{"id":244422,"date":"2016-05-18T19:01:32","date_gmt":"2016-05-18T19:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=244422"},"modified":"2016-05-18T21:38:03","modified_gmt":"2016-05-18T21:38:03","slug":"nato-announces-war-policy-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/nato-announces-war-policy-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"NATO Announces War Policy Against Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

On May 18th, Britain\u2019s Guardian<\/i> headlined\u00a0\u201cWest and Russia on course for war, says ex-Nato deputy\u00a0commander\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and reported that the former deputy commander of NATO, the former British\u00a0general Sir Alexander Richard Shirreff (who was Supreme Allied Commander in Europe from 2011-2014), expressed outrage that Britain isn\u2019t urgently preparing for war against Russia, and also reported that “He describes Russia as now the west\u2019s most dangerous\u00a0adversary and says Putin\u2019s course can only be stopped if\u00a0the west wakes up to the real possibility of war\u00a0and takes\u00a0urgent action. \u2026 In a chilling scenario, he predicts that Russia, in order\u00a0to escape what it believes to be encirclement by Nato,\u00a0will seize territory in eastern Ukraine.\u201d (That\u2019s\u00a0the Donbass region, where there has been a civil war<\/span><\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

This encirclement by NATO is, apparently, about to be expanded: Shirreff will now be satisfied by NATO, even if not by its member the UK, of which Shirreff happens to be a citizen. New Europe bannered the same day,\u00a0\u201cNATO lays down the cards on its Russia policy\u201d<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0and reported that, “In two distinct pre-ministerial\u00a0press conferences on\u00a0Wednesday [May 18th], the General\u00a0Secretary of NATO Jens\u00a0Stoltenberg and the US\u00a0Ambassador to NATO,\u00a0Daglas Lute, introduced the\u00a0Russia agenda to be\u00a0covered. Both NATO leaders\u00a0said that the Accession\u00a0Protocol Montenegro is\u00a0signing on Thursday is a\u00a0strong affirmation of NATO\u2019s\u00a0open door policy, mentioning\u00a0explicitly Georgia. ‘We will\u00a0continue to defend Georgia\u2019s\u00a0right to make its own\u00a0decisions,’ Stoltenberg said.\u201d Georgia is on Russia\u2019s southwestern flank; so, it could be yet another a nuclear-missile base right on Russia\u2019s borders, complementing Poland and the Baltics on Russia\u2019s northwestern flank. (The U.S. itself has around 800 military bases in foreign countries<\/span><\/a>, and so even Russia\u2019s less-populous eastern regions would be able to be obliterated virtually in an instant, if the U.S. President so decides. And President Obama is already committed to the view that Russia is by far the world\u2019s most \u201caggressive\u201d enemy, more so even than international jihadists are<\/span><\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the New Europe report, Stoltenberg announced that where the\u00a01997 NATO-Russia Agreement<\/span><\/a>\u00a0asserts that<\/span><\/p>\n

The member States of NATO\u00a0reiterate that they have no\u00a0intention, no plan and no reason to\u00a0deploy nuclear weapons on the\u00a0territory of new members, nor any\u00a0need to change any aspect of\u00a0NATO’s nuclear posture or nuclear\u00a0policy \u2014 and do not foresee any\u00a0future need to do so. This\u00a0subsumes the fact that NATO has\u00a0decided that it has no intention, no\u00a0plan, and no reason to establish\u00a0nuclear weapon storage sites on\u00a0the territory of those members,\u00a0whether through the construction\u00a0of new nuclear storage facilities or\u00a0the adaptation of old nuclear\u00a0storage facilities. Nuclear storage\u00a0sites are understood to be facilities\u00a0specifically designed for the\u00a0stationing of nuclear weapons, and\u00a0include all types of hardened\u00a0above or below ground facilities\u00a0(storage bunkers or vaults)\u00a0designed for storing nuclear\u00a0weapons.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

the agreement is effectively terminated, and, “Largely as a result of\u00a0the\u00a0Crimean annexation<\/span><\/a>, the\u00a0repeated violations of the\u00a0Minsk ceasefire agreement,\u00a0and the demands of eastern\u00a0flank member states, boots\u00a0on the ground will increase\u00a0considerably in the region, if\u00a0not \u2018substantially\u2019,\u201d along Russia\u2019s northeastern<\/i> flank, in Poland and the Baltics. Furthermore, “Poland has already said that\u00a0it regards this agreement \u2018obsolete\u2019.\u201d So, General Stoltenberg is taking his lead on that from the Polish government.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to both Russia and the separatist Donbass eastern region of the former Ukraine, the violations of the Minsk II agreement regarding Donbass are attacks by Ukrainian government forces firing into Donbass and destroying buildings and killing residents there, however NATO and other U.S. allies ignore those allegations and just insist that all violations of the Minsk II accords are to be blamed on Russia. That is also the position advanced by Shirreff, who thinks that Russia has no right to be concerned about being surrounded by NATO forces.<\/span><\/p>\n

Consequently, regardless of whether or not the Minsk II violations are entirely, or even mainly, or even partially, due to Ukrainian firing into Donbass, NATO appears to be gearing up for its upcoming July ministerial meeting to be an official<\/i> termination of its vague promises, which NATO had made in the 1997 NATO-Russia agreement (technically called the\u00a0“Founding Act on Mutual Relations,\u00a0Cooperation and Security\u00a0between NATO and the Russian\u00a0Federation signed in Paris,\u00a0France, 27 May 1997\u201d<\/span><\/a>). That document said “NATO and Russia do not\u00a0consider each other as\u00a0adversaries. They share the\u00a0goal of overcoming the vestiges\u00a0of earlier confrontation and\u00a0competition and of strengthening\u00a0mutual trust and cooperation.\u201d In this regard, it was \u2014 though in public and written form, instead of merely private and verbal form \u2014 similar to\u00a0the promises that the West had given to Soviet then Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, which have already been rampantly violated by the West many times and without apology.<\/span><\/a> The expectation and demand is clearly that Russia must allow itself to be surrounded by NATO, and to do this without complaint, and therefore also without taking military countermeasures, which NATO would call yet more \u201caggression by Russia.\u201d Any defensive moves by Russia can thus be taken by the West to be unacceptable provocation and justification for a \u201cpre-emptive\u201d attack against Russia by NATO. That would be World War III<\/span><\/a>, and it would be based upon the same accusation against Russia that the Republican candidate for the U.S. Presidency, Mitt Romney, had stated when he was running against<\/i> Barack Obama: \u201cThis is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe.\u201d<\/span><\/a> Perhaps the West here intends the final solution of the Russian problem<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse On May 18th, Britain\u2019s Guardian headlined\u00a0\u201cWest and Russia on course for war, says ex-Nato deputy\u00a0commander\u201d\u00a0and reported that the former deputy commander of NATO, the former British\u00a0general Sir Alexander Richard Shirreff (who was Supreme Allied Commander in Europe from 2011-2014), expressed outrage that Britain isn\u2019t urgently preparing for war against Russia, and also reported […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":244428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,461,18],"tags":[115,30,1036,32,96,535,698,907,1021,757,1023,753,524,754,523,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-244422","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-editorials","9":"category-latest-news","10":"tag-barack-obama","11":"tag-big-brother","12":"tag-breaking-news","13":"tag-cia","14":"tag-cover-up","15":"tag-global-news","16":"tag-hillary-clinton","17":"tag-isis","18":"tag-martial-law","19":"tag-nato","20":"tag-nuclear","21":"tag-police-state","22":"tag-russia","23":"tag-syria","24":"tag-ukraine","25":"tag-white-house","26":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}