{"id":249648,"date":"2016-06-14T02:38:44","date_gmt":"2016-06-14T02:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=249648"},"modified":"2016-06-14T10:59:17","modified_gmt":"2016-06-14T10:59:17","slug":"nato-begins-encirclement-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/nato-begins-encirclement-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"NATO Begins Encirclement of Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de\/2016\/06\/13\/deutsche-soldaten-nach-litauen-nato-beginnt-einkreisung-von-russland\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

NATO begins encirclement of Russia: German troops to Lithuania<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

German Economic News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0Published:13:06:16 17:21\u00a0Clock <\/span>(Translation by Eric Zuesse)<\/span><\/p>\n

NATO prepares a veritable military buildup in Eastern Europe: German soldiers are operating in Lithuania, the British take over Estonia, and US soldiers move in to protect Latvia.\u00a0The Canadians will be in Poland.\u00a0Also in the Mediterranean, combat units are being increased.\u00a0Russia perceives the activity as a threat, but hasn\u2019t yet announced any countermeasures.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the NATO summit during July 8th-9th in Warsaw, the Alliance will adopt a massive military presence along Russia\u2019s border.<\/b>\u00a0Russia is classified by NATO as a threat. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently said in Washington that the US and the EU have the right in the form of NATO to defend its territories on foreign soil.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Critics of this strategy believe that it\u2019s possible this upgrade will increase significantly the danger of a conflict between the superpowers<\/span><\/a>. Wednesday in Brussels, the defense ministers want the military alliance to take decisions which will then be sealed by the leaders in Poland.\u00a0NATO wants to strengthen its military presence on its eastern borders significantly, and to position foreign combat troops battalions in Poland and the three Baltic states.\u00a0Germany is the core of the Association in Lithuania, the British in Estonia, and the United States is expected to be that in Latvia<\/b>.\u00a0What remains unclear, however, is who will be sending troops to Poland.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe Canada will take on this task, it was last reported from Polish diplomatic sources as quoted by Reuters<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0\u201c’The summit in Warsaw will be President Obama’s last (NATO summit) and the U.S. wants it to be a success. It will ensure that the fourth framework country is found, possibly by leaning on Canada,\u2019 the source said. \u2018Washington will bend over backwards here.\u2019”<\/span><\/p>\n

Germany wants to send at least 600 soldiers to Lithuania, which will constitute the core of the local battalion there with about 1,200 soldiers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The battalions are to include around 1,000 soldiers each, and are not permanently stationed in the eastern countries, but replaced regularly.\u00a0By means of this rotation, the military alliance wants to\u00a0avoid a formal breach of the NATO-Russia Founding Act 1997<\/b>, which prohibits the permanent stationing of a “substantial” number of combat troops in the east.\u00a0What specifically “substantial” means, however, is controversial. [In other words: Obama wants to be more aggressive than the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 might allow; he wants to violate the treaty in such a way that he\u2019ll be able to say he\u2019s not really breaking the treaty.]<\/span><\/p>\n

Poland and the Baltic countries want to push NATO to be even more aggressive.<\/b>\u00a0They demand among other things, increased aerial surveillance by fighter jets of the alliance partners on the Baltic.\u00a0Poland had in the past also repeatedly demanded the permanent stationing of NATO combat troops [which would clearly violate the NATO-Russia Founding Act].\u00a0The Baltic States and Poland have been feeling threatened since Russia\u2019s March 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.<\/span><\/p>\n

NATO defense ministers will also discuss a new mission in the Mediterranean.<\/b>\u00a0What exactly is planned there, is difficult to judge.\u00a0Officially the rise of extremist ISIS militias and the refugee crisis are given as reasons for that expansion of NATO. ISIS is financed and otherwise supported by Saudi Arabia, the closest ally of the West in the Middle East.\u00a0A good reason why NATO, the most powerful fighting force in all of the world’s military, have not coped with that group of more or less random ragtag mercenaries, is not known.\u00a0Russia is fighting on the side of Syria against ISIS and against previously officially the US-backed al-Nusra Front [Al Qaeda in Syria \u2014 the Syrian affiliate of the group that did 9\/11].<\/span><\/p>\n

The NATO alliance is looking for a new combat mission in the Mediterranean, as the 11 September 2001 NATO response \u201cActive Endeavor\u201d<\/span><\/a> patrolling the Mediterranean to stop terrorists there, has actually become obsolete.\u00a0The ministers therefore want to consider whether the mission should be transformed into a more general one to strengthen security in the Mediterranean.\u00a0Also being considered is to transform that mission to a closer cooperation with the European Union, which maintains its own naval deployment off the Libyan coast against human traffickers and the rescue of refugees in distress under the name “Sophia”.\u00a0At dinner on Tuesday therefore also the EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and government representatives from the non-NATO countries Finland and Sweden will also be in NATO headquarters.<\/span><\/p>\n

The agenda on Wednesday also includes the future of the NATO mission in Afghanistan<\/b>.\u00a0According to current plans, the US wants to reduce the number of its troops in Afghanistan from its current 9800 to 5500.\u00a0Whether Obama will hold to that objective despite the poor security situation in Afghanistan isn\u2019t yet clear.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de\/2016\/06\/13\/deutsche-soldaten-nach-litauen-nato-beginnt-einkreisung-von-russland\/ NATO begins encirclement of Russia: German troops to Lithuania German Economic News\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0Published:13:06:16 17:21\u00a0Clock (Translation by Eric Zuesse) NATO prepares a veritable military buildup in Eastern Europe: German soldiers are operating in Lithuania, the British take over Estonia, and US soldiers move in to protect Latvia.\u00a0The Canadians will be in Poland.\u00a0Also in the Mediterranean, combat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":246745,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[115,30,96,1035,93,535,698,907,59,757,1023,753,524,754,523,49,76,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-249648","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-cover-up","11":"tag-daily-news","12":"tag-eu","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-hillary-clinton","15":"tag-isis","16":"tag-military","17":"tag-nato","18":"tag-nuclear","19":"tag-police-state","20":"tag-russia","21":"tag-syria","22":"tag-ukraine","23":"tag-usa-news","24":"tag-warfare","25":"tag-white-house","26":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}