U.S. Recruits Russia As Junior Partner To Maintain Global Dominance

by Rick Rozoff for STOPNATO

This past weekend the world witnessed an event that until recently would have seemed inconceivable: A Russian head of state attended a summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

President Dmitry Medvedev participated in the NATO-Russia Council meeting during the second day of the summit in Lisbon, Portugal on November 20 with the heads of state of NATO's 28 member states.

The national leaders signed a Joint Review of 21st Century Common Security Challenges, agreed on resuming joint - NATO and Russian - theater missile defense cooperation and "reconfirmed a shared determination to assist in the stabilisation of Afghanistan and the whole region." [1]

That is, Russia's Medvedev endorsed NATO's agenda without adding anything of substance to it and without asking anything by way of a quid pro quo.

The joint declaration states that "we have embarked on a new stage of cooperation towards a true strategic partnership" and "that the security of all states in the Euro-Atlantic community is indivisible, and that the security of NATO and Russia is intertwined." [2] It also applauds Russia - referred to in the third person - for "facilitating railway transit of non-lethal ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] goods" through its territory for the war in Afghanistan and for "resuming its support to NATO’s operation Active Endeavour in the Mediterranean Sea." The summit declaration referred to Operation Active Endeavor, now in its tenth year, as an Article 5 mission; that is, as part of the first and to date only activation of NATO's collective military assistance provision.

On November 23 Russia signed a pact with NATO to allow "NATO to ship armored vehicles and other equipment from the region [the greater Afghan war theater] back to Europe using the same route via Central Asia and Russia." [3]

The day before the NATO-Russia Council meeting, where Russia was outnumbered 28-1, U.S. President Obama met privately with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Russia’s Public Enemy No. 1 as military analyst Alexander Golts described him on the occasion.

Saakashvili, who was educated in the U.S. on a State Department fellowship and came to power through a U.S.-sponsored coup in 2003 which its perpetrators termed the Rose Revolution, ordered sniper and mortar attacks on South Ossetia on August 1, 2008, killing six people including a Russian peacekeeper. The day after the Immediate Response 2008 NATO war games led by 1,000 U.S. troops had ended and with American soldiers and military equipment still in Georgia.

Six days later, as the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games was underway in Beijing, Georgia launched an all-out assault on the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali.

By the time Russian reinforcements beat back the Georgian offensive and the war ended five days after it had begun, 64 Russian service members had been killed and 323 wounded. The U.S. provided military transport planes to bring 2,000 Georgian troops back from Iraq for the fighting.

Shortly afterward the U.S. rewarded Georgia with the signing of the United States-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership and NATO formed the NATO-Georgia Commission, out of which an individually tailored Annual National Program(me) was created to further Georgia's integration into the North Atlantic Alliance.

The declaration issued by the recently concluded NATO summit in Portugal includes:

"At the 2008 Bucharest Summit we agreed that Georgia will become a member of NATO and we reaffirm all elements of that decision, as well as subsequent decisions. We will foster political dialogue and practical cooperation with Georgia, including through the NATO-Georgia Commission and the Annual National Programme. We strongly encourage and actively support Georgia’s continued implementation of all necessary reforms...in order to advance its Euro-Atlantic aspirations. We welcome the recent opening of the NATO Liaison Office in Georgia which will help in maximising our assistance and support for the country’s reform efforts. We welcome Georgia’s important contributions to NATO operations, in particular to ISAF. We reiterate our continued support for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia within its internationally recognised borders....We continue to call on Russia to reverse its recognition of the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions of

Georgia as independent states."

During the opening hours of the Georgian-Russian war of 2008 Mikheil Saakashvili was reported to have held "several phone talks including consultations with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer." [4]

That almost 400 Russian soldiers had been killed and wounded by Georgian military forces trained, equipped and supported by the U.S. and NATO before, during and since the war doesn't appear to mean much to President Medvedev. That his 28 fellow heads of state in the NATO-Russia Council had unanimously supported the perpetrator of the 2008 war while demanding Russia humiliate itself by rescinding its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia - and withdrawing its troops, thereby leaving both states easy prey for Georgia's next assault - also didn't take the fixed smile off Medvedev's face during his huddling with President Obama and 27 other NATO leaders this past Saturday.

The autumn session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Warsaw, Poland ending three days before the NATO summit began passed a resolution referring to Abkhazia and South Ossetia as "occupied territories." Also in advance of the summit, interim president of Moldova Mihai Ghimpu, who came to his position on the back of the latest "color" uprising in a former Soviet republic - the so-called Twitter Revolution of last year - sent a telegram to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen calling on the U.S.-dominated military alliance for assistance in ousting 1,500 Russian peacekeepers from Transdniester (Pridnestrovie), which refused to join an independent Moldova (and be absorbed into Romania, now a NATO member) as the Soviet Union was dissolving in 1990.

But the legendary "reset" button has been pushed by the Obama administration and now Russia has a new "strategic partner."

Medvedev had only been president of Russia for five months when the war with Georgia broke out and five months after it ended George W. Bush was no longer president of the United States.

Obama and Medvedev, it has been observed, are their respective nations' first fully post-Cold War heads of state. Medvedev was 26 when the Soviet Union collapsed. Obama was 30.

However, Obama's vice president, Joseph Biden, was the first American official to visit Georgia after the war in his then-position of chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, pledged to work with the George W. Bush administration to secure $1 billion in emergency aid for the Saakashvili government, and upon returning to Washington stated:

"I left the country convinced that Russia’s invasion of Georgia may be the one of the most significant event to occur in Europe since the end of communism....[T]he continuing presence of Russian forces in the country has severe implications for the broader region.”

Five days after leaving Georgia - on August 23 - Biden was announced as Barack Obama's running mate in the 2008 presidential election.

Three weeks after taking up his current post as vice president on January 20, Biden spoke of plans to "press the reset button" with Russia without in any manner adjusting his position on the South Caucasus or any other issue: Russia had invaded Georgia. Georgia had not attacked South Ossetia. Russian actions were characterized as a belated confirmation of Cold War fears of Russian troops and tanks pouring over the territory of a defenseless nation whose only crime was to cherish freedom and democratic values...and so on.

When Obama and Biden moved into the White House in 2009 Obama had only served two-thirds of his first term in the U.S. Senate, where he had been catapulted from the Illinois state legislature in 2005. Biden had served six terms - 36 years - in the Senate and was the outgoing chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Biden, not Obama and the equally foreign policy-challenged Hillary Clinton at the Department of State, is the current administration's international relations veteran and grey eminence.

Though Obama and Clinton have learned to parrot Biden's position on not only the South Caucasus but on relations with Russia as a whole.

Last month Clinton met with a delegation led by Georgian Prime Minister Nikoloz Gilauri at the second annual United States-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership meeting in Washington, D.C. and repeated the accusation that Abkhazia and South Ossetia are "occupied territories," a charge she made in July while meeting with fellow former short-term New Yorker Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi.

On October 6 she stated: "We continue to call on Russia to end its occupation of Georgian territory, withdraw its forces and abide by its other commitments under the 2008 cease-fire agreements."

More broadly, she added:

"The United States remains committed to Georgia's aspirations for membership in NATO, as reflected in the Alliance's decisions in Bucharest and Strasbourg-Kehl. We strongly support Georgia's efforts related to its Annual National Program, which promotes defence reform and guides cooperation with NATO. And we continue to support Georgia's efforts on defence reform and improving defence capabilities, including NATO interoperability and Georgia's contributions to ISAF operations in Afghanistan."

Her comments on assisting the upgrading of Georgia's military capability led "some observers to surmise that Washington may consider selectively relaxing the undeclared embargo on equipping and training Georgia for defense of the homeland. In that case, interoperability might extend beyond counterinsurgency in expeditionary operations, and start encompassing national defense. The latter would not only answer to Georgia’s own requirements but also enhance its credentials for eventual NATO membership, in line with NATO’s core mission." [5]

The government of Abkhazia responded by challenging Clinton to label Afghanistan and Iraq "American-occupied territories."

Russian President Medvedev was silent on the subject.

As to the ultimate purpose of the U.S. training Georgia's armed forces for deployment to Afghanistan, in September Saakashvili told cadets at a military base in Georgia that "someone may say: 'we have so many problems, our territories are occupied and there is no time now for going somewhere else to fight.' But because of these very same problems that we have, we need huge combat experience...and that [Afghan mission] is a unique combat and war school." [6]

As noted earlier, Obama set aside time on the first day of last week's NATO summit in Portugal to meet privately with his fellow Columbia University alumnus Saakashvili.

