On May 18th, Britain’s Guardian headlined “West and Russia on course for war, says ex-Nato deputy commander” and
reported that the former deputy commander of NATO, the former
British general Sir Alexander Richard Shirreff (who was Supreme Allied
Commander in Europe from 2011-2014), expressed outrage that Britain
isn’t urgently preparing for war against Russia, and also reported that
“He describes Russia as now the west’s most dangerous adversary and says
Putin’s course can only be stopped if the west wakes up to the real
possibility of war and takes urgent action.
… In a chilling scenario, he
predicts that Russia, in order to escape what it believes to be
encirclement by Nato, will seize territory in eastern Ukraine.” (That’s the Donbass region, where there has been a civil war.)
This encirclement by NATO is, apparently,
about to be expanded: Shirreff will now be satisfied by NATO, even if
not by its member the UK, of which Shirreff happens to be a citizen. New
Europe bannered the same day, “NATO lays down the cards on its Russia policy”, and
reported that, “In two distinct pre-ministerial press conferences
on Wednesday [May 18th], the General Secretary of NATO Jens Stoltenberg
and the US Ambassador to NATO, Daglas Lute, introduced the Russia agenda
to be covered. Both NATO leaders said that the Accession Protocol
Montenegro is signing on Thursday is a strong affirmation of NATO’s open
door policy, mentioning explicitly Georgia. ‘We will continue to defend
Georgia’s right to make its own decisions,’ Stoltenberg said.” Georgia
is on Russia’s southwestern flank; so, it could be yet another a
nuclear-missile base right on Russia’s borders, complementing Poland and
the Baltics on Russia’s northwestern flank. (The U.S. itself has around 800 military bases in foreign countries,
and so even Russia’s less-populous eastern regions would be able to be
obliterated virtually in an instant, if the U.S. President so decides.
And President Obama is already committed to the view that Russia is by far the world’s most “aggressive” enemy, more so even than international jihadists are.)
According to the New Europe report, Stoltenberg announced that where the 1997 NATO-Russia Agreement asserts that
The member States of NATO reiterate
that they have no intention, no plan and no reason to deploy nuclear
weapons on the territory of new members, nor any need to change any
aspect of NATO’s nuclear posture or nuclear policy — and do not foresee
any future need to do so. This subsumes the fact that NATO has decided
that it has no intention, no plan, and no reason to establish nuclear
weapon storage sites on the territory of those members, whether through
the construction of new nuclear storage facilities or the adaptation of
old nuclear storage facilities. Nuclear storage sites are understood to
be facilities specifically designed for the stationing of nuclear
weapons, and include all types of hardened above or below ground
facilities (storage bunkers or vaults) designed for storing
nuclear weapons.
the agreement is effectively terminated, and, “Largely as a result of the Crimean annexation,
the repeated violations of the Minsk ceasefire agreement, and the
demands of eastern flank member states, boots on the ground will
increase considerably in the region, if not ‘substantially’,” along
Russia’s northeastern flank, in Poland and the Baltics.
Furthermore, “Poland has already said that it regards this agreement
‘obsolete’.” So, General Stoltenberg is taking his lead on that from the
Polish government.
According to both Russia and the
separatist Donbass eastern region of the former Ukraine, the violations
of the Minsk II agreement regarding Donbass are attacks by Ukrainian
government forces firing into Donbass and destroying buildings and
killing residents there, however NATO and other U.S. allies ignore those
allegations and just insist that all violations of the Minsk II accords
are to be blamed on Russia. That is also the position advanced by
Shirreff, who thinks that Russia has no right to be concerned about
being surrounded by NATO forces.
Consequently, regardless of whether or
not the Minsk II violations are entirely, or even mainly, or even
partially, due to Ukrainian firing into Donbass, NATO appears to be
gearing up for its upcoming July ministerial meeting to be an official termination of its vague promises, which NATO had made in the 1997 NATO-Russia agreement (technically called the “Founding
Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the
Russian Federation signed in Paris, France, 27 May 1997”).
That document said “NATO and Russia do not consider each other
as adversaries. They share the goal of overcoming the vestiges of
earlier confrontation and competition and of strengthening mutual trust
and cooperation.” In this regard, it was — though in public and written
form, instead of merely private and verbal form — similar to the
promises that the West had given to Soviet then Russian President
Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, which have already been rampantly violated by
the West many times and without apology. The expectation and
demand is clearly that Russia must allow itself to be surrounded by
NATO, and to do this without complaint, and therefore also without
taking military countermeasures, which NATO would call yet more
“aggression by Russia.” Any defensive moves by Russia can thus be taken
by the West to be unacceptable provocation and justification for a
“pre-emptive” attack against Russia by NATO. That would be World War III,
and it would be based upon the same accusation against Russia that the
Republican candidate for the U.S. Presidency, Mitt Romney, had stated
when he was running against Barack Obama: “This is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe.” Perhaps the West here intends the final solution of the Russian problem.
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