President Biden on Thursday signed an executive order allowing the Pentagon to mobilize 3,000 reservists for deployments in Europe, where the US military has significantly increased its presence since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Since February 2022, the US has deployed over 20,000 additional troops to Europe, bringing US troop levels on the continent to over 100,000 for the first time since 2005. The US has beefed up its presence in Eastern Europe and currently has over 10,000 troops in Poland, which has become a hub for weapons bound for Ukraine.
The mobilization of 3,000 reservists signals the US military is strained by maintaining a large troops presence in Europe. A spokesman for US European Command (EUCOM) said the authority will “not change current force-posture levels,” suggesting the reservists might be used to rotate other troops out of Europe.
“These authorities will ensure long-term resilience in EUCOM’s continued heightened level of presence and operations,” said EUCOM spokesman Capt. Bill Speaks.
The Pentagon said the reservists will support Operation Atlantic Resolve, the name for US military activities in Europe that have come in response to events in Ukraine since 2014, the year a US-backed coup in Kyiv led to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the civil war in Ukraine’s Donbas region.
President Biden signed the order at the end of a trip to Europe that included the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. On Thursday, he was in Finland, NATO’s newest member that shares an over 800-mile border with Russia, and declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “already lost” the war in Ukraine.
We have heard this before in the 60s. LBJ said I am not going to send American boys to die. We all know how that wenr 565,000 troops went to the jungle and 55,000 did not come back.What are this countries priorities. War or Peace,Love or Hate,Life or Death. i think this is a valid question that must be answered.The US is pouring Billions worth of weapons that should be used at home to tackle our many serious issues into Ukraine and for what reason? Pushing Putin into a corner is not a winning gambit.Long supply lines and the threat of escalation to something nobody in their right mind wants is pure insanity. That also applies to our recent talks with the Chinese. Do our politicians think the Chinese are stupid? They can feel mus coming for them next. It is long past time for a change in leadership and strategy.
More like, change in socio-economic structure; and ideally before Armageddon, ecocide, plague, or the Malthusian nightmare.
Not to worry, Russia won’t be playing that marginal games like we did in Vietnam. As Jesse Ventura wrote, we don’t have time to Bleed.
Is that a new policy or just an extension of what it’s been doing, Mr. Anal Yzer?
That’s the policy your DC masters continue to support. Like a broken record….and there you are.
Meanwhile Julio, your boy Zelensky has his troops snatching people off the street. Nothing desperate about that eh Julio? https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/young-ukrainians-scared-leave-their-homes-more-and-more-videos-emerge-forced
Biden wants to be reelected so no big U.S. deployments will happen…!!!!!
He is senile enough to be easily directed.
If they manage to plant Biden back in the White House in 24, his dementia will be so advanced that his handlers will keep Joe on permanent vacation. They’ll have to come up with a facsimile, a hologram.
I keep thinking of “Weekend at Bernies”.
Except Bernie dead had more personality than the demented one.
I certainly agree he is lost in directionless fog, but, but Nuland, Clinton & The Neocon seekers will need their locked fingers to be pried off the levers of power by strong hands unless they grossely overplay their weak hand in futile desperation or a fatal lapse of sanity Any thing is possible…..!!!!!!
The number of US soldiers lost in the Korean war are to this day CLASSIFIED most of them where never recovered kind of blows a hole in NO ONE GETS LEFT BEHIND . , as are the number of HUEY`S lost in Vietnam still CLASSIFIED .
This countries priorities are power and money and to hold onto any shred of its lost hegemony in hopes to reassemble it after defeating Russia with Ukraine and China with Taiwan and Australia. They hope they can devise a workable plan before 2025… Scar Chasm alert…
Lots of luck with that
… Poland, which has become a hub for weapons bound for Ukraine
really. how do weapons get into Ukraine from Poland? must be trains and trucks unless Zelensky has flying carpets. so why hasn’t Russia already destroyed train tracks and freeways between Poland and Ukraine?
Because Putin is a bully that only attacks military inferior countries.
Sounds like another country there Julio. You know, a country that would attack a country like Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, take your pick. The big bad U.S. hasn’t fought a worthy contender since WW2 until now.
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Great question.
100,000 to protect Europe who won’t do it themselves.
Totally logical.
They are not there to protect Europe. They are there to dominate Europe. Europe doesn’t need protection. They need Russian energy.
“On Thursday, he was in Finland, NATO’s newest member that shares an over 800-mile border with Russia, and declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “already lost” the war in Ukraine.” What did the ostrich see in the sand?
“The mobilization of 3,000 reservists signals the US military is strained by maintaining a large troops presence in Europe.” But, I thought Biden said that Russia “already lost!?” Is Biden referring to his success in bribing Erdogan? Which was a Mafia boss move, if you ask me. Any indication that Biden’s corruption, which was his strength, might soon become his weakness? No? With all the Ukrainian blood on our hands, is our American dream forcing us to go deeper into the sewer? …I thought so. …Yes, “the swamp” has always been a sewer and my snorkels are already on. (Sarcasm alert)
Just like the Taliban had already lost in Afghanistan, then they won.
If you want to get some good non-main stream Ukraine news theduran.locals.com
These guys are very knowledgable and also quite articulate, in fact they are an antidote to MS NEWS…!!!!!!!
Agreed. Good analysis. But Alexadner Mercouris reminds me of Treebeard the Ent in Lord of the Rings. who told the two young Hobbits, Merry and Pippin: “It takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish, and the Ents never say anything unless it is worth taking a very long time to say.”
