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30 October 2010 By Rick Rozoff
On November 19 and 20 the leaders of 28 North
American and European nations, all the major Western
military powers and their vassals, will gather in the
capital of Portugal for this year’s summit of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Until recently held every other year, NATO summits
are now annual events, with the last held in France
and Germany in 2009 and the preceding one in Romania
in 2008.
Prior to last year’s summit in Strasbourg and Kehl,
the first held in two nations, four in a row had
occurred in Eastern Europe: The Czech Republic in
2002, Turkey in 2004, Latvia in 2006 and Romania in
2008. None of those host countries, of course, are
anywhere near the North Atlantic Ocean. Neither are
any of the 12 nations incorporated into the Western
military bloc in the past 11 years.
This year’s summit will endorse the Alliance’s
first Strategic Concept for the 21st century, a draft
of which was crafted by a so-called group of experts
led by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright and presented in a report entitled NATO 2020:
Assured Security; Dynamic Engagement.
Despite NATO referring to itself as a “military
alliance of democratic states in Europe and North
America” and claiming that all its members’ opinions
carry equal weight – as though Luxembourg and Iceland
could block or override the U.S., the world’s sole
military superpower as its current head of state
proudly christened it last December – next month’s
summit will be a rubber stamp affair.
Everything the Pentagon and White House demand will
be granted, most notably:
The subordination of NATO’s theater interceptor
missile initiative, the Active Layered Theatre
Ballistic Missile Defence Programme launched in 2005,
and the U.S.-German-Italian Medium Extended Air
Defense System (MEADS) to a U.S. missile shield
structure throughout all of Europe and into the Middle
East.
Standard Missile-3 planned for Baltic and Black Sea
deployments
The retention of at least 200 U.S. nuclear bombs on
air bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands
and Turkey.
A complementary cyber warfare “dome” over the
European continent directed by the new U.S. Cyber
Command. [1]
The qualitatively accelerated military integration
of NATO and the European Union in the aftermath of the
Lisbon Treaty entering into force last December 1. A
Portuguese adviser to President of the European
Commission Jose Manuel Barroso recently affirmed “that
the best solution for the enhancement of EU-U.S.
relations would be that the European Union (EU) joins
NATO.” [2]
The continuation of both components of what are
frequently (and artificially) presented as being
contradictory: NATO’s founding and core mission – the
collective military defense of its member states – and
its constantly expanding missions far outside the
Euro-Atlantic region, with the war in Afghanistan the
prototype and standard of the second.
The Lisbon summit will formalize and extend what
has been underway in earnest since NATO’s first war in
1999: The projection of the U.S.-dominated military
alliance into an international intervention and
occupation force. One that is moving steadily to the
east and south of the European continent, which has
been unified under NATO and will soon be subsumed
under American missile and cyber warfare systems.
Washington and Brussels pretend to protect all of
Europe from threats that do not exist – not from
Russia, not from Iran and certainly not Syria and
North Korea – in exchange for the Pentagon being
permitted to move its military personnel and
infrastructure along Russia’s western flank from the
Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and recruiting the host
countries’ youth for wars abroad. What in fact are
NATO membership obligations.
Voice of Russia on October 27 stated that “Russia
is pressing for a NATO ban on the deployment of
substantial numbers of allied forces in the
newly-admitted eastern member-nations,” and recounted
that last December Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
handed NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen a
proposal for a draft agreement on Russian-NATO
relations which “sets a ceiling for the number of
troops and weapons allowed for deployment” to the
territory of the former Warsaw Pact and even the
Soviet Union.
In doing so Lavrov resembled Afghan President Hamid
Karzai periodically complaining of the U.S. and NATO
killing his nation’s civilians and the Pakistani
government publicly bemoaning deadly American drone
strikes in its tribal areas. What he urged was correct
and important, but he knew that nothing would come of
it.
The Pentagon has ensconced itself permanently at
bases in Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania
and Kosovo and the hosts’ troops – except for the
last-named, a U.S.-spawned stillborn pseudo-state
still not a member of the United Nations 32 months
after its unilateral declaration of independence –
have been dispatched to fight and die in Afghanistan.
In 21st century Europe armed forces exist not for
territorial defense but for NATO and European Union
deployments overseas. Military bases, facilities and
installations are for billeting foreign troops and
housing other nations’ aircraft and military
equipment, those of the U.S. in particular.
U.S. F-15 Eagle fighter jets are currently
patrolling the airspace over the Baltic Sea in
Russia’s neighborhood and are stationed at the
Siauliai Air Base in Lithuania until the end of the
year.
F-15C fighter jet
The first long-term deployment of American
anti-ballistic missiles – a Patriot Advanced
Capability-3 battery with approximately 100 troops
manning it – occurred this year in northeastern Poland
near its border with Russia.
Last year Washington launched the world’s first
multinational strategic airlift operation at the Papa
Air Base in Hungary.
The U.S. Army’s Task Force East operates out of
Romania’s Mihail Kogalniceanu Airfield and Babadag
Training Area and Bulgaria’s Novo Selo Training Range.
