as recently as January 2022. Even as war rages in Ukraine it remains as true now as it was then.

With childrens hospitals bombed and refugees shelled as they flee, emotions run high. But cool heads must ultimately prevail, so that we can collectively step back from the brink of Russia-NATO confrontation before it is too late. The price of nuclear escalation is planetary suicide, with no winners at all. That wont save lives in Ukraine it will simply take the death toll of the current war from the thousands to the billions.

Image: Nuclear bomb test in the ocean. Photo: Shutterstock/Romolo Tavani

View post:
What the science says: Could humans survive a nuclear war between NATO and Russia? - Alliance for Science

Mr. Clinton was perhaps more correct than he knew. The transactional attitude he identified appeared to be the key to understanding Russias president. Mr. Putin had inherited a very particular vision of what the West actually was. For him, it was, according to Gleb Pavlovsky, a former close aide, synonymous with the liberal capitalist order, which he understood in terms of Soviet caricature: It meant tolerating oligarchs, privatizing state industries, paying and accepting bribes, hollowing out state capacity and having some semblance of power-sharing. Mr. Putin thought his predecessors Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin had failed because they failed to understand this.

Mr. Putin himself acted like a savvy applicant to the West in many respects. He gamely signed on to the global war on terror, later allowing the United States to use his bases for the war in Afghanistan, and extinguished a terrorist insurgency at home. Since coming to power, Mr. Putin has also made Moscow into a paragon of fiscal rectitude, and, according to the former aide, he explored the idea of installing an American-style two-party system in Russia.

But as the economy Mr. Putin presided over threatened to crash in a state-stripping bonanza, he tried to shore up the state sector and turned to increasingly authoritarian measures at home. As former Warsaw Pact countries welcomed NATO expansion, he shifted to a more civilizational understanding of Russias place in the world, one based on Eastern values: the Orthodox Church, patriarchal chauvinism, anti-homosexuality edicts, as well as a notion of a greater ethnic Russian identity whose ancient wellspring is inconveniently Kyiv, Ukraine. Protesters such as Pussy Riot and others who struck directly at this neo-civilizational image came in for swift retribution.

Mr. Putins turn reflected a broader phenomenon of authoritarian-led liberalizing economies trying to fill an empty ideological space that seemed poised to be filled by Western idolatry. In China, too, in the late 2000s, there was a turn to a civilizational understanding in Beijing, where dutiful readers of Mr. Huntington have spread notions of Chinese civilization in the forms of global Confucius Institutes or a program for cultural self-confidence, and which President Xi Jinping today expresses in his elliptical thought.

Turkey, too, under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has pushed a vision of a neo-Ottoman sphere stretching from North Africa to Central Asia, which is a direct repudiation of Ataturks more bounded vision of Turkish nationalism. More recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India has revived ideas about Hindu supremacy, glorifying his nations ancient past Hindustan is his Kyivan Rus and using it as a bludgeon against his opponents. The turn to civilizational imagining provides a useful lever for ruling elites who want to suppress other forms of solidarity, whether class, regional or ecologically based, and to restrict the attractions of cosmopolitanism for their economic elites.

For all the talk about how Ukraine is despite whatever losses on the battlefield winning the P.R. war, there is a sense in which Mr. Putin has already won at another level of framing the conflict. The more we hear about the resolve of the West, the more the values of a liberal international order appear like the provincial set of principles of a particular people, in a particular place.

Of the 10 most-populous countries in the world, only one the United States supports major economic sanctions against Russia. Indonesia, Nigeria, India and Brazil have all condemned the Russian invasion, but they do not seem prepared to follow the West in its preferred countermeasures. Nor do non-Western states appear to welcome the kind of economic disruptions that will result from, as Senator Rob Portman phrased it, putting a noose on the Putin economy. North Africa and the Middle East rely on Russia for basics from fertilizer to wheat; Central Asian populations rely on its remittances. Major disruptions to these economic networks seem unlikely to relieve Ukrainian suffering.

Originally posted here:
Opinion | Putin Wants a Clash of Civilizations. Is The West Falling for It? - The New York Times

Soldiers take part in a military exercise at the Adazi military base, Latvia (Getty)

Russia has warned it will respond to what it describes as Nato's "provocative" deployment of soldiers and military hardware near its border.

Nato has been gathering troops in a number of its member states in recent weeks after Vladimir Putin began amassing his own soldiers on the Ukrainian border before launching a full-scale invasion two weeks ago.

Nato members have so far rejected Ukrainian pleas to establish a no-fly zone over its skies, making it clear that any such move could provoke direct engagement with Russian military jets that could in turn spark a wider war.

Troops are currently based in the eastern European countries of Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Damage to buildings in Kharkiv after Russian shelling, as the invasion stretches into its 14th day (Getty)

A Russian tank lies destroyed after being destroyed by Ukrainian forces. Russia has faced a strong resistance from Ukraine since attempting to invade (Getty)

Moscow has frequently accused Nato of provocation, despite repeated assurances that the alliance is a defensive one and poses no threat to Russians. On Wednesday, the Russian foreign ministry stoked tensions further.

"The build-up of NATO forces on the eastern flank is openly provocative," it said. "The containment of Russia has obviously become the alliance's main mission again.

"We will respond to the confrontation policy pursued by #NATO towards our country."

