NATO officials were all pleased as punch last week with a major military exercise in Poland, described as the alliance’s single largest since the Cold War. The operation simulated a tank rush across Poland to its eastern border, ending near the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was a lot less upbeat about the operation, saying the exercises were counterproductive “sabre-rattling,” and that the alliance would be further ahead seeking more dialogue with Russia instead of creating “pretexts” for warmongering against them.
“Whoever believes that symbolic tank parades on the alliance’s eastern border will bring more security is mistaken,” Steinmeier added. German tanks were involved in the operation, marking the first time German tanks crossed Poland heading eastward since WW2.
NATO has been running more and more such exercises in Eastern Europe since 2014’s regime change in Ukraine, which ousted a pro-Russian government and led NATO to start predicting an imminent Russian invasion of Europe.
NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu defended the latest operations as “defensive, proportionate, and in-line with our international commitments,” while German MEP Rebecca Harms slammed Steinmeier as “irresponsible” for questioning NATO’s military buildup on the Russian frontier.
Go Steinmeier. Too bad he and Gabriel don’t have more juice to serve as a counterbalance to that neocon servant Merkel.
Gabriel is a neocon. His whole claim to fame was his antisoviet past.
Nothing wrong with being anti-Soviet. At least he’s not anti-Russia. He’s protested against the sanctions often.
Warmongering…INDEED. WHO BENEFITS? OH THATS RIGHT, THE MIC AND THE INTERNATIONAL BANKSTERS.
I’m not going to be surprised to hear in the near future that Herr Steinmeier has been replaced by someone more…malleable. I used to think that the Germans had a much better grasp of the intricacies of the European theater and about what it takes to live peacefully together…understanding that if the sh!t hits the fan the European continent is going to be the first place to get lit up.
NATO-east is now starting to moan about the ‘unfair’ distribution of western forces. There’s dollar to be made from first-world soldiers and their bases, and nobody wants to be a loser when it comes to that,,, and the token ‘defense barrier’ to the Russian bear. Everybody is scrambling to import the ‘good guys’.