Britain is deploying troops, aircraft and armor in the biggest military buildup in Eastern Europe since the Cold War.<\/p>\n
The deployment, which was first floated in the press by UK defense chiefs on Wednesday, appears to have been prepared well in advance.<\/p>\n
It will see up to 800 armored infantry troops deployed to Estonia and Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter jets deployed to Romania in what appears to be a reiteration of the strategy of containment employed against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.<\/p>\n
France and Denmark will also commit more troops.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon struck a belligerent tone in the Wall Street Journal when he warned that Europe \u201cis our continent<\/em>\u201d and, as such, would be defended.<\/p>\n While he claimed the force would be \u201cdefensive in nature<\/em>\u201d he pledged it would be \u201cfully combat-capable.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n He denied the placement of small formations around the Baltic area are merely a \u201ctrip-wire<\/em>\u201d in case of the much-heralded, but hypothetical, clash with Russia.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a serious military presence,<\/em>\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Tensions have only just begun to subside after a fleet of Russian naval vessels bound for the Mediterranean Sea passed through the North Sea and English Channel.<\/p>\n The passage caused a press frenzy in the UK, framed as though Russia was launching an invasion of the British Isles. The Royal Navy deployed destroyers to, in Fallon\u2019s words, \u201cman-mark<\/em>\u201d the vessels while the RAF overflew the ships with fighter jets.<\/p>\n According to the Russian military, the naval group\u2019s task was to \u201censure a naval presence in operationally significant areas of the world\u2019s oceans,<\/em>\u201d as well as \u201cthe safety of maritime navigation and other maritime economic activities<\/em>\u201d of Russia.<\/p>\n Britain\u2019s deployment of troops, drones and aircraft is expected to begin in May 2018.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Britain is deploying troops, aircraft and armor in the biggest military buildup in Eastern Europe since the Cold War. The deployment, which was first floated in the press by UK defense chiefs on Wednesday, appears to have been prepared well in advance. It will see up to 800 armored infantry troops deployed to Estonia and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":276022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-276021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276021","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}