Ukraine has stated as recently as last month that joining Nato to bolster its security is a key ambition. Putin is said to be angered by such a move and Russia has stated that Ukraine must "enshrine its neutrality" before any ceasefire can be brokered.

Read more: What is Nato, which countries are members and how has it responded to Russias invasion of Ukraine?

Click on this image to see all Yahoo News UK's latest content on the Ukraine crisis

In response, President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared to suggest he would no longer seek membership, telling ABC News on Monday: "I have cooled down regarding this question a long time ago after we understood that ... NATO is not prepared to accept Ukraine."

He added he did not want to be president of a "country which is begging for something on its knees."

Story continues

Ukraine has also appealed to Nato to supply fighter jets to help with their efforts in holding off Russian forces. On Tuesday, Poland said it was ready to deploy all its MIG-29 jets to Rammstein Air Base in Germany and put them at the disposal of the United States

However, the Pentagon dismissed the proposed solution as "untenable" saying the prospect of the jets' departing from a US and Nato base in Germany "to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire Nato alliance".

Vladimir Putin is keen to ensure Nato does not get any stronger (Getty)

Putin's actions have now driven 2 million people out of Ukraine and into neighbouring countries as refugees, the UN said on Tuesday.

It is is the largest humanitarian crisis since World War Two.

US intelligence authorities warned on Tuesday that Putin could decide to leave Ukraine if his efforts to take over are continually stalled, but warned he could double down on the violence before deciding to.

We assess Putin feels aggrieved the West does not give him proper deference and perceives this as a war he cannot afford to lose. But what he might be willing to accept as a victory may change over time, given the significant costs he is incurring, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, told members of the House Intelligence Committee.

Watch: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses MPs in the House of Commons

Western officials believe Putin had hoped to have Ukraine well under his control within days of launching the invasion, but say poor planning, bad leadership and a fierce line of resistance from the Ukrainian people have stalled the Russian progress.

The US defence office has claimed Russia has deployed nearly all the 150,000 troops who were stationed on the border, but has only "made little progress".

An unnamed official added the Russians are "frustrated by a stiff Ukrainian resistance as well as their own internal challenges".

The nation's largest cities are still under Ukrainian control, but coming under constant Russian bombardment as Putin's force step-up their campaign of misery.

Follow this link:
Russia vows to react to 'confrontational' build-up of Nato on its border - Yahoo News

Russian President Vladimir Putin's brutal campaign to deter Ukrainian admission to NATO has inadvertently boosted the military alliance's popularity among other prospective member states.

As Russia's assault on its neighbor intensifies, nearby Finland and Sweden are rethinking their long-standing positions of military neutrality, with a majority of voters now favoring membership of the 30-member alliance for the first time.

In opinion polls released Friday, half (51%) of Swedes and 48% of Finns said they would support their country joining NATO, while around one-quarter opposed it. An earlier poll conducted in February indicated majority Finnish support too.

Speaking to CNBC Monday, Finland's former prime minister said the recent Finnish poll represents a "reversal" in public opinion reflecting the "rational fear" currently felt by the public.

"[It's] fear of an aggressive superpower in the form of Russia. Fear of an aggressor and a military power," Alexander Stubb told CNBC's "Street Signs Europe."

Prospective NATO members can apply to the defense bloc by meeting certain political and economic requirements, with eventual admittance being voted on by existing member states.

However, any move for the two Nordic states to join is unlikely to be speedy or straightforward.

Right now, we do not want to escalate the crisis or the war up here to the northeastern part of Europe.

Alexander Stubb

professor and director, European University Institute

Putin has long viewed NATO's refusal to block its neighbor, Ukraine, from the alliance as an act of military aggression, listing it among a series of preconditions for halting his current assault. Admitting Finland which shares a 1,300 kilometer land border with Russia, the European Union's largest or Sweden would likely be met with similar resistance.

Indeed, Russia's defense minister has previously said such moves would be met with military consequences. Already, Russian warplanes have reportedly been intruding into Swedish airspace.

Jeff Overs | BBC News & Current Affairs | Getty Images

Authorities in Sweden and Finland have so far shown no signs of testing that resolve.

Sweden's Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist told reporters last week that despite deepening its cooperation with NATO, it would not change its position overnight based solely on opinion polls.

Meanwhile, Stubb, who served from 2014 to 2015, said the current government was increasing military spending but stopping short of NATO membership.

"Right now, we do not want to escalate the crisis or the war up here to the northeastern part of Europe," said Stubb, who is currently a professor and director of transnational governance at the European University Institute.

Still, the shift in public mood is a historic one for two countries with previously amicable relations with Russia, and another potential miscalculation in Putin's war.

"I predict that as the war is prolonged, day by day, support for Finnish NATO membership will increase," said Stubb.

"The train has left the station," he added.

View original post here:
Putin wanted to block Ukrainian NATO membership. Now more countries are eager to join - CNBC

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday assured Lithuania and Latvia of NATO protection and American support as he made quick visits to two of three Baltic states that are increasingly on edge as Russia presses ahead with its invasion of Ukraine.

Along with Estonia, which Blinken will visit on Tuesday, the former Soviet republics are NATO members, and the Biden administration is aiming to calm any fears they have about their security in the event Russia chooses to expand its military operations.

In the Latvian capital, Riga, Blinken said the Baltics have formed a democratic wall that now stands against the tide of autocracy that Russia is pushing in Europe. The United States is more committed than ever to standing with you as our democracies rise to the challenge, Blinken said.

