With Russia threatening the United States to aim Russia’s armed forces to the “territories from where the threat comes,” the world is concerned about the growing risk of accidents and mistakes taking place in the nearest future.
Last week, both Russia and the West threatened each other with steps that would bring them closer to stationing their permanent forces at the bordering areas and thus give life to a serious confrontation. The agreements that used to suppress any nuclear weapons race, are now at risk.
It might seem that the current confrontation between NATO and Russia is just a show off, in which every side is trying to show its people and the other side that it is not going to back down. The leaders of both sides believe that this sort of confrontation can be easily contained and brought to an end any moment. However, it seems like this kind of confrontation begins to grow too big and might soon become beyond control.
Pentagon has not dismissed the reports in the media that said the United States is coming up with a plan to station heavy military equipment in the states of Eastern Europe that neighbor with Russia. Russia, in turn, claims that this kind of activity violates the agreement of demilitarization in the region.
Just a week ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will add 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles to its nuclear arsenal this year.
The move was widely denounced in the West. Some might even say that many top Western officials started freaking out about it.
“Some of Russia’s recent actions haven’t been made since Nazis”
Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of NATO, responded to the claims and announcements made at the conference by saying that Russia is unjustifiably spreading panic. “This nuclear sabre-rattling of Russia is unjustified,” he said. “It’s destabilizing and it’s dangerous.”
Lt. Gen. Stephen Wilson, the man responsible for U.S. ICBMs and nuclear bombers, said at a recent briefing in London that Russia has “annexed a country, changing international borders, raising rhetoric unlike we’ve heard since the cold war times…”
Wilson even went as far as comparing Russia to Nazis. “Some of the actions by Russia recently we haven’t seen since the 1930s, when whole countries were annexed and borders were changed by decree.”
However, experts that oversee global armament note that both of the sides modernize their strategic nuclear arsenals. Following their logic, Putin was just ‘informing’ of Russia’s plans to replace its old missiles with new, able to penetrate through the anti-missile shield of NATO in Europe, missiles. However, it more seemed like a threat and a response to NATO’s increased presence in Eastern Europe, including the deployment of its heavy military equipment in the Baltic states and Poland to rapidly send 5,000 troops to counter Russia threat and aggression.
It must also be pointed out that strategic weapons is one of the few military areas that are more or less under control. Both sides have agreements that limit the amount of such weapons, and both sides still comply with them.
Europe’s safety might be ruined
However, the situation around short and medium-range nuclear missiles is much more dangerous. Russia has long been warning that it would station its Iskander-M missiles in Kaliningrad to counter NATO’s anti-ballistic missiles systems.
Washington is already accusing Moscow of violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and has come up with an idea of stationing nuclear missiles in Europe. It must be pointed out that if the INF treaty is cancelled, Europe will regress to the nuclear confrontation of the 1980s.
However, nobody would win from cancelling the INF treaty, but both sides constantly refer to the treaty in an attempt to threaten the other side of the confrontation.
It is crystal clear that the longer the confrontation between the West and Russia goes on, the more fragile the European safety becomes. If the leaders of both sides do not stop worsening their relations, the safety and stability in Europe that was achieved with blood and great efforts during the past centuries might be ruined.
NATO gets serious about countering Russia with its military
For the past 65 years, NATO has carried out hundreds of military drills, but not a single one of them were as robust as the ‘Noble Jump’ exercises in Poland, which were completed at the end of the past week.
The military drills were the first exercises of the recently created NATO’s very high readiness Spearhead Force. The need to carry out such military drills clearly indicate the tense relations between NATO and Russia, which responds to every NATO’s military drills with its own exercises.
The main NATO’s strategy now is to get back to the initial mission of the Alliance’s existence. NATO was created to protect Europe from the USSR and this mission dictated each move of the Alliances up until the collapse of the USSR and Warsaw pact.
That is why NATO carries out its military drills one after another. The next day after the ‘Noble Jump’ exercises, NATO completed another large military drills, Baltops – 2015.
NATO’s military has proven that in case of Russia’s aggression, it can quickly respond with military force. Now it all depends on politicians. In order to deploy high readiness Spearhead Force, all 28 members of the European Union must give their consent.
The issue will most likely be raised at the upcoming meeting between defense ministers of NATO’s states, which will take place this week in Brussels. Besides, according to Die Welt, they might discuss a secret document of Russia’s use of nuclear weapons. Vladimir Putin’s words about increasing Russia’s nuclear arsenal must have really made Brussels freak out.