Between Clinton's meeting with Georgia's prime minister and Obama's with its president, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley sided with military ally Japan on what Washington also considers to be "occupied territory," Russia's Kuril Islands. On November 2 he affirmed "We do back Japan regarding the Northern Territories," the Japanese term for the islands.

Russia's Medvedev has made an odd choice of partners. Washington has consistently supported Japan, with which it is bound by the 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, and Georgia, which it is committed to under the terms of the 2009 United States-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership, against Russia in regards to territorial disputes and openly accuses Russia of occupying territory belonging to two of its major military allies.

There is no reciprocity in Russian-American relations.

Even in the transition from the former Bush administration's interceptor missile plans for Eastern Europe, the new Phased Adaptive Approach of current administration - described by Obama himself in September of 2009 as providing "stronger, smarter and swifter defenses of American forces and America's allies" than his predecessor's would have - will, as formalized by last week's NATO summit declaration, be far broader than 10 ground-based midcourse missiles in Poland.

That NATO chief Rasmussen has repeatedly advocated - and since the Lisbon summit has secured - a U.S.-controlled interceptor missile system over all of Europe as the continent is allegedly threatened because "30 countries have or are aspiring to get missile technology" without ever listing which nations he's speaking of or being pressed to do so by the news media is reprehensible. Four days before the summit began he told journalists in Brussels: "There is no reason to name specific countries, because there are already a lot of them." That the Russian government allows such statements to go unchallenged is criminal.

This May the Pentagon moved the first interceptor missiles into Europe by installing a Patriot Advanced Capability-3 battery in Poland as close to Russia's border - 35 miles - as possible. [7]

The day before the NATO summit in Lisbon, Polish Defense Minister Bogdan Klich revealed that the U.S. will start rotating F-16 Fighting Falcon jet fighters and Hercules military transport planes to Poland in 2013. The U.S. provided Poland with 48 F-16s between 2006 and 2008, the first deployment of the planes to a former member of the Warsaw Pact and the largest arms purchase in Poland's history. (Russia's Black Sea neighbors Romania and Bulgaria were next in line to purchase F-16 warplanes until the current financial crisis hit Europe.)

On November 16 the U.S. delivered the third of five C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft to Poland. "The C-130 aircraft are Poland's biggest transport planes. Polish crews used the planes to fly to Spain, Georgia, Iraq and Afghanistan." [8]

U.S. F-15C Eagle aerial combat fighters are operating out of the Siauliai Air Base in Lithuania until the end of the year for the now six-year-old NATO Baltic Air Policing mission, and earlier this month they participated in a Baltic Region Training Event with NATO Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft at the Siauliai Air Base.

Fellow Baltic state Estonia recently opened the newly expanded and modernized Amari Air Base for use by NATO and U.S. warplanes. [9]

The U.S. has gained access to and has been employing eight military bases, including three air bases, in Bulgaria and Romania over the past five years.

This February Romania and Bulgaria were prevailed upon by the U.S. to provide missile shield installations for the Pentagon's - and now NATO's - interceptor missile system, in the case of Romania a land-based adaptation of the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) as the 1936 Montreux Convention prohibits the transit of non-Black Sea nations' warships over 45,000 tons through the Bosporus Straits and the Dardanelles into the sea and as such effectively excludes U.S. Aegis class destroyers and cruisers equipped with SM-3s. There are no comparable restrictions in the Baltic Sea region where the Pentagon is also going to station land-based SM-3s in Poland.

The U.S. and its NATO allies in Europe have yet to ratify the 1999 Adapted Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty - insisting, without legal foundation, on linkage with the demand for the withdrawal of Russian peacekeeping contingents in Transdniester, Abkhazia and South Ossetia - and the U.S. and NATO are in direct violation of it through establishing a permanent (in all but name) military presence in several Eastern European countries. [11]

The Pentagon and NATO resumed annual Sea Breeze exercises in Ukraine this July, presided over by commander of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe and Africa Admiral Mark Fitzgerald, after last year's exercise was cancelled because of domestic opposition, particularly in the Crimea where the exercises are held near the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.

In former Soviet Central Asia, the U.S. State Department signed a military transit agreement with Kazakhstan and the Defense Department a cooperation agreement with Uzbekistan in the past two weeks. The U.S. and NATO conduct ongoing operations out of bases in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and, though not publicly acknowledged, Turkmenistan. Earlier this year reports surfaced of plans for the Pentagon to construct new multi-million-dollar training bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

The U.S. and NATO are also expanding military exercises, deployments and facilities in the Arctic Ocean in concert against their only rival in the region, Russia. [12]

In return for the steadily advancing deployment of U.S. military personnel and infrastructure to Russia's borders, the Medvedev administration is expanding its accommodation of Pentagon and NATO operations in Central and South Asia by providing ever-broader transit and overflight rights for U.S. and NATO troops and equipment headed to Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Last week the U.S. secured a port in Lithuania as the latest transit hub for NATO's Northern Distribution Network to bring supplies and equipment by rail across Russia for the war in Afghanistan. Estonia and Latvia already supply docking facilities for goods coming to the Baltic Sea.

Two years ago Russia granted Germany permission to transit military equipment bound for the German military base in Termez, Uzbekistan and northern Afghanistan. Several years before Russian passengers were forced off a train to provide seats for German troops. German troops in Russia.

After assigning its first troops to NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan recently, on November 12 Kazakhstan signed an agreement with the U.S. that allows American military aircraft to fly across the North Pole and over Kazakhstan to supply U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Kazakhstan is a member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization and along with Russia and China a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It also shares borders with China and Russia. [13]

Last August U.S. and British troops led a NATO military exercise, Steppe Eagle 2010, in the country.

The new agreement permits the U.S. to send weapons over Kazakh airspace for the first time.

Between the Arctic Ocean and Kazakhstan lies Russia, which had to - and did - agree to the Pentagon flying military aircraft over its territory.

"The new arrangement will also substitute for a previous one under which U.S. military cargo planes flew combat troops and materiel to the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where they refueled, and from there to air bases in Kuwait and other destinations in the Persian Gulf, circumventing Iran which forbids American military overflights, and then either directly into the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or to Pakistan." [14] Or from Germany over Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus to the Caspian Sea and western Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan, where cargo was transshipped across Tajikistan to Afghanistan. The Northern Distribution Network also includes sea-land-sea shipments through the South Caucasus: Georgia and Azerbaijan on the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, respectively. Decidedly circuitous - and expensive - routes.

Flying over Russia and Kazakhstan allows U.S. military transport planes to go directly from Alaska to Afghanistan without refueling.

"The new route over the North Pole to Bagram Air Base, the military’s main air hub in Afghanistan, will allow troops to fly direct from the United States in a little more than 12 hours.” [15]

Last April Michael McFaul, Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and senior director of Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the United States National Security Council, said the agreement would also "allow troops to fly directly from the United States over the North Pole to the region” in addition to supplies and equipment. “This will save money; it will save time in terms of moving our troops and supplies needed into the theater." [16]

Additionally, "Chartered passenger jets could leave from Chicago and fly over the North Pole to deliver troops.” [17]

Presidents Obama and Medvedev prepared the way for the recent agreement in a verbal commitment on polar overflights in the summer of 2009. "The White House said at the time that the accord would set the stage for 4,500 polar-route flights a year over Russia and Kazakhstan, saving the U.S. government $133 million annually in fuel, maintenance and other transportation costs." [18]

The Obama administration has approved a $708 billion defense budget for next year - the largest in constant dollars since 1946 and over $2,300 for every man, woman and child in the United States - and Russia is kind enough to save it $133 million on the war in Afghanistan. The Medvedev government is even more obliging considering that two of three armed groups the U.S. and NATO are laying waste to Afghanistan in the name of fighting are those of Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who Washington - and its then-CIA deputy director, now defense secretary Robert Gates - funded and armed to kill young Russian and other Soviet conscripts in the 1980s.

Soon U.S. and NATO planes, troops and equipment will criss-cross Russia from the west, east and north. Russia has made a new friend, has found a new "strategic partner," at the expense of its traditional allies, its national interests and its self-respect alike.

The Russian position on regional and international developments has changed radically since then-President Vladimir Putin addressed the Munich Security Conference in February of 2007 and said:

"What then is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it describes a scenario in which there is one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making. It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And this is pernicious, not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within. And this, certainly, has nothing in common with democracy. Because democracy is the power of the majority in the light of the interests and opinions of the minority.

"Today we are witnessing an almost unrestrained hyper-use of force - military force - in international relations, a force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts."