We are bolstering our shared defense so that we and our allies are prepared, he said, stressing that the US commitment to NATOs mutual defence pact is sacrosanct and that NATO and the US were discussing the permanent basing of troops in the Baltics.

We will defend every inch of NATO territory if it comes under attack, he said. No one should doubt our readiness. No one should doubt our resolve.

Leaders in both countries expressed grave concerns about Russian President Vladimir Putins intentions as it relates to former Soviet bloc countries that are now allied or otherwise linked to the West.

We have no illusions about Putins Russia any more, Latvian foreign minister Edgars Rinkevics said after meeting Blinken in Riga. We dont really see any good reason to assume that Russia might change its policy.

Rinkevics said that the Russian invasion of Ukraine had shown the Baltic countries, in particular, the need to bolster air and coastal defenses and that Latvia would like its security cooperation with NATO to be more efficient.

Unfortunately, the worsening security situation in the Baltic region is of great concern for all of us and around the world, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda told Blinken earlier in Vilnius. Russias reckless aggression against Ukraine once again proves that it is a long-term threat to European security, the security of our alliance.

Memories of Soviet rule are still fresh in the Baltics and since the invasion of Ukraine last month, NATO has moved quickly to boost its troop presence in its eastern flank allies while the US has pledged additional support.

Blinken opened his Baltic tour in Vilnius, where Lithuanian support for Ukraines resistance to the Russian invasion was palpable as signs of solidarity with Ukrainians are evident in many businesses and on houses, public buildings and buses. He later traveled to Riga, which has been similarly festooned with blue and yellow Ukrainian flags.

Lithuanias Nauseda said a policy of deterrence was no longer enough and that forward defence was now needed. He predicted that Putin will not stop in Ukraine if he will not be stopped.

It is our collective duty as a nation to help all Ukrainians with all means available, said Nauseda. By saying all, I mean, indeed all means all, if we want to avoid the Third World War. The choice is in our hands.

Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis called for a surge in assistance to Ukraine, noting that the NATO allies are doing a lot, but we cannot stop. He also called for an immediate halt to imports of Russian energy. We cannot pay for oil and gas with Ukrainian blood, he said.

Lithuania is dealing with pressure from another large power China for its relationship with Taiwan, the island China regards as a renegade province. China has taken actions, including halting imports of certain products, against Lithuania for allowing Taiwan to open a de facto embassy in Vilnius.

Blinken said the Ukraine situation was relevant to Lithuanias Taiwan situation as all countries should have the right to pursue their own foreign policies. Every nation is free to associate with whom it chooses, he said. The United States continues to stand by Lithuania and every nation to choose its own path.

Blinken arrived in the Baltics late Sunday from non-aligned Moldova, which is also warily watching the war on its doorstep, and Poland, where he visited the Polish-Ukrainian border and met with refugees from Ukraine.

After his meetings with senior Latvian officials and Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid in Riga, Blinken will visit Tallinn, Estonia on Tuesday and then go on to Paris for talks with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met with Putin over the weekend and Macron has been in frequent contact with the Russian leader. Both Israel and France sought meetings with Blinken to discuss those interactions.

Blinken declined to discuss those meetings in detail before they have been held but said: There is certainly no change in our message to Moscow, our message to Russia and to President Putin: End the war. End it now.

Follow this link:
Blinken tells nervous Baltics NATO will protect them from Russia - Al Jazeera English

A Ukrainian military vehicle speeds by on a main road near Sytnyaky, Ukraine, on March 3, 2022.

Photo: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Many governments of the world havedenounced Putins actions. But when it comes to the U.S. and its NATO allies, these condemnations demand greater scrutiny. While many statements from Western leaders may be accurate regarding the nature of Russias actions, the U.S. and other NATO nations are in a dubious position to take a moralistic stance in condemning Russia. That they do so with zero recognition of their own hypocrisy, provocative actions, and history of unbridled militarism particularly in the case of the U.S. is deeply problematic. From the beginning of this crisis, Putin has exploited the militarism and past bombing campaigns of the U.S. and NATO to frame his own warped justification for his murderous campaign in Ukraine. But the fact that Putin is trying to justify the unjustifiable does not mean that wemust ignore the U.S. actions that fuel his narrative.

In recent days, U.S. and NATO officials have highlighted Russias use of banned weapons, including cluster munitions, and have said their use constitutes violations of international law. This is indisputably true. What goes virtually unmentioned in much of the reporting on this topic is that the U.S., like both Russia and Ukraine, refuses to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

The U.S. has repeatedly used cluster bombs, going back to the war in Vietnam and the secret bombings of Cambodia. In the modern era, both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush used them. President Barack Obama used cluster bombs in a 2009 attack in Yemen that killed some 55 people, the majority of them women and children. Despite the ban, which wasfinalized in 2008 and went into effect in 2010, the U.S.continued to sell cluster bombs to nations like Saudi Arabia, which regularly used them in its attacks inYemen. In 2017, President Donald Trump reversed an internal U.S. policy aimed at limiting the use of certain types of cluster munitions, a move which a Human Rights Watch expert warned could embolden others to use cluster munitions that have caused so much human suffering. None of this exonerates Russia for its unconscionable use of cluster bombs against civilians, but these facts are clearly relevant when assessing the credibility of the U.S.

