NATO’s announcement of a new “spearhead” force aimed at Russia comes as yet another new source of tension between NATO and Russia has emerged, and reflects just how little it might take to kick off World War 3 between the world’s largest nuclear powers.
That incident was the detention of a spy from the tiny NATO member nation of Estonia by Russia. Exactly which side of the border the spy was captured from is unclear, and both sides are differing on the story in several key ways.
Estonian officials claim Russia snuck into the country, attacked him with a stun grenade and hauled him off at gunpoint. Russia says he was detained on the Russian side of the border, where he had spying cameras, audio recording devices, and a bundle of cash.
Russian officials believe the operation was some sort of covert espionage operation carried out by Estonia’s Security Police, likely on behalf of NATO.
In the grand scheme of things, such a minor issue along the border of two nations would normally hardly be worth mentioning. In the context of President Obama and other NATO officials insisting any “sovereignty violation” against any NATO member is an attack on the entire alliance, and one that would be met with military retaliation.
These sort of automatic alliance-wide declarations of war reflect a very dangerous problem with NATO, and a much bigger one since NATO has absorbed so many tiny nations along the Russian frontier. Any minor border agitation could quite easily lead to a war escalating out of control.
Estonia is a nation of just over one million people, and a single dispute over a single spy would never, under normal circumstances, lead to a war for such a nation, especially with a large neighbor as Russia. The NATO alliance gives Estonia effective control over 900 million people worldwide, and most of the planet’s military assets, so they could quite readily escalate any such incident beyond all reason.
The danger of a war expanding regionally because of interlocking alliances was seen clearly in World War 1, which tore a path of destruction across Europe. Yet that could be a drop in the bucket compared to a NATO-Russia War, given each side has a nuclear arsenal capable of wiping out the human race several times over, and neither tends toward reasonableness in the face of apocalypse.
Well, here in Germany most people in the normal population has no problem with Russia. It is the media propaganda which tries to rise such hatret in the brains.
Unlike the constant hate propaganda against a low warfare “enemy” like Islam and nations under islamic rule this intention does not work very well with most Germans. All elderly persons here know the stories of the last German-Russian war from parents, grandparents or even still some very old people from own experience.
It is as usually the polical class which does not work for the interests of its own people but for the interests of the military industrial complex here in Europe and especially in the US and for imperialistic ambitions of certain NATO members.
The media whore complies with this scheme.
If really Germanys government would try to start fullscale war together with NATO this probably would lead to unrests here in Germany.
Here in Germany the vast majority does not want bad relations with Russia or even a war.
But we have a bought puppet government here unfortunately.
How very true , if only the rest of the world, especially the English speaking world, were as wise as the Germans.
Maybe its time Germany stopped being America's toady.
The German people do have the advantage of proportional representation, which makes it easier to form new political parties and gain representation in the government. Perhaps Germans should form a new peace party devoted to the single issue of peace, withdrawal from NATO and kicking the US bases out. Here in the US, the cards are stacked against formation of new political parties. Greens and Libertarians have a very difficult time even getting on the ballot. We really need your help in pressuring the US government to stop its drive toward unquestioned hegemony and "full spectrum dominance."
A very poor attempt to hype a minor incident into a risk of war! Putin is a European populist nationalist, which is not so much an ideology as a hangup. The basis is always that your own ethnic group is in some way "threatened" by some other ethnic group and has to "defend" itself at some level or another. If the "menace" cannot be crushed by force, or if an attempt to do so has failed, then the popnats usually start strutting up and down and thumbing their nose at the perceived "enemy". This looks like Putin thumbing his nose at NATO, for lack of any better alternative, in "revenge" for his defeat in Ukraine. NATO will wax indignant in public but will just laugh at Putin in private. If that's all the little fellow dares to do to Estonia, then NATO has very successfully protected Estonia!
NATO couldn't protect Estonia for one minute in a real war (unless there was a full scale nuclear exchange). In WW2 every commander of Army Group North urged Hitler to abandon Estonia. Putin got Crimea, without having to fire a shot. The Crimean peninsula is one of the most strategic places in Europe. A choice piece of real estate. The Russian speaking eastern Ukraine will at the very least get a substantial degree of autonomy. And Ukraine is still a deadbeat country, owing billions in gas and with a collapsed economy. As for NATO, despite all it big talking it did exactly squat.
Michael Kenny's not interested in facts. He's creating his own reality like his fellow neocon dead-enders.
Estinia is a neonazi dump, like most Baltic dumps.
How rude!
The utter insanity of the FedGov/NATO/EU cabal's longing to have a war with Russia will eventually result in yet another war of annihilation, this time with nuclear weapons. The morons and sociopaths that run the cabal apparently have read 20th century history and, instead of drawing the usual conclusions based on common wisdom, have used every recognized mistake as the basis for the individual elements in their schemes.
Some Baltic people remember the Nazis with reverence, not unlike their western Ukrainian counterparts:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/glorifying-nazism-in…
Yeah but so what?
they could quite readily escalate any such incident beyond all reason
Lesson #5437 in the cultivation of one's Evil Alter Ego.
If I were evil, and hence looking for ways to get do-gooders to fight eachother (most importantly: rather than me), I'd find expendable morons to persuade that they're working for one side, load them up with cash and gadgets, give signals sufficient to get a few of them caught, screech from one side how awful their treatment is, and screech from the other side how awful it was what they were doing.
One caveat: not all steps need be taken if one or more are taken for you by chance. E.g., it might not be necessary to persuade someone they work for one side if they already are…
But how could that possibly work on modern folk? Well, they bought the GWoT, didn't they? Have a little faith.
That's a perfectly plausible explanation for winding up in Russia; stunned, scooped up and locked in a van, and dragged across the Russian border, and then freed by the same people. It's still not as good as my weekly excuse every Monday morning in 9th grade English Literature for not having my homework ready to turn in because every Sunday night my same little sister keeps feeding my homework assignments to my dog.
Well we will just have to wait and see but there have been denials by British intelligence during the rock spy scandal working with NGO's that years later admitted was true and the CIA agent caught red handed in Moscow trying to recruit Russian FSB agents so it is not unprecedented that western intelligence conducts spy operations in Russia.
Cui bono? What advantage to the Russians to cross the border to snatch an Estonian "spy", especially in such a dramatic manner? Since this episode occurred during the NATO meeting in Wales it smells like an Estonian provocation to further make the case for a larger NATO presence in the Baltics.
Estonia is a very small and defenseless country.
I'm sure if Russia were as strong and powerful as the author and commentators on this article fantasizes it to be it would have no problem demonstrating to this puny little country and any other puny little countries out there that shares a similar delusion that it can protect itself in anyway from Russia, it's true place in the world.
Of course Russia understands full well that an attack on Estonia is an attack on America and America is far more powerful than Russia is, has been or ever will be.
Whenever Russia feels in the mood to "prove" to the world that it is a "real superpower just like America" all it has to do is invade tiny, helpless Estonia.
There will be nor can be a war with US NATO & Russia until the A. B. M. is set up on Russian borders.
AND the pretext won't be some stupid spy busyness business ( even if he was taken outside Russian borders. US has several Russian citizens in jails that they the US had kidnaped from out side US borders and no war happened. No war because of M. A. D. that is still enforced until there is a ABM in ones possession as to negate MAD! No one will commit suicide! over this stupid spy!
There will be nor can be a war with US NATO & Russia until the A. B. M. is set up on Russian borders.
I guess the fact that we're still reeling from the damage of WW! isn't enough for them. They need to repeat the mistake. Only bigger.