Two years before, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) held its fifth annual heads of state summit in Kazakhstan at which India, Pakistan and Iran (in addition to Mongolia) were welcomed as observer nations. Addressing the attendees of those nations and the six members of the SCO - Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan - the host country's President Nursultan Nazarbayev said they represented half of humanity. [19]

After the summit nations as diverse as Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Nepal and even NATO member Turkey expressed interest in joining or affiliating with the SCO.

In reference to the SCO and to the RIC (Russia, China, India) and BRIC (Brazil, Russia, China, India) formats, discussions of a new multipolar world order, of a just, rational and peaceful world, and of a new international security architecture were heard in Eurasia and throughout the world.

When in 2007 Putin warned against the unrestrained use of military force in the world, his comments came three years after the U.S. and its NATO allies had launched three wars in less than four years: In Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. His speech was condemned in the West, after which Putin was labeled a new czar, commissar and so forth, but was welcomed in most of the rest of the world, even being translated and posted on the website of the Turkish armed forces.

Russia is uniquely positioned to rally the world against the post-Cold War unipolar dominance of what current U.S. president Obama referred to as - without irony, though under ironic circumstances: while receiving the Nobel Peace Prize - the world's sole military superpower. [20]

Because of Russia's size and location. Because of its vast natural resources, including oil, natural gas and uranium; its military technology; its possession of the only nuclear deterrent and triad of delivery systems that matches those of the U.S. Because of its history: Its predecessor state the Soviet Union had supported independence and national liberation movements in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America for 70 years.

Calls from Russia for, not a revival of a bipolar, but the creation of a multipolar world had to be taken seriously.

After the financial crisis that began on Wall Street in 2008 and soon engulfed the world, Russia suffered several serious blows, affecting its two main export products: Energy and arms.

The price of oil and natural gas plummeted precipitately, which in turn led to a decrease in foreign arms orders from oil- and gas-producing nations and a substantial depletion of Russia's previously formidable gold and foreign exchange reserves. NATO expansion into Eastern Europe has also led new member states and candidates to discontinue the acquisition of military equipment made, designed and licensed by Russia in favor of U.S. and Western European arms, and deals struck during President Obama's recent visit to India have advanced the displacement of Russia as that Asian giant's main weapons provider.

Nevertheless, the abrupt about-face in Russia's foreign policy is not solely attributable to nor can it be excused by the above-cited developments.

In addition to unconscionably dragging out the completion of the nuclear power plant it has been building in Bushehr after draining Iran of substantial sums of money, in June of this year Russia joined China in voting for the harshest sanctions yet against Iran in the United Nations Security Council. The measures would have stronger, no doubt, without Russian and Chinese efforts to soften them, but both countries had the option of voting against and if need be vetoing them.

Claiming the very sanctions it had supported as the rationale, in September President Medvedev signed a decree which banned the delivery of S-300 air defense missiles to Iran - a $1 billion dollar package for which Iran had already paid $166.8 million - and other weapons including tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, ships and missile systems.

At several decisive points in the middle of this decade key Russian officials - including the country's foreign and defense ministers and top military commanders - warned against military attacks against Iran. It is to be assumed that such public pronouncements as well as back channel communications may well have stayed the hand of the U.S., Israel and perhaps both.

However, with the Russian political leadership's turn toward the U.S, and NATO, the prospects of an attack against Iran and all the catastrophic - perhaps cataclysmic - consequences it will unavoidably bring in its wake is heightened dramatically. To an extent that the conflagrations in Afghanistan and Iraq will seem mild in comparison.

In the past year and a half the only military-security formation Russia is a member of - the Collective Security Treaty Organization - has been weakened, perhaps fatally, with Belarus and Uzbekistan drawing back from commitments and joint exercises and the remaining members - Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan - being courted and in varying degrees won over by the U.S. and NATO.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, once a model and a source of inspiration for the world, has degenerated into an ineffectual forum, with this year's summit in Uzbekistan a non-event where Russia's Medvedev stated that "Countries which have difficulties with their legal status cannot claim SCO membership." An allusion to Iran and the sanctions Medvedev's government had voted for two days before.

In February of this year Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hosted Madeleine Albright and her NATO Group of Experts at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations as part of a tour in preparation for presenting a report on the military bloc's new Strategic Concept.

A leading Russian think tank, the Institute of Contemporary Development, issued a report whose contents, divulged in early September, detailed prospects for Russia collaborating more closely with NATO, even discussing the nation joining the Alliance. President Medvedev is the chairman of the institute's supervisory board.

Two days after the NATO summit in Lisbon ended, Eduard Shevardnadze, former president of Georgia ousted by the "Rose Revolution" and the last foreign minister of the Soviet Union, told one of his nation's newsweeklies that "Russia will become a NATO member soon." [21]

In an analysis published three days before the Lisbon summit, Victor Kovalev, a corresponding member of Russia's Military Science Academy, warned of what confronts Russia as it intensifies its collaboration with NATO:

"The NATO summit which will convene in Lisbon on November 19-20 will adopt the alliance's new strategic concept switching NATO from regional defense to global-scale missions. In practice, the reform will institutionalize the West's victory in the Cold World War III. The already visible results of the victory include the ongoing departure from the Yalta-Potsdam system and the downscaling of the role played by the UN – or at least by the UN Security Council – in international relations."

"The new world order built as we watch on the ruins of the Yalta-Potsdam system automatically energizes a range of negative global processes and is prone with new wars or major regional conflicts. At the moment, the situation in the Far East already appears similar to that in Europe on the eve of World War II." This week's developments on the Korean peninsula bear out the contention.

"Under the circumstances, Russia's priority should be to avoid being dragged into the epicenter of the coming collapse. Hoping to get rid of competitors in the post-capitalist world and to enforce a 'final solution' of the Russian problem, the West is luring Russia into this very epicenter." [22]

The author also pointed out that by assisting the U.S. and NATO in their plans for Eurasia and much of the rest of the world Russia risks alienating the Muslim world. Approximately 20 percent of Russians are Muslims or of Muslim religious background and in 2005 Russia became a permanent observer at the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Russia will also "be neutralized during the planned attack against Iran," though still be affected by whatever broader consequences such an action would entail.

It will expend material resources and political capital on the flagging and failing war in Afghanistan which has already contributed to an explosion in opium production that has led to 2.5 million heroin addicts and 30-40,000 annual overdoses in Russia according to the nation's Federal Drug Control Service.

The Russian analyst also stated that increased cooperation with NATO would lead to Russia Moscow "see[ing] its promising dialog with Beijing suspended as China would end up fully encircled" by a U.S.-created Asian NATO.

Russia will also be expected to distance itself from historical allies in the Arab world like Syria and Libya and to abandon burgeoning relations with Latin American partners like Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Nicaragua and Venezuela have recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which none of Russia's partners in the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization have yet to do. The U.S. and its NATO allies - President Medvedev's new friends - are adamant in branding the two new nations Russian-occupied Georgian territories. Moscow will be punishing its real friends and rewarding its competitors and adversaries.

Africa, where during the Soviet period Russia was the continent's main political and economic partner, will have to be acknowledged as the exclusive province of the Pentagon's Africa Command.

The analyst also warned that Western preconditions for integrating into NATO include the resolution of territorial disputes and could lead to demands to cede the Kuril Islands and even Sakhalin to Japan. That Russia would have to abandon claims in the Arctic Ocean in favor of NATO members the U.S., Canada, Denmark (through Greenland) and Norway, and "as a minimal concession" would have "to renounce its claim to the Lomonosov Ridge."

Russia might also be confronted with territorial claims by Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Georgia and Ukraine and be compelled to make concessions in the Caspian Sea. The Kaliningrad exclave is not free from potential claims by Poland, Lithuania and even Germany.

....

It has been a long time since words like multipolar world have been mouthed by Russian officials. Expressions like a just, rational and peaceful world are as rarely heard.

By aligning itself with the U.S. and NATO, Russia has nothing to gain and everything to lose.

1) North Atlantic Treaty Organization, November 20, 2010

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/SID-4F07AFE2-C5D95F20/natolive/news_68876.htm

2) NATO-Russia Council Joint Statement

North Atlantic Treaty Organization, November 20, 2010

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/news_68871.htm

3) Xinhua News Agency, November 23, 2010

4) Russia Today, December 31, 2008

http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/35499

5) Jamestown Foundation, October 8, 2010

6) Civil Georgia, September 13, 2010

7) Poland: U.S. Moves First Missiles, Troops Near Russian Border

Stop NATO, May 29, 2010

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/poland-u-s-moves-first-missiles-troops-near-russian-border

8) Xinhua News Agency, November 17, 2010

9) 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

....