It is much easier to express outrage at the actions and crimes of a foreign autocrat than it is to come to terms with the conduct of your own government. This is why the images of masses of Russians protesting in the streets is a more powerful repudiation of Putins war than the rhetoric from U.S. politicians on cable news or the statements from NATO officials.

It is also true that the laws of war and international law should applynot only to the declared bad guys of the moment or toparties thatunilaterally attack other nations, but also to every nation including our own. Putin has framed his aggression against Ukraine in part as a response to NATO expansion, and he and other Russian officials have in recent weeks invoked the 1999 Kosovo war as precedent for Russias current actions in Ukraine.

Moscows argument is that the U.S. and NATO, under the pretext of humanitarian intervention, and with no United Nations authorization, unilaterally bombed Serbia for more than two months in 1999 followed by a ground incursion into Kosovo. In February, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested, in remarks at the U.N., that the U.S. had set a precedent with the Kosovo war and that this negated the value of Western critiques of Russiasplansto attack Ukraine. Ihave torecall these facts, because some Western colleagues prefer toforget them, Putin said in his February 24 speech. When we mentioned the [Kosovo war], they prefer toavoid speaking about international law.

Although many of Putins comparisons are nonsense and even when they are cogent do nothing to justify his own current murderous campaign, there are relevant insights we can extract from reviewing some of NATOs actions in Kosovo.The most direct analogy in recent U.S. military history to Putins large-scale ground invasion of Ukraine is obviously the Iraq War.Yet its important to examine the Kosovo air war because it highlights military tactics that the U.S. and NATO now rightly condemn Russia for using. Like Iraq, it also illustrates the entrenched double standard that permeates the consistently hypocritical U.S. response to the actions of its enemies.

Slobodan Miloevi had for many years imposed a system of minority rule, repression, and terror against Kosovo Albanians, which constituted 90 percent of the southern provinces population. Beginning in 1989, he began to hack away at Kosovos long-held autonomous status within the Yugoslav federation. The situation steadily deteriorated over the next decade as Yugoslavia disintegrated, and by 1998 the U.S. was threatening to intervene militarily to confrontMiloevi, accusing his forces of massacring and terrorizing Albanian civilians andplotting a wider campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Throughout the year leading up to the NATO bombing, Miloevis forces regularly clashed with armed insurgents from the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army. After the killing of several police officers in early 1998, Miloevis forces launched a murderous retaliatory campaign in which they repeatedly killed civilians, including the family members of KLA guerrillas.Human rights groups also documented abuses by the KLA, including killings and kidnappings of civilians, though on a far smaller scale than those carried out by Serbian forces. This situation, combined with the general state of repression of ethnic Albanians, brought Kosovo to wider public attention and drew sharper focus from the U.S. and NATO, which stood accused, earlier in the decade, of failing to respond earlier to the mass slaughter of Bosnian Muslims.

There were also influential voices in the U.S. including then-Sen. Joe Biden, who advocated directly targetingSerbia and Miloevi since the Bosnia warand the worsening situation in Kosovo helped them make their case. We talk about humanitarian interests it far exceeds the humanitarian interest, Biden said in October 1998. If I were president, I would just bomb him, and I mean that sincerely, and I would have the NATO allies come along. Belgrades position was that it was engaged in a fight against terrorist KLA militants and that theU.S. and NATO wereattempting to undermine the countrys sovereignty, a position supported by both Russia and China. As the violence intensified in early 1999, and reports of Serbian police andspecial forces killing civilians garnered more public attention, the prospect of a U.S.-NATO war became real.

By March 1999, an estimated 460,000residents of Kosovo had been internally displaced, forced from their homes, or fled to neighboring countries. The U.S.-NATO position was that given the mass atrocities committed by Bosnian Serb forces throughout the early 1990s in Bosnia, particularly the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995, it was necessary to stop Miloevi from accelerating a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the majority ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo. Multiple subsequent war crimes trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia determined the Srebrenica massacre to be an act of genocide.

NATOasserted that in order to avert a bombing campaign,Miloevi would have to sign the Rambouillet Accord andagree to the deployment of as many as 30,000 NATO-led troops in Kosovo. Thedocument, drafted by NATO and signed by representatives of the Kosovo Albanians, contained a provision that stated NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access not just in Kosovo but also throughout the entire Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In mid-March, international monitors pulled out of Kosovo asNATO military action grew imminent. Miloevis forcesused the opportunityto intensify their rampages through KLA strongholds, burning Albanian homes and shops. Clinton dispatched his envoy Richard Holbrooke to Belgrade to personally meet with Miloevi on March 23. We presented the ultimatum to Milosevic that if he didnt sign the agreement, the bombing would start, Holbrooke recalled. And he said, No.

Russia was the most powerful ally of Miloevi and was dead set against the U.S. and NATO bombing Serbia. Clinton failed to get U.N. approval for a military operation, in part because of Russias repeated threats of a veto, so he sidestepped the fierce debates in both Congress and the U.N. and, on March 24, proceeded with a NATO military operation. Congress never authorized the war despite the efforts of Biden, one of the most passionate proponents of bombing Serbia. Russia, for its part, denounced the bombing as prematurely abandoning diplomacy and characterized it as a violation of the U.N. charter. From Moscows perspective, NATO was steadily asserting its dominance over the republics of the former Yugoslavia, which had been a socialist, nonaligned state since the end of World War II.

