On the final day of its summit in Wales, NATO has approved the creation of a “rapid reaction force” for Eastern Europe, which officials described as the “spearhead” for any future fighting with Russia in the region.
The approval sets up the permanent force of 4,000 troops for Eastern Europe, in keeping with previous reports about what the proposal as expected to include.
The “spearhead” force is just a fraction of the size of what Poland wanted for a permanent deployment, which was a minimum of 10,000 troops, but may not be the end of the ongoing NATO buildup in the region.
The move is nominally a counter to a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, though after months, the invasion never happened, and the ongoing civil war in east Ukraine seems to be winding down with a new ceasefire.
The so-called '1997 NATO–Russia Founding Act' only mentions not establishing permanent bases in eastern Europe “in the current and foreseeable security environment.”
The "security environment" has fundamentally changed.
This force, and more, should be permanently forward deployed. Now.
Don't forget that it was an arms race that bankrupted the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Even a modest force will probably provoke Putin into some sort of militarily useless but highly expensive nose thumbing. That will probably bring him down soon enough.
Or this NATO provocation of Putin and Russia, which you just admitted is the case, will bring us all down soon enough.
"…ongoing civil war in east Ukraine seems to be winding down…"
Don't worry, they'll find (or manufacture) another reason to ratchet up the angst.
We invaded the middle east and were defeated by a bunch of lightly armed insurgents and now we're going to have a "spearhead" to go into Russia. Good luck with that. The same country that defeated Hitler's vaunted military and Napoleon. It wouldn't matter if they used 50,000 troops, this "rapid reaction force" or whatever name they want to give it would be surrounded and wiped out within hours. Western "leaders" come across as children playing with matches.
4,000 guys? Hitler assembled 3,300,000 guys, plus over 3,000 tanks. That sure worked out well didn't it?