Pentagon Confronts Russia In The Baltic Sea

Stop NATO, January 28, 2010

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/pentagon-confronts-russia-in-the-baltic-sea

10) U.S. And NATO Accelerate Military Build-Up In Black Sea Region

Stop NATO, May 20, 2010

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/u-s-and-nato-accelerate-military-build-up-in-black-sea-region

....

Romania: U.S. Expands Missile Shield Into Black Sea

Stop NATO, February 6, 2010

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/romania-u-s-expands-missile-shield-into-black-sea

11) Pentagon Forges NATO Proxy Armies In Eastern Europe

Stop NATO, October 30, 2010

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/10/30/pentagon-forges-nato-proxy-armies-in-eastern-europe

....

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

12) Canada Opens Arctic To NATO, Plans Massive Weapons Buildup

Stop NATO, August 29, 2010

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/canada-opens-arctic-to-nato-plans-massive-weapons-buildup

....

Loose Cannon And Nuclear Submarines: West Prepares For Arctic Warfare

Stop NATO, December 1, 2009

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/loose-cannon-and-nuclear-submarines-west-prepares-for-arctic-warfare

....

NATO’s, Pentagon’s New Strategic Battleground: The Arctic

Stop NATO, February 2, 2009

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/natos-pentagons-new-strategic-battleground-the-arctic

13) Kazakhstan: U.S., NATO Seek Military Outpost Between Russia And China

Stop NATO, April 14, 2010

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/kazakhstan-u-s-nato-seek-military-outpost-between-russia-and-china

14) Ibid

15) New York Times, April 12, 2010

16) Washington Post, April 12, 2010

17) Air Force Times, April 12, 2010

18) Central Asia Newswire, November 15, 2010

19) The Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Prospects For A Multipolar World

Stop NATO, May 21, 2009

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/150

20) Obama Doctrine: Eternal War For Imperfect Mankind

Stop NATO, December 10, 2009

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/obama-doctrine-eternal-war-for-imperfect-mankind

21) Trend News Agency, November 22, 2010

22) Victor Kovalev, The Cost Russia Will Pay for NATO Rapprochement

Strategic Culture Foundation, November 16, 2010

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2010/11/16/the-cost-russia-will-pay-for-nato-rapprochement.html

Eastern Europe: From Socialist Bloc And Non-Alignment To U.S. Military Colonies

by Rick Rozoff for Stop NATO

Eleven years ago today the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was in the seventh week of a bombing war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, one which saw over 1,000 Western military planes fly over 38,000 combat missions, bombs dropped from the sky and Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from the Mediterranean Sea.

Having quickly exhausted military targets, NATO warplanes resorted to bombing so-called targets of opportunity, including bridges on the Danube River, factories, Radio Television of Serbia headquarters in the capital (where sixteen employees were killed), a refugee column in Kosovo, the headquarters of political parties and the residences of government officials and foreign ambassadors, a passenger train, a religious procession, hospitals, apartment courtyards, hotels, the Swedish and Swiss embassies and the nation’s entire power grid.

U.S. Apache gunships and British Harrier jet aircraft were used for attacks on the ground and Yugoslavia was strewn with unexploded cluster bomb fragments and depleted uranium contamination.

The 78-day bombing campaign, NATO code name Operation Allied Force and U.S. Operation Noble Anvil, was promoted in Washington and other Western capitals as history’s first “humanitarian war.”

The U.S. and NATO dramatically escalated the reckless assault with an overnight attack on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on May 7 in which five American bombs simultaneously struck the building, killing three and wounding 20 Chinese citizens. The government of China denounced the action for what it was, a “war crime,” a “barbaric attack and a gross violation of Chinese sovereignty” and “NATO’s barbarian act.”

During the long Cold War it was assumed that military action by the North Atlantic military bloc would result in the death and injury of soldiers and civilians in member states of the Warsaw Pact. But NATO’s first victims were Serbs and Chinese.

When the war ended on June 11, the West had achieved what it set out to accomplish:

50,000 troops under NATO’s command entered Serbia’s Kosovo province, where over 12,000 remain eleven years later.

The Pentagon commissioned Kellogg, Brown & Root to construct the nearly 1,000-acre Camp Bondsteel and its sister base Camp Monteith in Kosovo, which continue to operate to the present day.

Kosovo had been wrenched from Serbia and on February 17, 2008 declared itself an independent nation, recognized as such by the U.S. and most all of its NATO allies, though not by almost two-thirds of the world’s nations.

In 1999 NATO Secretary General Javier Solana moved across the street as it were in Brussels to become the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, in which post he supervised a “trial separation” for what remained of Yugoslavia, and the very name of Yugoslavia was wiped from the map as the Western-sponsored State Union of Serbia and Montenegro succeeded it in 2003.

Three years later Montenegro, with a population smaller than that of the American city of Memphis, became the world’s newest nation. To demonstrate after the fact what had been planned before, a U.S. guided missile cruiser visited the coastal city of Tivat within months and an American submarine, USS Emory Land, arrived there in 2007 to mark the first anniversary of Montenegro’s nominal independence.

In the year following the break-up of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, the last-named joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace apprenticeship program and the following year was granted an Individual Partnership Action Plan and signed a Status of Forces Agreement with NATO for which the U.S. is the depositary government. In late 2009 it received a Membership Action Plan, the final step before full NATO membership. This March Montenegro became the 44th nation to contribute troops for NATO’s war in Afghanistan. All these developments occurred in four years.

Since the beginning of NATO’s post-Cold War expansion in 1999, nations of the former Warsaw Pact and of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia have become Western military colonies, hosting visits by and basing troops and military equipment from NATO and its individual members, especially the U.S. So far this year former Warsaw Pact countries Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and most recently Albania have announced their willingness to accede to U.S. and NATO requests for interceptor missile facilities to be stationed on their territories.

The U.S. has acquired four military bases in Romania and three in Bulgaria over the past four years and will soon activate a Patriot Advanced Capability-3 interceptor missile installation in the east of Poland, 35 miles from the Russian border.

NATO now has a major training center in Poland, the world’s first multinational strategic airlift operation at the Papa Air Base in Hungary, and de facto possession of a former Soviet air base in Lithuania.

Air bases in Bulgaria and Romania were employed for the attack on and invasion of Iraq in 2003 and have been used regularly for the nearly nine-year U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan.

After the invasion of Iraq, new NATO members the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland sent troops to the country, as did then NATO candidates and partners Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine.

Offering Washington troops for the war in Iraq was a prerequisite for advanced NATO partnerships and eventual full membership. Nine of the above nations were awarded the second in return for their services. Bosnia, Macedonia and as of last year Montenegro have been granted Membership Action Plans, introduced at the 1999 NATO fiftieth anniversary summit in Washington, D.C. as the penultimate stage of full integration. Georgia and Ukraine were presented special Annual National Programs by NATO shortly after Georgia’s war with Russia in August of 2008.

All twelve new Eastern European NATO members have troops in Afghanistan, as do prospective members Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Georgia, Macedonia and Montenegro.

NATO has taken over the former Warsaw Pact and former Yugoslavia, in the first case without firing a shot. In the second through two bombing campaigns (Bosnia in 1995 and Serbia in 1999) and three deployments of ground troops (Bosnia in 1995, Kosovo in 1999 and Macedonia in 2001).

All ex-Warsaw Pact nations outside the former Soviet Union now have soldiers killing and dying under NATO command in Afghanistan, as all but the former East Germany did in Iraq, though none of them did under Warsaw Pact obligations during the ten years of Soviet involvement in the South Asian nation. Seven of fifteen former Soviet republics also have troops serving under NATO in the Afghan war zone.

The U.S. and other major Alliance powers conduct regular multinational Partnership for Peace military manuevers in all three former Soviet Republics in the South Caucasus – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia – and have held comparable exercises in Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

The major purpose of the war games and other drills is to prepare the militaries of the host and participating nations for interoperability in military, including combat, missions abroad, most prominently in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past few years.

Georgia had 2,000 troops in Iraq in 2008, at the time the third largest foreign contingent, although its population is only slightly over four million, a fraction of that of the U.S., Britain and other major troops providers.

Most of those troops were flown back to Georgia on U.S. military transport planes during the five-day war with South Ossetia and Russia in August of 2008. Georgia will soon have almost 900 troops in Afghanistan, the largest per capita contribution of any of the 50 nations supplying soldiers to NATO for the fighting there.