At the end of the bombing, Russian forces entered Kosovo ahead of NATO and briefly took control of a key airport resulting in a showdown between NATO and Russia, which some analysts feared could have severe consequences. Putin, who at the timewas head of Russias national security council, has actuallyclaimed hehad a role in the incident. While it was ultimately resolved peacefully, at one point during the standoff a British general refused to implement the orders of U.S. Gen.Wesley Clark, the NATO supreme allied commander, to block the runway. Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson reportedlytold Clark, I am not going to start Third World War for you. The U.S. ultimately establisheda large military base in the Balkans, Camp Bondsteel, and led the effort to make Kosovo, at the time a Serbian province, an independent state. To Russia, this campaign constituted an act of aggression by NATO, in circumvention of the U.N., that carved up the territory of a Russian ally in Europe and resulted in a new U.S.-NATO military base in Europe.

High U.S. officials confirm that it was primarily the bombing of Russian ally Serbia without even informing them in advance that reversed Russian efforts to work together with the U.S. somehow to construct a post-Cold War European security order, said Noam Chomsky in a recent interview. This reversal accelerated with the invasion of Iraq and the bombing of Libya after Russia agreed not to veto a UN Security Council Resolution that NATO at once violated.

None of this history lends an iota of legitimacy to Putins invasion of Ukraine. What it does offer, however, is an opportunity for the citizens of the U.S. and NATO countries to review the history of their own forces and to examine the ways in which our conduct damages our moral standing and ultimately gives propagandistic fodder to leaders like Putin.

The fact that Miloevi was a murderous gangster who orchestrated mass deportations, atrocities, and widespread killings of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo does not justify NATOs repeated use of cluster bombs, including on a crowded marketplace and hospital in the city of Ni, killing more than a dozen people. Human Rights Watch determined NATO killed between 90 to 150 civilians in cluster bomb attacks. Nor does it exonerate Clark, theNATO supreme allied commander, for ordering the deliberate missile attack on Radio Television Serbia that killed 16 media workers in April 1999, an act which Amnesty International labeled a war crime. It does not excuse the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy (which killed three journalists), or any of the other U.S.-NATO attacks that killed civilians.

The U.S. and its allies also sought, at times, to cover up or justify incidents in which they killed civilians. In one attack, NATO struck a civilian passenger train on a bridge, killing 10 people. It later released a videotape that was played at three times the speed, making it appear as though the strike was a split-second decision and a tragic mistake. But moments after the strike, NATO fired another missile at the train. In another incident, NATO bombed a convoy of Albanian refugees fleeing Serb forces on April 14, 1999. Some 73 civilians, including 16 children, were killed in the attack, which was carried out by an American F-16. After initiallysuggesting that Serbian forces hadkilled the refugees, NATO was forced when international journalists traveled to the scene to admit responsibility for the strike. NATO then expressed deep regret for what it labeled a mistake, though NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea also assertedthat sometimes one has to risk the lives of the few to save the lives of the many. A month later, NATObombed another convoy of Kosovo Albanian refugees in a similar strike.

The overwhelming majority of Kosovo Albanians who were killed by Serbian forces perished after the NATO bombing began. Miloevi unleashed both conventional and special units as well as vicious paramilitaries in a systematic and deliberately organized mass killing and forced displacement operation. The Independent International Commission on Kosovoconcluded, The NATO air campaign did not provoke the attacks on the civilian Kosovar population but the bombing created an environment that made such an operation feasible. More than 8,600 Albanian civilians were killed or disappeared between 1998-2000, according to human rights groups; more than 2,000 Serb, Roma, and other non-Albanian civilians died or went missing during the same period.

Within nine weeks of the beginning of the air strikes, nearly 860,000 Kosovo Albanians fled or were expelled, according to areportfrom the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. They did so amid a campaign of terror, rape, and pillaging by both official and paramilitary forces. The NATO strikes were accompanied by escalating violence on the ground and a large refugee outflow that included organized expulsions, according to the UNHCR. The sequence of violence and displacement underlined the importance of the Western powers in the events that produced the refugee emergency. After the war, when NATO occupied Kosovo, some 200,000 Serbs, Roma, and other minorities fled their homes, the UNHCR found.

The crimes of despots, dictators, and thugs do not give the U.S. and NATO permission to kill civilians.

These facts do not justify a single thing Miloevi and his forces did, and Miloevi deserved his indictment for war crimes. International prosecutors charged that Miloevi planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted in a deliberate and widespread or systematic campaign of terror and violence directed at Kosovo Albanian civilians. The vast majority of the charges against Miloevi were for killings and other crimes against Albanians that occurred after the start of the NATO bombing. In 2001, after being ousted from power amid his attempts to overturn an election he lost, Miloevi was arrested by Serbian special forces in the middle of the night and extradited to The Hague to face trial for his role in mass killings and other atrocities in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. He died in jail before his trial ended. The crimes of despots, dictators, and thugs including vile criminals like Miloevi do not give the U.S. and NATO permission to kill civilians. Nor do they grant authority to the U.S. to bomb other nations for 78 days, particularly when Congress has explicitly declined to authorize the action. The crimes of declared enemies also do not erase the culpability of the U.S. and its personnel for war crimes.