The U.S. continues to occupy the almost 1,000-acre
Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo.
Shifting American nuclear bombs from NATO air bases
in other parts of Europe to ones in the east like
Lithuania’s Siauliai, Estonia’s Amari, Poland’s
Swidwin, Romania’s Mihail Kogalniceanu and Bulgaria’s
Graf Ignatievo and Bezmer would be the simplest matter
in the world – assuming it hasn’t already been done.
There would be less (which is to say no) publicity
than that which accompanied CIA “black sites” in
Lithuania, Poland, Romania and who knows where else on
the territory of new NATO states.
A day never passes without U.S. warplanes flying
over and warships visiting ports in Eastern Europe,
without the Pentagon conducting military training and
exercises including live-fire drills and full-scale
war games in the region. [3]
Last month the U.S. participated in the Northern
Coasts exercise in the Baltic Sea and the Jackal Stone
10 multinational military exercise in Lithuania and
Poland, deploying USS Mount Whitney, flagship of the
Mediterranean Sea-based Sixth Fleet, for the latter.
Throughout this month U.S. Special Operations
Command is conducting training exercises in Hohenfels,
Germany with troops from the Czech Republic, Lithuania
and Poland “to seamlessly integrate on the
battlefield” in Afghanistan.
“During the actual exercise, the Special Forces
command element coordinated with conventional forces
to provide Quick Reaction Force assistance.” [4]
On October 11 Polish Army Lieutenant General
Mieczyslaw Bieniek, recently appointed Deputy Supreme
Allied Commander Transformation of the NATO command in
Norfolk, Virginia, visited the NATO Joint Forces
Training Centre in Bydgoszcz in his homeland to meet
with Afghan generals and among other matters discuss
“the situation in Afghanistan, current NATO-Afghan
cooperation and its future challenges.” [5]
A week later the Polish government extended the
deployment of its 2,600 troops in Afghanistan. “The
current mission was supposed to end on 13 October but
at the government’s request the president decided to
prolong it until 13 April 2011.” [6]
As the U.S.-based Polish NATO commander was in
Poland, Polish troops were training at the Marseilles
National Guard Center, 65 miles from Chicago, with the
Bilateral Imbedded Staff Team A7 which will deploy to
Afghanistan in January and which “trains through the
State Partnership Program with members of the Polish
military both here and in Poland to build
relationships with coalition members.” [7]
F-15C fighter jets of the sort currently deployed
in the Baltic skies arrived at the Campia Turzii Air
Base in Romania on October 21 for Operation Golden
Lance, “a large-scale exercise involving more than 150
U.S. Air Force personnel, 10 fighter aircraft and
dozens of pieces of support equipment.”
The commander of the 493rd Fighter Squadron in
charge of the war games stated, “We’re excited to
bring our F-15C capability to demonstrate our air
superiority skills, train with a formidable NATO ally
and integrate our services on offensive
counter-aircraft training missions.”
A major objective of the air combat maneuvers is to
provide the U.S. Air Force with yet more opportunities
to face off against Russian MiG-21s.
The two nations’ air forces “already share a common
link,” as Romanian air force units from the Campia
Turzii Air Base “have performed the Baltic Air Police
mission the 493rd FS is currently performing elsewhere
in the world.” [8]
On October 27 the U.S. 86th Airlift Wing and 435th
Air Ground Operations Wing completed two weeks of
joint exercises in Bulgaria in the context of Thracian
Fall 2010, during which American personnel “were able
to train and lead more than 1,000 Bulgarian
paratroopers to successful landings from U. S. Air
Force in Europe’s newest tactical aircraft.”
As to the purpose of such exercises, an American
officer present for them said, “We are hoping by them
[Bulgarians] being able to observe how we conduct our
operations they will use this to enhance their own
ability, from paratrooper operations to flying and one
day be able to conduct exercises and even assist in
future conflicts.” [9]
The future conflicts mentioned – constantly
emphasized – are tomorrow’s wars, ones for which the
current nine-year-old armed conflict in Afghanistan is
a preparation.
Russia’s foreign minister might want to take note
of the fact.
1) NATO Provides Pentagon Nuclear, Missile And
Cyber Shields Over Europe
Stop NATO, September 22, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/2463
2) Diário de Notícias, 22 de outubro de 2010
http://dn.sapo.pt/Inicio/interior.aspx?content_id=1692723
3) Baltic States: Pentagon’s Training Grounds
For Afghan and Future Wars
Stop NATO< September 30, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/baltic-states-pentagons-training-grounds-for-afghan-and-future-wars
U.S. Consolidates New Military Outposts In
Eastern Europe
Stop NATO, September 23, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/u-s-consolidates-new-military-outposts-in-eastern-europe
4) U.S. European Command, October 26, 2010
5) North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Transformation
October 20, 2010
6) Polish Radio, October 18, 2010
7) LaSalle News Tribune, October 22, 2010
8) U.S. Air Forces in Europe, October 26, 2010
9) U.S. Air Forces in Europe, October 28, 2010
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