During the 36 years of the Warsaw Pact member states aside from the Soviet Union rarely deployed military units outside their borders and never overseas.

In the past decade all non-Soviet members and all former Yugoslav republics but Serbia have had their sons and daughters deployed by NATO to such frequently farflung war and conflict zones as the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq and adjoining countries like Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan (Germany) and Kuwait. Over a hundred Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Czech, Estonian, Latvian, Hungarian, Lithuanian and Slovak soldiers have returned to their homelands from Afghanistan and Iraq in coffins.

When the Soviet Red Army left Bulgaria in 1947 no foreign troops were stationed in that nation until U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited it two years after its NATO accession to sign an agreement on three military bases there: The Bezmer Air Base, the Graf Ignatievo Air Base (recently certified as meeting “100% compliance” with NATO requirements) and the Novo Selo Training Range.

The last Soviet troops left Romania in 1958. When Nicolae Ceausescu became leader of the nation in 1965, he distanced his country from the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, forbidding exercises and deployments involving other states.

In 2005, the year after Romania gained full NATO membership, Condoleezza Rice visited Bucharest and secured four bases for the Pentagon and NATO: The Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base (already used for the war against Iraq), the Cincu and Smardan training bases, and the Babadag firing range.

The U.S. recently concluded military exercises with Bulgaria – Thracian Spring – from April 22 to 28 and led joint air force exercises with Bulgaria and Romania from April 12 to 16 at the Aviano Air Base in Italy.

This February Romanian and Bulgarian government officials announced that they would accept American and NATO Standard Missile-3 interceptor installations and the troops to man them.

In 1960 Albanian leader Enver Hoxha turned against the Soviet Union and other former Warsaw Pact allies, aligning himself with the People’s Republic of China. No foreign troops or bases were allowed in the country.

Starting in 1993 the U.S. Sixth Fleet began conducting naval exercises with Albania, acquired the use of military bases there and deployed troops to a foward base it established near the port city of Durres for the war against Yugoslavia in 1999.

Last week the nation’s prime minister and the chief of staff of the armed forces – after meeting with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen – announced their willingness to host U.S. and NATO interceptor missile facilities and the soldiers who will accompany them.

Albania, along with Croatia, with whom U.S. Special Operations Command Europe just concluded two months of air exercises for what was described as “large-scale counterinsurgency, stability and counterterrorism operations” abroad, are NATO’s newest members, joining in 2009.

NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, American Admiral James Stavridis, was in Bulgaria on April 26 and 27 and Secretary General Rasmussen is expected there on May 20.

Before his visits to Albania and Croatia late last month the latter said at NATO headquarters in Brussels, “My dream will come true if – one day – we could see all countries in the Balkans as members of NATO. They belong to the Euro-Atlantic Community. I hope to see their flags represented here among all other NATO nations.”

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov visited Washington, D.C. at the end of April to meet with among others U.S. National Security Advisor James Jones, and pledged support for NATO and European Union membership for both Serbia and Kosovo.

At last month’s NATO foreign ministers meeting in Estonia, Bosnia’s Membership Action Plan was approved.

NATO’s Kosovo Force is training and arming the Kosovo Security Force, an army in formation under NATO control.

With the demise of the Cold War former members of the Warsaw Pact may have hoped for a demilitarized Europe, one free of armed blocs. Instead the first and preeminent Cold War military alliance, NATO, will soon have engulfed almost every nation on the continent.

The new nations of former Yugoslavia, a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement which had never been in any military bloc, will not be spared that fate.

Rasmussen won’t have long to wait for his dream to be realized and for the flags of all nations and pseudo-nations in Eastern Europe to fly at NATO headquarters. And at bases in Afghanistan and other combat zones.

Foreign troops will be based permanently on their soil as their troops are deployed far abroad.

Full Circle: NATO Completes Takeover Of Former Yugoslavia

by Rick Rozoff for Stop NATO

In 1991 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was a nominally defensive military bloc with sixteen members that, as the cliche ran, had never fired a shot.

In 1991 the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the only simultaneously multiethnic and multiconfessional nation (entirely) in Europe, consisting of six federated republics with diverse constituencies.

By 2009 NATO had grown to 28 full members and at least that many military partners throughout Europe and in Africa, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Asia and the South Pacific. Next month NATO is to hold a summit in Estonia to be attended by the foreign ministers of 56 nations. Last month a meeting of NATO’s Military Committee in Brussels included the armed forces chiefs of 63 nations, almost a third of the world’s 192 countries.

By 2008 the former Yugoslavia has been fragmented into six recognized nations (the former federal republics of Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia) and a semi-recognized province of Serbia, Kosovo.

Until the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1991, NATO had never staged operations outside the territory of its member states.

In 2004 it ran eight operations in four continents, including a training mission in Iraq and combat deployments in Afghanistan. The first former Yugoslav republic, Slovenia, was inducted into NATO in that year along with six other Eastern European nations in the bloc’s largest-ever expansion.

The Alliance’s first three military operations, however, all occurred in the former Yugoslavia. In 1995 NATO launched Operation Deliberate Force against the Republika Srpska with 400 aircraft and over 3,500 sorties and stationed troops in Bosnia afterward.

In 1999 it unleashed the relentless 78-day Operation Allied Force air war against Yugoslavia and in June of that year deployed 50,000 troops to Kosovo.

Two years later it sent troops to and initiated the first of several operations in Macedonia following an armed conflict in that country.

The three interventions preceded September 11, 2001.

After NATO invoked its Article 5 collective military assistance clause following the latter date, NATO Partnership for Peace affiliates as well as full member states started to deploy troops to Afghanistan.

After the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq two years following that, soldiers from Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia were deployed to the war zone in that nation to prove their loyalty as NATO candidate countries. Montenegro did not gain its Western-backed independence until 2006, but has already been levied for troops for the Afghan war. Croatia was rewarded with full membership in 2009 and Macedonia would have accompanied it into the ranks of the world’s only military axis except for the lingering name dispute with Greece.

In December of 2008 the complete transfer of contributing states’ troops from Iraq to Afghanistan began and there are now military personnel from five of the six former Yugoslav republics – Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovenia – committed to NATO in the world’s longest active and deadliest war theater.

In the post-Cold War epoch the former Yugoslavia has been the laboratory for global NATO, its testing ground and battleground, the prototype for the disintegration of nations and for their transformation into economically nonviable monoethnic statelets and Western military colonies.

The NATO military command in charge of the Balkans, Allied Joint Force Command Naples formed in 2004, oversees the eleven-year NATO military operation in Kosovo, Kosovo Force (KFOR), and has a headquarters in Bosnia and in Macedonia and a new military liaison office in Serbia. (Croatia and Slovenia are now full members.)

In addition to the Adriatic Charter initiative launched by the United States in 2003, which successfully prepared Albania and Croatia for NATO membership and is currently doing the same for Macedonia, Bosnia and Montenegro with Serbia and Kosovo to follow, the Allied Joint Force Command Naples is the major mechanism for recruiting troops from former Yugoslav republics for wars abroad. Particularly for that in Afghanistan, but the Naples command also operates the NATO Training Mission – Iraq in Baghdad.

Considered by many observers as a major architect of the breakup of Yugoslavia, Richard Holbrooke, now U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, delivered an address in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar last month in which he “drew parallels between the Bosnian war and the onslaught against the Taliban in Afghanistan,” and said:

“The U.S. has led and won similar wars in Kosovo and Bosnia with the support of the international community. And we are very optimistic about Afghanistan too.” [1]

In the same month the parliament of the Republika Srpska passed a law allowing for a referendum on its current status within Bosnia – two years after the U.S. and almost all its NATO allies supported and recognized the secession of Kosovo from Serbia – and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reacted by stating that the Barack Obama administration does “not want to see any moves to break up Bosnia,” and to insure the integrity of Bosnia (and breakaway Kosovo also) she “reiterated Washington’s support for EU and NATO integration of Western Balkans countries, Serbia included.”

“But the NATO piece of it, I’m watching very closely because…we want Bosnia-Herzegovina to feel like they’re welcome.” [2]

Also in February, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon sounded the same theme while speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School. In a presentation called The Obama Administration’s Vision for Southeastern Europe, Gordon said “To fully achieve European and therefore American security, we believe that peace and stability should not only extend across northern and central Europe, but also southeastern Europe,” with special emphasis on “Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Turkey.” [3]

In completing the incorporation of all of Southeastern Europe into the U.S.-dominated military bloc, the current American administration would put the capstone on “the historic project of trying to bring democracy to the whole of Europe.”