It is precisely the history of these actions by the U.S. and NATO that Putin has sought to weaponize in his insane attempts to justify his invasion of Ukraine. That some of these claims are rooted in fact does not absolve Putin of a single Russian atrocity. But citizens of the U.S. and other NATO nations should deeply examine whether they support the use by their own governments of some of the very tactics and weapons favored by Putin.It is also relevant that to this day there has been no accountability for the crimes committed by the U.S. in its invasion and occupation of Iraq, its 20-year war in Afghanistan, the post-9/11 CIA torture and kidnapping program, or the killing of civilians in drone and other airstrikes in numerous countries. The U.S. has systematized a self-exoneration machine. And Russia and every nation on Earth knows it.

Since the invasion of Ukraine began, people expressing horror and outrage at Putins actions in Ukraine while also referencing the history of the U.S. and NATO governments have been portrayed as traitors or apologists for Russia. This is a classic tactic in the history of pro-war discourse; it has been used throughout U.S. history and was a common cudgel used to attack anti-war views in the aftermath of 9/11.

The U.S. has systematized a self-exoneration machine.

There is no contradiction between standing with the people of Ukraine and against Russias heinous invasion and being honest about the hypocrisy, war crimes, and militarism of the U.S. and NATO. We have an undeniable moral responsibility to prioritize holding our own government accountable for its crimes because they are being done in our names and with our tax dollars. That does not mean we should be silent in the face of the crimes of Russia or other nations, but we do bear a specific responsibility for the acts of war committed by our own nations.

Some prominent U.S. politicians and diplomats have also called for collective punishment against ordinary Russian people in order to pressure them into toppling Putins government, and Sen. Lindsey Graham went so far as to openly encourage Russians to assassinate Putin. While many opponents of Russias invasion and Putin have been clear that they do not hold Russian people responsible for the crimes of their leaders, some high-profile U.S. political figures have taken a different stance. There are no more innocent neutral Russians anymore, tweeted Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia under Obama. Everyone has to make a choice support or oppose this war. The only way to end this war is if 100,000s, not thousands, protest against this senseless war. Putin cant arrest you all! McFaul later deleted the tweet. Ordinary Russians will be key to any meaningful hope of ending this war and Putins insanity, but we cant overlook the brutality they face from their own government. Those who are protesting inside of Russia deserve immense credit for their bravery. Sanctions aimed at billionaire Putin cronies and government officials responsible for this invasion are fundamentally different from sanctions that directly impact civilians in an effort to blackmail them into an uprising against a regime that has shown no compunction about violently repressing and at times murdering dissidents.

The global response to Putins war has already exposed the tragic double standard when it comes to war victims. The people of Yemen have been suffering for more than a decade under a merciless campaign of bombing initiated by Obama in 2009thatmorphed into a scorched-earth campaign by U.S.-armed-and-supported Saudi Arabia, whichcontinues to this moment. How many of the people with Ukrainian flag avatars on their Twitter profiles have spent days or weeks pleading for the world to stand up for ordinary Yemenis living under the hell of American bombs and Saudi warplanes? The same question applies in the case of the Palestinians who live under an apartheid state imposed by Israel and backed up by a sustained campaign of annihilation supported and encouraged by the U.S. How can people argue in favor of Ukrainian rights to self-defense while simultaneously stripping Palestinians of that same right?

Vladimir Putin and the Russian officials responsible for this invasion of Ukraine should face justice. Once the evidence has been gathered, every war crime should be investigated, indictments issued, and prosecutions undertaken. The obvious venue for this would be before the International Criminal Court. Yet here is an inconvenient fact: The U.S. has refused to ratify the Rome Statute, which established the ICC. In 2002, Bush signed legislation that authorizes the U.S. to literally conduct military operations in The Hague to liberate anyAmerican personnel brought to trial for war crimes. It is indefensible that the U.S. has established a precedent that powerful nations need not be held accountable for their crimes. It is a precedent that Russia knows well, exploits regularly, and will certainly use again and again.

Read more from the original source:
Putin's Criminal Invasion of Ukraine Highlights Some Ugly Truths About U.S. and NATO - The Intercept

Russian President Vladimir Putin is showing no signs of calling off his invasion of Ukraine.

On Monday the United Nations Human Rights Office released figures confirming 406 civilians, including 27 children, have died so far, with a further 801 people reported injured. It warned the real number could be much higher.

Ukraines military has claimed more than 11,000 Russian troops have been killed since the start of the invasion.

Russian forces have only been able to seize control of one large city so far Kherson in the south. Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Mariupol have remained in Ukrainian hands despite heavy Russian bombardment.

A whistleblower from Russias security service has said the invasion will be a total failure and could result in real international conflict in the coming months.

There arefears President Putin could turn to other countriesif he is successful in Ukraine, and thepossibility of him attacking Nato countries cannot be ruled out completely.

Karin von Hippel, who was a nonpolitical senior adviser at the US State Department during the Obama administration told NBC President Putin could potentially target non-Nato nations in Eastern Europe, such as Moldova and Georgia.

He added that if the Russian leader starts to slowly expand his empire, there will be several other places that are in Nato that are going to be getting extremely stressed out.

Its very unclear at this stage that anyone can convince Putin to do anything other than what he wants to do, he said.

Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko may have revealed Russian plans to invade Moldova.

