Fresh off of Pentagon officials talking up plans to send multiple brigades worth of battle tanks and heavy weaponry to nations along the Russian border to “pre-position” for future events, the Russian government is threatening their own retaliatory buildup in the same region.
Russian Defense Ministry officials say the deployments in response will likely include a missile brigade in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave along the Baltic Sea that borders both Poland and Lithuania. They said other deployments were also possible.
And even though US officials were only yesterday touting their deployments as meant to reassure Eastern Europe of their support against Russia, Pentagon officials now insist that the Russians should not consider the deployments a threat and shouldn’t react at all.
Russia had previously threatened to put Iskander Missiles into Kaliningrad in response to a US plan to create a missile defense base in Poland. That plan was eventually scrapped, but US officials seem eager to keep throwing more assets into the region, leading to a protracted buildup by both them and Russia in the east.
Can't blame them.
The difference here is that it is literally Russia's Borders with all units inside those borders, America how many thousand miles from their closest border! And it wasn't until America upped the ante that Russia said they were going to increase their own defense!
If you're asking how far from Russia the closest US border is, the answer is two and a half miles — the distance between Big Diomede Island (claimed by Russia) and Little Diomede Island (claimed by the US) off the Alaskan coast in the Bering Strait.
Yes, yes, Mr. Knapp.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov should set up a meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry on Ratmanov (a.k.a. Big Diomede) Island that separates Russia from Alaska
(see: http://www.distancefromto.net/distance-from/Alask… and zoom in on the Bering sea ).
There the two men can talk about the different types of "birds" seen on the island with the obvious implication that some of the winged creatures of the Russian variety could be Topol ICBM missiles pointed at the eastern seaboard of America. Perhaps Kerry would begin to understand what it feels like to have nuclear weapons camped on the doorstep of the continental U.S.
Wise men often say visual aids are a great motivator.
This is a good point. Russia is surrounded by NATO. Its Arctic coast is only a short distance from North America, its Pacific coast is attackable from the US and Canada, the Caucasus and the Black Sea coast are attackable from Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey and the Baltic coast is attackable from the Baltic republics, Poland and even Germany. If Putin starts a war, he can be attacked on four fronts.
If Putin had kept all his units inside his borders, there would be no problem. But he used private contractors' mercenaries to seize Crimea and invade Donetsk and Lugansk province. Basically, he struck the first blow, indeed, the first blow of a kind which Europe hasn't seen since 1939, and he cannot now complain if his ongoing blustering and threatnening has brought the predictable consequences down on his head.
In the link an officer at the Pentagon both says we are doing it, and says it is not a threat.
"At the Pentagon on Monday, spokesman Col. Steve Warren said the pre-positioning plan was evolving and should not be considered a threat to Moscow. . . . Planning is underway to equip a brigade-sized element but nothing has been decided, Warren said"
That makes no sense. It is babble. What would we say if the Russians moved a brigade worth of equipment to enable rapid deployment? We'd be hysterical.
Who is in charge of this? So far, it is leaks from the Pentagon. Stupid. Maybe it is a trial balloon that won't fly, but based on past behavior the more stupid it is, the more likely to do it.
Most USA moves in that region appear to be the same as cold-war strategy; challenge the Russians to match the billions we are capable of throwing at weapons, in an effort to bankrupt them. As David Stockman; Reagans budget chief; said many years ago; "we and the Russians were in a race to see who could go bankrupt first; and we lost by a nose".
"…the more stupid it is, the more likely to do it."
Ain't that the truth…
Bad history — A thing war-hawks love to forget
If all of Russia did not have to remember World War Two, have to remember how 21 million Russians were slaughtered in battle, then the stupidity of NATO and Empire USA might not be so asinine in thinking that Russia would cower back again, would repeat bad history all over again.
For pity the war-hawk nations so fool as to think that Russia is not ready, willing and able to turn their infrastructure into crumbled concrete.
Classic American error. The generation that fought WWII is now extremely old, if not already dead. There is no reason to beleive that the present generation shares their mentality nor is there any reason to beleive that they would be willing to fight to defend Putin and his oligarch pals who, after all, have being robbing ordinary Russians blind since 1991. Saddam Hussein's army just threw their hands up, why not Putin's? And, of course, Russia's rickety, cold-war era military is neither ready nor able to go one-on-one with NATO, to say nothing of the long tradition of incompetent officers, going all the way back to the Tsar's time: Crimea 1854, Turkey 1876, Japan 1904 and WWI. In WWII, the strategy the Soviet generals could come up with was to hurl masses of infantry at the Germans, causing horrendous casulties, with NKVD troops ranged behind to shoot anyone who turned back. Anyone who surrendered knew his family was going to be persecuted. And that says nothing about the massive supplies of US equipment, the tying down of German forces elsewhere and the fact that the Soviets were fighting on only one front. None of that is true today.
It's a great moment in neocon history, Cakewalk Russia time!
Exactly right, Michael.
We would overwhelm them in weeks if not days.
The locals would welcome us as liberators.
Then we could send in Paul Bremer III in his brown boots with hordes of fresh-faced boys and girls to fire all the remaining Russian army and civil servants. He could rule by edict as de-facto Czar of Russia. We'd need to leave some troops just to guard the former Gazprom offices and facilities of course.
Next we'd hold proper democratic elections and, if the results are what we wanted, recognize the new government and assist them to re-create Russia in our image and likeness.
What could possibly go wrong.
a….they might fire nukes at LA Seattle NYC & DC?
This is exactly where Putin betrays his sense of the weakness of his own position: he has no strategy, he just retaliates, childishly, to whatever the US, NATO or the EU does. That's just playing to the gallery and must cause much amusement to NATO commanders.
The U.S. Is now confirmed as being mentally disabled to make such ludicrous statements. You plant armed thugs on the sidewalk in front of my house and there is a better than not possibility that I will lock and lord nô Matter whatreally line you think i will believe
Warmonger Amerika is surely crusin for a brusin.
What in the hell is wrong with the U.S. govt? Is Obama as stupid as George Bush or is it that he is just completely bought and doesn't know how to get out of the clutches of the billionaires who made him president of the US. Dang! I'm from Alabama and the education people there say that I am a special needs student. I don't know but I have always had trouble with school work. My teachers say that I am slow, but damned if I don't know a mudfish from a catfish or an honest man from a politician.
Americansl is in bad trouble because they don't know nothing. They don't know a dead rat from one of them lizard loafer fellows who are paid to paid representatives for their vote. Alabamians may be dumb, but 99% of U.S. reporters are liars who would lie to they own momma.
We through as a country. Raise the Star of David over the White House and make it official.
Bubba from Alabama