In particular, “the Obama administration will seek to position Bosnia for future membership in the European Union and NATO,” and in reference to Serbia, “The door to NATO membership is open”.”

According to Harvard’s daily student newspaper, Gordon noted in his speech that “yesterday marked the second anniversary of Kosovo’s independence: a sign that progress has been made.” [4]

Earlier this month former NATO secretary general George Robertson joined the chorus pushing the Alliance’s absorption of the Balkans: “Serbia can offer a lot….I believe it wants to become a part of [the] European mainstream rather than to stay on the margins. All the neighbors of Serbia will be members of the EU and NATO. I am convinced that all the Western Balkan countries will be part of the Alliance in ten years.” [5]

Serbia, by far the most populous of all former Yugoslav states with more than 7 million citizens, is receiving the most attention from NATO at the moment.

Mary Warlick, newly appointed U.S. ambassador to the nation, recently “announced that the door of NATO membership is open to Serbia” and said “the United States fully supports the European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations of Serbia and is doing all it can to facilitate Belgrade’s efforts in this direction.” [6]

Her comments were reiterated by NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, the U.S.’s Admiral James Stavridis, who in early February visited Serbia’s capital “to establish personal relationships and strengthen cooperation and partnership” and meet with the nation’s president, defense minister and chief of staff of the armed forces. (NATO opened a military liaison office in Belgrade in December of 2006 when Serbia joined the bloc’s Partnership for Peace program.)

Stavridis’ NATO delegation was briefed “on the progress and continued efforts to professionalize the Serb military” and “participated in the annual National and Armed Forces Day reception.” [7]

Last year the pro-Western government of President Boris Tadic signed an Individual Partnership Program with NATO.

Recently the public affairs chief of the Serbian Ministry of Defense announced that a “Serbian mission [to] NATO will be officially opened by the beginning of June, which is in accordance with participation in the program Partnership for Peace,” and will be staffed by six officers. [8]

On the same day, and to provide a blunt indication of what further NATO integration means, a Serbian news source disclosed that troops from the nation are being readied for peacekeeping deployments in Uganda, Lebanon and a third nation as yet unidentified.

Whereas “the participation of the Serbian Army in international peace operations has until now been limited to sending observers and medical experts,” the country’s armed forces have “organized courses [for] which Serbian experts will be enabled to participate in infantry units and mine clearing units.”

Moreover, military analyst Aleksandar Radic said “NATO and the EU follow the participation of countries in peacekeeping missions very closely. The countries in our region have understood that and started participating in these missions in order to gain a reference for joining international organizations.” [9]

Serbian soldiers are inching ever closer to the Afghan war theater.

But not with the support of their countrymen.

Last month the results of a TNS Medium Gallup poll in Serbia showed that “only 20 percent of Serbian citizens would support NATO accession, which is four percent less than last year.” [10]

In tandem with moves to drag Serbia deeper into the NATO nexus despite widespread popular opposition, Brussels and Washington are consolidating their hold on the other three former Yugoslav republics not yet full NATO members: Bosnia, Macedonia and Montenegro.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and a delegation of the permanent representatives of all 28 member states arrived in Bosnia on March 23 to consult with leaders of the nation on a Membership Action Plan, “an essential stepping stone on the road toward alliance membership.”

A senior official in Bosnia’s Foreign Ministry announced that “We expect that Bosnia will be invited to join [the] MAP in Tallinn,” [11] a reference to the NATO foreign ministers meeting in Estonia on April 10.

Earlier this month the chairman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nikola Spiric, visited NATO headquarters in Brussels to meet with Rasmussen and to address the North Atlantic Council.

“NATO Allies thanked Mr. Spiric for the invitation extended to the North Atlantic Council to visit Bosnia and Herzegovina later this month and looked forward to the next meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers in April, when the Membership Action Plan for the country will be discussed.” [12]

A week earlier a high-level NATO delegation headed by Admiral Mark Fitzgerald, commander of Allied Joint Force Command Naples, arrived in the Macedonian capital of Skopje to meet with Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, Defense Minister Zoran Konjanovski and chief of the Army General Staff Miroslav Stojanovski and discuss the Army of the Republic of Macedonia’s “contribution to the ISAF mission in Afghanistan, the achievements of the Republic of Macedonia in the implementation of reforms and the participation in the command structure of the Alliance as well as ARM’s progress in the application of the NATO operation skills concept.”

The delegation also inspected a military base in Krivolak where Fitzgerald and his colleagues were “introduced to the new training capacities and the project of its development into a regional center.” [13]

On February 22nd Boro Vucinic, Montenegro’s defense minister, visited NATO headquarters and met with Deputy Secretary General Claudio Bisogniero. The latter “reaffirmed NATO’s willingness to continue providing relevant assistance and expertise to Montenegrin authorities” and “expressed satisfaction with Montenegro’s decision to become a contributor to the ISAF mission in Afghanistan.” [14]

In mid-March Admiral Fitzgerald was in Montenegro and at a press conference expressed his satisfaction at his host nation’s movement toward the North Atlantic bloc, stating “he had witnessed a significant improvement in the past two years,” and said “Montenegro had demonstrated it was a ‘responsible and reliable partner’ in the membership process.”

Speaker of the Parliament of Montenegro Ranko Krivokapic said that NATO membership was a “national priority” and that for the Alliance “it is also strategically important to have this part of the Adriatic coast integrated into the NATO structure.” [15]

On March 22 NATO’s KFOR launched five days of exercises throughout Kosovo in conjunction with the European Union’s EULEX (European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo) and the separatist Kosovo Police Service (KPS).

The drills are headed by NATO commander Markus Bentler.

In an allusion to Kosovo’s ethnic Serb minority that KFOR, EULEX and the KPS are training to subjugate in common, a KFOR statement on the exercises said:

“KFOR will handle its force in Kosovo very flexibly and determinedly. The aim of these operations is to strengthen the capacities of KFOR, EULEX and the Kosovo police so that they could respond to any scenario that brings security into question.” [16]

The putative president of the Republic of Kosovo, Fatmir Sejdiu, recently returned from NATO headquarters and a meeting of the bloc’s North Atlantic Council – usually reserved for the ambassadors of full member states – where he had updated those envoys on the “general evolution in Kosovo, Kosovo’s objective [of making] further progress and, especially, its ambition to become a member of NATO.”

Sedjiu had also “thanked the North Atlantic Council ambassadors for all the support that NATO has [provided] and is providing to Kosovo and has expressed the commitment of our institutions to an active partnership and close cooperation with NATO.”

At a press conference in Pristina after his return, he spoke of his offer to make members of the Kosovo Security Force, a NATO-trained national army in embryo, available for “NATO peacekeeping operations.” [17]

….

In 1991 the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and from the following year onward the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, presented an obstacle to NATO’s drive to the east – the former Soviet Union and Asia – and to the south – the Middle East and Africa.

In the story of Aesop’s a bundle of sticks tied together could not be broken but, once separated, each could be easily snapped in two.

In completing the fragmentation of Yugoslavia NATO removed a crucial impediment to its expansion into a global military force. In its place it has acquired seven new members and candidates and as many potential sites for training camps, air and naval bases, and transit points for moving troops and weapons to new war zones on three continents and in the Middle East.

1) Tanjug News Agency, February 17, 2010
2) Tanjug News Agency, February 26, 2010
3) Harvard Crimson, February 16, 2010
4) Ibid
5) Tanjug News Agency, March 11, 2010
6) Radio Serbia, February 5, 2010
7) NATO Public Affairs, February 16, 2010
8) Radio Serbia, March 22, 2010
9) Blic, March 22, 2010
10) Tanjug News Agency, February 11, 2010
11) BalkanInsight, March 23, 2010
12) North Atlantic Treaty Organization, March 3, 2010
13) Makfax, March 16, 2010
14) North Atlantic Treaty Organization, February 22, 2010
15) Xinhua News Agency, March 18, 2010
16) Tanjug News Agency, March 22, 2010
17) President of the Republic of Kosovo, March 22, 2010

Pentagon Confronts Russia In The Baltic Sea

by Rick Rozoff for Stop NATO

Twelve months ago a new U.S. administration entered the White House as the world entered a new year.

Two and a half weeks later the nation’s new vice president, Joseph Biden, spoke at the annual Munich Security Conference and said “it’s time to press the reset button and to revisit the many areas where we can and should be working together with Russia.”