His troops are believed to have joined Russias invasion of Ukraine, having reportedly entered the Chernihiv region in the north of the country on Tuesday morning.

The UK has imposed sanctions on Belarus for its role in the war. President Lukashenko is a close ally of President Putin, and Russia has been able to use his country as a launchpad for attacks.

But their plans could go beyond Ukraine based on a map shown during a televised broadcast from President Lukashenko.

The map showed attack plans for Ukraine, but also displayed a possible route into Moldova from the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, via a large red arrow.

It also showed red shading around the Moldovan border, potentially indicating plans for an occupation.

If Russia were to invade Moldova or Georgia the situation is likely to be similar to that of Ukraine, in that Nato forces including the UK and US would support Moldova by sending both military and non-military aid, but would not engage in battle with Russian troops directly.

President Putin has warned other countries against intervening in Ukraine. He has also compared Western sanctions against Russia to a declarations of war.

To anyone who would consider interfering from outside: If you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history, he said last week. All the relevant decisions have been taken. I hope you hear me.

He later issued what many took to be a threat of nuclear war, adding: Russia, even after the collapse of the USSR and the loss of a significant part of its nuclear potential, is today one of the most powerful nuclear powers.

And moreover, it has certain advantages in a number of the latest types of weapons. In this regard, no one should have any doubt that a direct attack on Russia will lead to defeat and dire consequences for a potential aggressor.

There are also fears he may want to continue expanding Russias empire out, with the Baltic states the most likely targets.

However, Nato uses a system of collective security, whereby its independent member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any external party.

This means were Russia to attack a Nato state such as Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania, it would then be at war with all 30 Nato members.

While Russias forces are strong they would be dwarfed by Natos collective power, making touching a Nato member incredibly risky.

Natos core task is to protect and defend all allies, Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said. There must be no room for miscalculation or misunderstanding.

An attack on one will be regarded as an attack on all. This is our collective security guarantee.

Link:
Will Russia attack Nato? How Putin could respond to Ukraine sanctions from the UK and other Nato countries - iNews

A staff member, center right, from the Russian representative office receives a protest sign from a demonstrator during a protest against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, outside the Russian representative office in Taipei, Taiwan, on March 1, 2022. (Sam Yeh, AFP via Getty Images/TNS)

Chinas concern that the U.S. is seeking to build an Indo-Pacific version of NATO has one major problem: A previous effort failed in the 1970s, and most Asian countries havent been interested in trying again.

China Foreign Minister Wang Yi raised eyebrows on Monday when he accused the U.S. of looking to form a NATO-style military alliance to maintain theU.S.-ledsystemof hegemony. The charge echoed Russian President Vladimir Putins justification for invading Ukraine, raising questions about whether Beijing may one day take similar preemptive military action in the region.

But as European nations become increasingly open to joining the U.S.-led military alliance, Asian governments that dont already have mutual defense treaties with America have been reluctant to get too close. Many are economically dependent on China, whose economy is 10 times larger than Russias, and have resisted picking sides in the broader geopolitical struggle between the worlds biggest economies.

It certainly is a nonstarter for our region, definitely, Marty Natalegawa, Indonesias foreign minister from 2009 to 2014, said of an Indo-Pacific NATO. Whenever you speak either of Southeast Asia or the Indo-Pacific in general, for decades our efforts have been to build an architecture that is inclusive in nature, rather than returning to the old Cold War, East-West type of divisions.

Southeast Asias modern-day foreign policy is mostly aimed at avoiding becoming a battleground in great-power competition, as occurred during the Vietnam War and other bloody conflicts. Back then, the U.S. and other colonial powers sought to form the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization as a regional NATO to fight communism, but it suffered from organizational problems and eventually disbanded in 1977.

While Beijing long benefited from peace in the region underpinned by the U.S. military, over the past few decades it has accused America of militarizing the South China Sea and seeking to contain Chinas rise. At the same time, Chinas reputation has suffered due to its increased assertiveness over disputed territory along the Indian border and the South China Sea, and use of economic coercion against Australia, South Korea, Japan and other nations.

I cant think of a single country in this region that doesnt have some concerns about Chinese behavior, said Bilahari Kausikan, who was the top bureaucrat in Singapores Foreign Ministry until 2013.

While the U.S. has security arrangements with most countries in Asia, they are fundamentally different from NATO, which provides for a common defense if one member is attacked.

All of the U.S. mutual defense treaties in Asia with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia are bilateral and have been around for decades. The other agreements in the five-four-three-two formation that Chinas Wang cited on Monday Five Eyes, the Quad and Aukus dont contain any military obligations.

China is right to be worried about solidarity among democracies and middle powers, and Ukraine is an extraordinary example now of democratic solidarity building, said Rory Medcalf, head of the Australian National Universitys National Security College who wrote Indo-Pacific Empire: China, America and the Contest for the Worlds Pivotal Region. Thats quite distinct from a formal treaty commitment to automatically go to war with a great power.

The one wild card in the region is Taiwan, which is the main issue China cares about and the biggest flash point with America. While the U.S. formally ended its defense treaty with Taiwan in the 1970s when it recognized Beijing as Chinas legal government, many analysts still expect the U.S. and its allies to intervene in a conflict.

Still, the U.S. and Taiwans leaders have avoided a formal declaration of independence that would trigger a war, and China faces a host of risks if it invades including pushing Asia into more formal security alliances with the U.S.

