On Friday, NATO Deputy Secretary-General Mircea Geoana said that he expects the Western military alliance to establish permanent bases in Eastern Europe in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Under the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, the alliance agreed not to build permanent bases east of Germany, but Geoana suggested that the deal is now “void” because of Russia’s invasion.
Geoana said that as part of NATO plans, the alliance is working on a “state of the art, permanent” presence in Eastern Europe. At an upcoming NATO summit in Madrid scheduled for later this month, Geoana said alliance leaders will be working on a “fundamental transformation of NATO’s posture, presence and deterrence” in the region, which will include “more of a presence on the ground.”
Last month, The Washington Post reported that Poland and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are seeking a significant increase in NATO’s presence on their territory. But other NATO members, including France and Italy, are hesitant to do so. NATO members are also divided on whether or not to abandon the NATO-Russia Founding Act.
Earlier in the year, the US deployed tens of thousands of additional troops to Europe, many of which deployed to Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. US military leaders are looking to make the deployment more permanent.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told Congress in April that US allies in the region are “very, very willing” to build new bases where US troops can be deployed. He suggested that the bases should be permanent, but that the US troops would rotate through them.
“My advice would be to create permanent bases but don’t permanently station, so you get the effect of permanence by rotational forces cycling through permanent bases,” Milley said.
Of course Pentagon “very, very willing” to build bases in Eastern Europe; they’re salivating at the prospect. Justifies increased spending, growth of military-industrial-spy industry ubersector. All good. For them.
If things go their way, that still remains to be seen.
Well, Russia and Serbia don’t, especially not in about a month or so when the ukie Nazi’s and Nato are defeated in the ukraine. Call it domino effect.
It’s necessary given the Russian aggression in Ukraine, seriously, what did they Russians expect? If you start a war then you force your opponent to act and look over its defences.
It started with the American aggressions, for Russia it is defensive, regardless of what you want to call it. It is like America saying some state like Iran is a terrorist state does not make it so, it is all for political uses like all the WMDs in Iraq, remember that?
Trying to defend the Russian aggression?
Don’t you want your husband or father to return home from Ukraine alive?
The aggression displayed by NATO with the resultant carnage, refugee crises that they have created in the past 30 years makes the Russian incursion look like charity.
The ongoing genocide in Afghanistan makes the Russians look like angels.
Are you trying to defend the Russian atrocities, comrade?
NATO has no business in Ukraine, so what is the real issue?
Biden wants regime change and weakening Russia in order to privatize Russian resources to benefit the American corporations.
You are welcome to present a rational opinion to support Biden’s position. He spilled the beans, he said it and Austin said it, and acts accordingly, he wants war as long as others do the dying.
Both parties fund wars no questions asked, no debates, all while the country is going down the tubes.
No money for infrastructure, education, health care, housing, a shrinking middle class. The nation has decades of stagnating wages, massacres in schools, churches and malls and other public places, lack of clean drinking water in cities, lack of adequate child care, run down cities wherever you look. All things China is doing better.
Wake up and open your eyes, even the poorest nations have a rich upper class but not a healthy working middle class, the back bone of a nation.
Who attacked the US, why do we have troops on the other side of the globe? What business did the US have in Ukraine, there is the Minsk II agreement too.
Are you defending the Azov Ukrainian war crimes?
I want an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, no more killing!
As Russia is the one that started shooting, they must be the first to stop too!
Stop talking about the Azov battalion, Russia has already taken Mariupol. Stop the killing now!!
You seem desperate to defend the Russian atrocities, comrade l.
NATO or West or America should put sealing on stupidity, a red line which should not be crossed
There is some concern that this brand of stupidity may be contagious…
NATO expands but it does not contract…
But it can break, EU and NATO are already cracking.
West Europe went fascist in WW I-II; knows well the “old whore gone in the teeth.” But they apparently find themselves too weak willed to resist her obscene importuning. Victor Orban alone the last decent European.
I think industrialization, capitalism is basically fascistic. Democracy and capitalism (fascism) don’t go together. That is the reason for regime change of democratically elected governments. IMHO
Fascism arises with the failure of Capitalism, a gradual process that sees the big bourgeois defaulting to gov’t and its police/military for self-preservation. Democracy has always been a term of art. In actual fact the “demes” never had any say. The pattern of government originated from the joint stock, or, latterly, “publicly held”, capitalist corporation where each share has a vote. This was transposed by Locke et al to the political corporation where, land owners, real property owners, and finally taxpayers, were construed the equivalent of shareholders. Structurally this ensured government by the “biggest shareholders”, the wealthy elite. All the rhetoric from Jefferson, Lincoln and their politician progeny is demagogy, the structurally precise term for hoodwinking the demes.
Thanks, you explained it very well.
The epic war between capitalism/fascism and socialism/democracy .
Exactly.
General Milley seems fairly affable but, from his comments, I’m not terribly sure he is altogether bright…
That promise was always a lie. Nobody was fooled before this announcement. That is the only reason there is a war in Ukraine now.
Public continuing manipulation by MSM, censored as it is, works.
He should hold his horses, there is a good chance there will be NO NATO left. It is an alliance based on coercion, the USA does not have the same interests as Europeans have.
Were the European people ever told, that the war is to force a regime change on the Russian people, like the one Obama/Biden did in Ukraine in 2014 which failed big time as we can see? Were they told it is about control and privatization of Russia’s natural resources?
The Europeans and Americans were never told in simple language what this terrible war is all about, what NATO is really fighting for.
It is USA v Russia, NATO and Ukraine are proxies, the cannon fodder.
Freedom and Democracy are not involved, the words are used to obfuscate the truth.
Isn’t Bondsteel in Kosovo in eastern Europe? It certainly looks east of Germany
I thought we had Russia surrounded with our bases already.
FACT:
Russia’s land border is just over 20,000 kilometres long. Of that, less than one- sixteenth (1,215 kilometres), is shared with NATO members. Russia has land borders with 14 countries. Only five of them are NATO members.
Only five? Can you name another country that wouldn’t have a problem with having FIVE member states of a hostile alliance bordering them?
And they border the RF were it counts.
Deadly kilometers indeed. It has only cost them 27 million citizens in WW II alone.
Meanwhile, the US and its lackey are throwing a hissy fit because China just signed a security agreement w/ the Solomon Islands thousands of kilometers away. Go figure!
The US has led NATO’s policy of continuing expansion and provoking Russia to use Ukraine to weaken Russia in order to reign supreme.
They are now leading the aggression against China and will use Taiwan to provoke and weaken China and turn Asia into a larger Ukraine. It is astounding that the Asian nations are allowing themselves to be used. I guess they forgot of the colonial times; same actors different clothing.
China exports Road and Belt, the US and NATO export conflict and wars.
A must watch Interview of Col. Richard Black by Mike Billington:
and a follow up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoReTq-7bYM