Incongruously to any who expected a change in tact if not substance regarding strained U.S.-Russian relations, in the same speech Biden emphasized that, using the “New World Order” shibboleth of the past generation at the end, “Two months from now, the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will gather to celebrate the 60th year of this Alliance. This Alliance has been the cornerstone of our common security since the end of World War II. It has anchored the United States in Europe and helped forge a Europe whole and free.” [1]

Six months before, while Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he rushed to the nation of Georgia five days after the end of the country’s five-day war with Russia as an emissary for the George W. Bush administration, and pledged $1 billion in assistance to the beleaguered regime of former U.S. resident Mikheil Saakashvili.

To demonstrate how serious Biden and the government he represented were about rhetorical gimmicks like reset buttons, four months after his Munich address Biden visited Ukraine and Georgia to shore up their “color revolution”-bred heads of state (outgoing Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko is married to a Chicagoan and former Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush official) in their anti-Russian and pro-NATO stances.

While back in Georgia he insisted “We understand that Georgia aspires to join NATO. We fully support that aspiration.”

In Ukraine he said “As we reset the relationship with Russia, we reaffirm our commitment to an independent Ukraine, and we recognize no sphere of influence or no ability of any other nation to veto the choices an independent nation makes,” [2] also in reference to joining the U.S.-dominated military bloc. Biden’s grammar may have been murky, but his message was unmistakeably clear.

Upon his return home Biden gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal, the contents of which were indicated by the title the newspaper gave its account of them – “Biden Says Weakened Russia Will Bend to U.S.” – and which were characterized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies as “the most critical statements from a senior administration official to date vis-a-vis Russia.” [3]

It took the Barack Obama government eight months to make its first friendly gesture to Russia. In September of last year the American president and Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that they were abandoning the Bush administration’s plan to station ten ground-based midcourse interceptor missiles in Poland in favor of a “stronger, smarter, and swifter” alternative.

The new system would rely on the deployment of Aegis class warships equipped with SM-3 (Standard Missile-3) missiles – with a range of at least 500 kilometers (310 miles) – which “provide the flexibility to move interceptors from one region to another if needed,” [4] in Gates’ words.

The first location for their deployment will be the Baltic Sea according to all indications.

The proximity of Russia’s two largest cities, St. Petersburg and Moscow, especially the first, to the Baltic coast makes the basing of American warships with interceptor missiles in that sea the equivalent of Russia stationing comparable vessels with the same capability in the Atlantic Ocean near Delaware Bay, within easy striking distance of New York City and Washington, D.C.

Although Washington canceled the earlier interceptor missile plans for Poland, on January 20 the defense ministry of that country announced that not only would the Pentagon go ahead with the deployment of a Patriot Advanced Capability-3 anti-ballistic missile battery in the country, but that it would be based on the Baltic Sea coast 35 miles from Russia’s Kaliningrad district. [5]

The previous month Viktor Zavarzin, the head of the Defense Committee of the Russian State Duma (the lower house of parliament), said “Russia is concerned with how rapidly new NATO members are upgrading their military infrastructure” and “that Russia was especially concerned with the reconstruction of air bases in the Baltic countries for NATO’s purposes which include signal and air intelligence radio of Russian territory.” [6]

As it should be.

Since the Baltic Sea nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were ushered into NATO as full members in 2004, warplanes from Alliance member states have shared four-month rotations in patrolling the region, with two U.S. deployments to date.

Shortly before the patrols began almost six years ago the Russian media reported that “Relations between Russia and Estonia have been tense ever since NATO built a radar station on the Russian-Estonian border last year. On March 23, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko warned Russia would retaliate ‘if NATO planes fly over Russian borders after the Baltic nations join the alliance.’” [7]

Last year the Obama-Biden administration went ahead with a series of major military exercises in the Baltic region:

The annual BALTOPS (Baltic Operations), the largest international military exercise conducted in the Baltic Sea, run by the U.S. Navy, NATO and the latter’s Partnership for Peace program which included naval forces from twelve nations – Britain, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the United States – led by U.S. Carrier Strike Group 12.

The 10-day Loyal Arrow 2009 NATO military exercises in Sweden with 50 jet fighters (the U.S. Air Force’s F-15 Eagle among them) and NATO AWACS.

The Cold Response 09 NATO exercises in Norway (north and west of the Baltic) with over 7,000 troops from thirteen nations as well as air and naval forces.

“Cold Response 2010 is expected to be even larger” than last year’s war games. [8] The U.S. Marine Corps “is planning Cold Response 2010, an exercise in Norway that could include a company of infantry Marines and a detachment of trainers with Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command.” [9]

“The Corps has used caves carved into the sides of mountains here [Norway] for nearly 20 years, storing vehicles, equipment and ammunition later shipped everywhere from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to training exercises in Africa….[T]he Norwegians plan their security knowing that Marines will defend Norway in an attack using everything from Humvees to Howitzers that are already in place.” [10]

The Defense Professionals website in Germany published a report on January 26 of a meeting of the Nordic-Baltic Chiefs of Defense (Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Norway, Finland. Lithuania and Sweden) to plan the “Baltic Host, Sabre Strike, and Amber Hope exercises to be held in the Baltics this and the following year.”

“Exercise Baltic Host will be held this year in Latvia for participants from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the US.” [11] Last year’s Baltic Host in Estonia included military personnel from that nation and from Latvia, Lithuania, United States European Command (EUCOM) and Strike Force NATO.

The earlier Amber Hope 07 was held in Lithuania and included the participation of over 1,700 troops from NATO and Partnership for Peace countries: Armenia, Britain, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, as well as representatives from NATO multinational headquarters.

Earlier this month a planning conference was held at the Gen. Adolfas Ramanauskas Warfare Training Center in Lithuania for the Sabre Strike 2010 military drills “where representatives of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the US prepare[d] documentation and draft plans for the exercise which is scheduled to take place in Latvia in October 2010.”

“Sabre Strike 2010 will be designed to tune together interoperability procedures of the three Baltic States and the US with prospects of participation in the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) operation in Afghanistan and other multinational operations in the future. This exercise for the first time will pull together troops of the Baltic States and the US for a training event of such character.” [12]

2,000 troops from the four nations will take part and the war games will end with “a complex field exercise.” [13]

On January 28 the Helsingin Sanomat announced that “Finland is to play host to what is by far the largest naval military exercise that has ever been seen in Finnish territorial waters” in September which “will be joined by 50 ships and 2,500 persons.”

The Northern Coasts maneuvers will include warships and troops from Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Latvia, Poland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States and will consist of both sea and land drills, and the “maritime operations will be supported by air and special troops.” [14]

Not only hosting the largest naval war games in its history – ones simulating “a conflict between two countries that has an effect on the surrounding countries as well” – Finland will provide “nearly the entire Navy fleet” for the operation.

A local reported inquired whether the maneuvers were related to Russia’s plans for a natural gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea:

“At least according to the Finnish Navy, the exercise does not have anything to do with the Baltic Sea’s planned underwater gas pipeline, Nord Stream.

“But at least off hand, Annele Apajakari, Chief Public Information Officer at Navy Command Finland, was unable to say why also the United States, the Netherlands, and France will be involved.” [15]

The preceding day the same newspaper ran a story about prospective NATO-Russia military tensions in the Baltic region and quoted retired Lieutenant-General Matti Ahola as warning: “If the United States were to bring its planned anti-missile vessels into the Baltic Sea, it would bring about a reaction.” [16]

That was a week after the announcement that U.S. Patriot missiles and 100 troops were headed to Poland’s – eastern – Baltic coast.

In an article bearing the headline “Thanks to Poland, the alliance will defend the Baltics,” the British weekly the Economist on January 14 wrote that NATO would “stand by its weakest members — the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania” – and was elaborating “formal contingency plans to defend them.”

The magazine reported that “The main push came from Poland, a big American ally in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the first to gain contingency plans — initially only against a putative (and implausible) attack from Belarus, a country barely a quarter of its size….Poland accelerated its push for a bilateral security relationship with America, including the stationing of Patriot anti-missile rockets on Polish soil in return for hosting a missile-defence base.” [17]

“Formal approval is still pending and the countries concerned have been urged to keep it under wraps. But sources close to the talks say the deal is done: the Baltic states will get their plans, probably approved by NATO’s military side rather than its political wing. They will be presented as an annex to existing plans regarding Poland, but with an added regional dimension. That leaves room for Sweden and Finland (not members of the alliance but increasingly close to it) to take a role in the planning too. A big bilateral American exercise already planned for the Baltic this summer is likely to widen to include other countries.” [18]

Poland is the prototype for and the foundation upon which the Pentagon and NATO are constructing a formidable military – naval, air, ground and interceptor missile – network in the Baltic Sea region on Russia’s northwest frontier.