The only way such a security alliance could emerge would be through some kind of shock look at the responses to Russias invasion of Ukraine, said Natasha Kassam, director of the Lowy Institutes public opinion and foreign policy program. Countries in the region would need to feel as imperiled by China to consider such a significant departure from their current positions.

Right now theres no sign of that. In 2020, China was by far the biggest partner in Southeast Asia with over $503 billion in traded goods, compared with $301 billion from the U.S., according to Asean statistics. U.S. allies like Japan have also become heavily reliant on Chinese imports.

Many countries in Southeast Asia now want the U.S. more involved economically in order to balance ties with China. Theyve been waiting months for the Biden administration to reveal a long-awaited Indo-Pacific economic strategy meant as an alternative to an Asia-Pacific trade deal the Trump administration withdrew from in 2017.

But thats more aimed at balancing ties between major powers rather than jumping in a particular camp, said Carl Schuster, a former operations director at U.S. Pacific Commands Joint Intelligence Center.

They will not join an alliance that ties them to military actions in response to developments that do not threaten their nations, he said. They want the geopolitical freedom to choose their courses of action and shape the condition and nature of their participation.

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Visitbloomberg.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Continued here:
China's fears of an Indo-Pacific NATO are more myth than reality - Stars and Stripes

President Levits,Dear Egils,

Thank you so much for this warm welcome.It is always a pleasure to be in Latvia and to meet with you again.

We just had an important discussion about Russias brutal invasion of Ukraine.And the implications for our security.

The Ukrainian people and armed forces have inspired the world with their courage.

But President Putins assault continues.And the humanitarian impact is devastating.

Many civilians have been killed or wounded.And 2 million people have fled Ukraine.This is Europe's fastest-growing refugee crisis since the Second World War.

There are very credible reports of civilians coming under fire as they try to evacuate.Targeting civilians is a war crime.And it is totally unacceptable.

We need real humanitarian corridors that are fully respected.

We made clear for months that President Putin would pay a high price for renewed aggression against Ukraine.And this price is exactly what he is paying now.

Russia has been hit with severe and unprecedented sanctions.And near-total isolation on the world stage.

Allies are helping Ukraine to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence.Stepping up with billions of euros worth of support.And opening their borders and providing aid for refugees.

The suffering we now see in Ukraine is horrific.It affects us all.

And we have a responsibility to ensure the conflict does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine.That would be even more dangerous, destructive, and even more deadly.And the situation could spiral out of control.

To make sure there is no room for miscalculation in Moscow, NATO has significantly strengthened our presence in the eastern part of our Alliance.

We have 130 jets at high alert.Over 200 ships from the High North to the Mediterranean.And thousands of additional troops in the region.Including at NATOs multinational battlegroup in Adazi,Which I will visit later this afternoon.

Allies including Canada, the United States, and Spain are deploying hundreds of additional troops here.

We will protect and defend every inch of Latvia.And we will protect and defend every inch of all Allied territory.North America and Europe together, standing strong in NATO the strongest alliance in history.

President Levits,

NATO stands united at this critical moment for our shared security.

Thank you again for hosting me here today.

Question: I have a question, Mr. Stoltenberg. So for now, in this situation after almost two weeks of war in Ukraine, how NATO can help or how NATO will help Kyiv do you have a plan?

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg: The last part was I didnt hear the last?

Question: Do you have a plan? How NATO can help Kyiv?

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg: NATO Allies provide support to Ukraine in many different ways. Allies provide military support to help Ukraine to uphold the right for self defence. Allies have done so for many years.

Canada, who's present also here in Latvia with the leadership of the battlegroup, has actually helped to train tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers over the last years.And many other Allies have provided equipment and support and they have stepped up over the last days and weeks with more support to Ukraine to help them in their courageous fight against the invading Russian forces. Allies also provide fiscal, financial support to Ukraine and humanitarian aid.

Then, NATO Allies together with partners and the European Union have imposed unprecedented economic sanctions, which we now see are having an effect. The ruble is at historical low levels, the stock market has been closed. And we see that many companies are also leaving Russia and so the economic sanctions are unprecedented in their effect and the constraints imposing significant costs on Russia for their brutal invasion of Ukraine.

And then of course, Allies are also making sure that we protect all Allies. We need to end this conflict, not expand it. And therefore, we are increasing our presence also in Latvia and the other eastern parts of our Alliance to make sure that Russia understands that we are here to protect and defend all Allies, every inch of Allied territory.

Question: And I have a question to Mr Levits. Do you think that we here in the Baltics can feel completely safe given the support and the protection of our Allies or do we face any immediate threats from Russia here?

President of Latvia Egils Levits: Well, the answer is very clear. We are safe. We are protected. We are a NATO member state and other Allies will stand by us and will protect us. NATO protects each of its member states, every inch of its member state territory, including Latvia of course. And the measures that we've today discussed with the Secretary General include various practical measures to show Moscow, show [the] Kremlin that NATO is read, NATO is prepared to protect its territory, all of its territories of its member states, including of course Latvia. And that way we will deter Moscow from further aggression because Moscow only understands brute force and NATO is the most powerful defensive organisation in the world.

Moderator: Thank you. This concludes our press conference. Thank you all, and thank you Secretary General.

Read the original:
Press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and the President of Latvia, Egils Levits - NATO HQ