NATO Sees Ukraine as ‘New Lease on Life’

Biden: US Seeks Military Exercises in Baltics

Aside from a disastrous regime change in Libya and an even more disastrous 13-year occupation of Afghanistan, NATO hasn’t had a lot on their plate lately, not any conceivable reason to exist.

So those officials are quite relieved that the territorial disputes in the Crimea cropped up when they did, with one analyst saying it was “providential from the point of view of NATO,” adding the Ukraine situation was effectively a “new lease on life.”

Founded in 1949 as a hedge against Soviet expansion, NATO officials are now only too eager to spin the annexation of the Crimea as the start of a campaign of Russian aggression that only NATO can counter.

Vice President Joe Biden talked up more US military involvement on Russia’s frontier today, saying the US remains militarily committed to the Baltic states and wants more military exercises in the area.

Such operations will no doubt be seen as an escalation by the Russian side, and as evidenced by last week’s Belarussian calls for more military aid to counter NATO’s escalation of operations in the regions, a “more involved” NATO may be self-fulfilling in manufacturing all the border hostility it needs to justify itself.

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.