Late last year Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vygaudas Usackas delivered a lecture called “The New NATO Strategic Concept: Lithuania’s Vision” to participants of the Higher Command Studies Course of the Baltic Defense College (BALTDEFCOL) in which he stated “NATO is the embodiment of transatlantic relations. NATO should remain open to western countries, such as Finland or Sweden, to eastern countries like Ukraine or Georgia, as well as to the Balkan countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and other countries.” [19] (The Baltic Defense College is based in Estonia and in addition to instructing officers from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania also trains personnel from other NATO and EU states and countries like Bosnia, Georgia, Moldova, Romania and Ukraine.)

As well as advocating the incorporation of states neighboring Russia to its west and its south into NATO, the Lithuanian foreign minister asserted “that Article 5 was the basis of the organisation and it should remain the cornerstone of NATO in the future.” [20]

NATO’s Article 5 is a mutual military assistance obligation, the main substance of which is in its first paragraph, which reads:

“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

The outlines of a NATO “defense force” in the Baltic area and beyond were further delineated last November when it was revealed that Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine are to establish a “joint army.” The combined military unit “may have a political objective. It is meant to set up an alternative center of military consolidation for West European projects, a center which could embrace former Soviet republics (above all Ukraine), now outside NATO. There is no doubt who will control this process, considering U.S. influence in Poland and the Baltics.” [21]

Additionally, it will be linked to the Multinational Corps Northeast which was initially formed of Danish, German and Polish troops and later joined by forces from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. And the U.S. “[T]he Baltic military has cooperation experience with Polish troops. The Ukrainian military, too, has cooperation experience with NATO within the Partnership for Peace program….Establishment of a permanent brigade-class joint unit is expected to improve teamwork, allowing Ukrainians to grow into NATO’s command, staff, tactical and logistic culture.” [22]

The Multinational Corps Northeast has been used in Afghanistan where it has acquired direct combat zone experience.

The American client responsible for Ukraine’s abrupt pro-NATO orientation, President Viktor Yushchenko, barely won 5 percent of the vote in this year’s January 17 presidential election and is on his way out of office barring a reprise of the “orange revolution” of six years ago. Though at the NATO Military Committee meeting on January 27 Colonel-General Ivan Svyda, Chief of the General Staff and Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, announced that his nation was training troops for the NATO Response Force, a 25,000-troop global strike force. “The NATO Response Force (NRF) is a highly ready and technologically advanced force made up of land, air, sea and special forces components that the Alliance can deploy quickly wherever needed.

“It is capable of performing missions worldwide across the whole spectrum of operations….” [23]

The Ukrainian military chief announced “We selected 12 detachments that are undergoing training in line with NATO standards and represent all types and branches of troops, including engineer units, the marines, field engineers, chemical and biological defense troops and others. Up to 500 Ukrainian servicemen will participate in the [alliance's response] force.” [24]

The U.S. and NATO intend Ukraine to serve as a bridge between their new outposts on the Baltic Sea to the north and Georgia and Azerbaijan on Russia’s southern border.

Ukraine is being mentored and shepherded into the NATO pen with the U.S. employing the Baltic states of Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as both models and guides. The same mechanism with the same actors is being used for Georgia.

Last month the defense ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania signed a communique on joint military collaboration which “welcomed closer military cooperation in the security sector between the Baltic States and the USA which also included joint exercises in the Baltic region.” [25]

After releasing the statement, the three defense chiefs visited the Adazi Training Base in Latvia and “met with Gen. Roger A. Brady, Commander US Air Forces in Europe and NATO Allied Air Component.

“In the communique the NATO operation in Afghanistan was underscored as a priority of all the Baltic States.” [26]

On January 1 the Trilateral Baltic Battalion (BALTBAT) – with troops from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – began duty in the 14th rotation of the NATO Response Force. “On the same date Lithuanians…also enter[ed] a half-year standby period in the EU Battle Group.” [27]

On the Western end of the Baltic, on January 17 Swedish Defense Minister Sten Tolgfors spoke on the Targeting Decisions on Strengthening Defense Capability (TDSDC) program launched on January 1, pledged that “Sweden will develop its national defense in cooperation with NATO and neighbors Finland, Denmark and Norway” and added:

“Our defense policy adds a new neighborhood perspective. The structure and direction of Sweden’s Armed Forces will continue to have a clear Baltic profile. We have northern Europe’s largest and most qualified Air Force that is twice as large as any of our neighbors, and it has a full operational range.”

“It is the biggest renewal of security and defense policy for decades in Sweden. We will use 2010 to make the requisite decisions to carry out the modernization of our military, and civilian crisis, management capabilities.” [28]

Under the new program all members of the Swedish armed forces, now transitioned from a conscript to an all-volunteer (according to NATO demands for military “professionalization” of member and partner states) status, “are to be available for deployment at home or abroad in five to seven days in situations of ‘heightened alert.’” [29]

“In the old system, a third of the forces – which in 2008 meant 11,400 military personnel – were supposed to be able to deploy within one year from mobilization. In the new defence system, all 50,000 members of the forces would have to be ‘usable and available’ within a week….The soldiers in the conscript army could never be used for missions outside Sweden’s borders, but now that all soldiers will either be full-time employees or on contract, they will be available to deploy anywhere….New is also the focus on the Baltic Sea Region.” [30]

Last autumn a German Luftwaffe Eurofighter intercepted a Russian plane over the Baltic Sea. “After the German jet challenged the radar plane, the Russians scrambled two fighters, which approached at supersonic speed. Finnish jets then escorted the Russians back to international airspace, averting a further escalation of the situation.” [31]

This month NATO extended its Baltic warplane deployments until 2014. “The Baltic skies are presently secured by the so-called NATO air police, which in addition to fighter planes also provide air defense systems and manpower.” [32]

Added to the permanent presence of Western military aircraft are now American Patriot missiles and troops to operate them in Poland, “a demonstrative anti-Russian move” according to a leading general of the latter nation. [33]

Persistent U.S. and NATO military moves are threatening to turn the Baltic Sea region into a powder keg that another hostile encounter between Western and Russian military aircraft could ignite at any time.

As to government officials and the news media in Russia, a year is a sufficiently long period of time to awaken from the illusion of an imaginative rest button that will reverse a decade of NATO penetration of the Baltic Sea and the consolidation of military infrastructure there aimed squarely – and exclusively – at their own nation.

Related articles::

Scandinavia And The Baltic Sea: NATO’s War Plans For The High North
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/scandinavia-and-the-baltic-sea-natos-war-plans-for-the-high-north

Afghan War: NATO Trains Finland, Sweden For Conflict With Russia
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/afghan-war-nato-trains-finland-sweden-for-conflict-with-russia

End of Scandinavian Neutrality: NATO’s Militarization Of Europe
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/end-of-scandinavian-neutrality-natos-militarization-of-europe

ABC Of West’s Global Military Network: Afghanistan, Baltics, Caucasus
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/abc-of-wests-global-military-network-afghanistan-baltics-caucasus

1) Berlin Wall: From Europe Whole And Free To New World Order
Stop NATO, November 9, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/berlin-wall-from-europe-whole-and-free-to-new-world-order
2) Associated Press, July 23, 2009
3) Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 28, 2009
4) Russia Today, September 17, 2009
5) With Nuclear, Conventional Arms Pacts Stalled, U.S. Moves Missiles And
Troops To Russian Border
Stop NATO, January 22, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/with-nuclear-conventional-arms-pacts-stalled-u-s-moves-missiles-and-troops-to-russian-border
6) Voice of Russia, December 8, 2009
7) RosBusinessConsulting, March 26, 2004
8) Barents Observer, March 4, 2009
9) Marine Corps Times, July 21, 2009
10) Ibid
11) Defense Professionals, January 26, 2010
12) Lithuanian Armed Forces, January 11, 2010
13) Ibid
14) Helsingin Sanomat, January 28, 2010
15) Ibid
16) Helsingin Sanomat, January 27, 2010
17) Economist, January 14, 2010
18) Ibid
19) Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, November 28, 2009
20) Ibid
21) Russian Information Agency Novosti, November 18, 2009
22) Ibid
23) http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49755.htm
24) Ukrinform, January 28, 2010
25) Defense Professionals, December 14, 2009
26) Ibid
27) Defense Professionals, January 4, 2010
28) Defense News, January 25, 2010
29) Ibid
30) Radio Sweden, January 18, 2010
31) The Local (Germany), November 3, 2009
32) Russian Information Agency Novosti, January 4, 2010
33) Interfax-Ukraine, January 20, 2010