NATO Plans Yet More Troops in Eastern Europe at ‘Landmark Summit’

US: Russia Threat 'Real and Serious'

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is talking up a “landmark summit” in early July in Warsaw, a meeting which officials say is guaranteed to include a major new deployment of NATO ground troops into Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe.

This comes just a week and a half after the last NATO summit, which itself included deals to send massive numbers of addition troops into the same area, on the same pretext of fending off a Russian invasion that officials have been predicting for years now.

Rep. Mike Turner (R – OH), who also serves as the President of NATO Parliament, insisted that the Russian threat against Poland and th eBaltics is “real and serious.” A statement from the parliament today insists NATO has “no choice” but to send more troops, again.

NATO has been predicting an imminent Russian invasion of Eastern Europe since the 2014 regime change in Ukraine,citing Russian support for the ethnic Russian majority of eastern Ukraine rebelling when the pro-NATO government attempted to ban the Russian language and severely limit their ability to trade and travel across the border.

The invasion never happened, and after years of NATO buildup seems even sillier for officials to still be predicting. The ability to use this “threat” as a justification for more NATO spending, however, means it will probably continue for the foreseeable future.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.