Like it takes a long time to win a war, one could suppose…?????
Oh year, that’s the website that tells you what you want to hear. With the pro Russian Alex Mercouris who has a really bad record with his analysis and predictions, most in favor of Russia and most he got wrong. A disbarred lawyer for lying to the crown. Lied about being in the military and is a foreign agent as it gets financial support from Russian oligarchs.
Keep on visiting it.
Unlike Julio, who gets his talking points by checking in with the crew at MSNBC or CNN to see what talking points(lies) they will put out today. Julio is like the paw parrots with the MSM all repeating the same line, “Awwk, Ukraine is winning, awwwk, Russian troops are being driven back across the borders, Awwk, Putin’s government is falling” and more nonsense.
If they tell me what I want to hear, then we are in good stead: It’s facts and the truth that I want to hear. Not the wall to wall propaganda that the U.S. & E.U. dole out. How can one lie to a crown that is deaf & dumb…????
Maybe to a clown…?????
Erdogan blackmailed him. In exchange for letting Sweden join NATO Erdogan got Biden to shut up about Turkey becoming large trade partner to Russia, importing and reselling Russian oil, having just opened Russia built nuclear power plant, opened several weapons coproduction factories in for Russian lucensed weapons, having two pipelines.from Russia bringing natural gas, that is then shipped accross Balkans to Europe, and yes, no more blackmailing Turkey over Russian A-400 missile defence system. Those blocked plane sales are no more blocked.
Did you read about Biden calling Erdogan while on the airplane heading into Europe to bribe him with the F16s and $11 B? All Biden knows is Mafia techniques like bribe and threaten. The US media forgets about projecting “moral superiority,” while celebrating Biden’s corruption as “American diplomacy.” Even with all the “Turkish economy in bad shape” cover, Erdogan will probably regret it as the saying goes, “with friends like these, who needs enemies?”
You can’t project ‘moral superiority’ when you’re morally bankrupt as your nation is being run by a bunch of psychopaths.
I totally agree. But it is so engrained in us. All my friends and family feel we are a wonderful gift to the world–not a curse. I’m really serious.
Understood. As I and many others have pointed out, when they control the educational system, the MSM, the courts, the money, practically everything of importance, it’s not that difficult to shape the message to the ‘public’, and really the people in large measure have been so dumbed down and indoctrinated to believe the b.s. put out by the government. ‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell does a pretty good job of describing how those in power operate.
If George Orwell was alive, he would be in jail with Assange.
HERE, HERE… A real low blow against the true evil at work.. A Good laugh too!!!!
I have the same family problem, Biden lovers…!!!!!! Clinton & Nuland too. Do they get all their information from StormFront and NPR??? Jewish and those who have learned to love the Nazis, like Nuland, Clinton & Piatt! War makes strange bed fellows & gals too. New York Times article: “Nuance Is Difficult When It Involves Nazis, a Museum Finds.” “The exhibit at the Resistance Museum in Amsterdam was designed to be a more nuanced look at Dutch wartime experiences, but it has been accused of downplaying the heroism of some and the sins of others. To the surprise of officials at the museum, known in Dutch as the Verzetsmuseum, their effort to reframe perspectives has touched a sensitive nerve among many Dutch people. Some feel the exhibit doesn’t adequately promote the heroism of the resistance. Others argue that it fails to adequately distinguish between good and bad behavior, presenting each as the possible outcome of the horrible pressures of war.
This sounds like some feeble attempts to reframe and humanize the Nazis and promote comety with the “nice Nazis” in Ukraine fighting the “Evil Russians.” Very similar to the way the press in the U.S. went out of their way to “balance” their reporting on the prisoners in Abu Ghraib with their reporting on the torturers, who to this day have largely escaped any justice or identified. The whitewash of former enemies when they b-cum allies is as old as war itself and just as sad.
I’m not sure which Russian official said it, but they were absolutely and 200% correct: “Europe will never forgive Russia for defeating the Nazis.”
Reservists ought not be needed, ought not to be used, for normal peacetime operations.
We are told this is peacetime, that the US is not in this war. Apparently it is, and we are lied to. Again.
Even in “normal peacetime operations,” there are always some reservists on temporary active duty for this or that. It became a lot more common after Desert Storm, when many of the hundreds of thousands of reservists who were activated and deployed for that decided they liked doing stuff more than one weekend a month and two weeks a year and the military responded by giving them opportunities to do so.
I liked the Marine Corps better than my “day job,” but they wouldn’t take reservists for full active duty pumps, so I volunteered for a number of ad hoc border patrol/counter-narcotics type missions that the active side didn’t want to staff, and went to several schools (for example, I got qualified for NBC monitor/survey, and as a marksmanship instructor, in addition to my primary 0341 MOS). I was supposed to go to Gitmo to guard Haitian refugees during one of the big boatlifts, but that got canceled (the day after I got something like 41 shots because my vax record had been lost and I had to have the overseas battery again). I probably spent at least four months per year on active duty in 1992, 1993, and 1994.
Didn’t Bosh send US National Guard to Iraq and/or Afghanistan ?
There were certainly National Guard troops in the 1991 war, as well as reserve units (including mine). I personally knew reservists who were called up for Afghanistan and Iraq, but I don’t know for sure about Guard units. I think so, since there’s a “Defend the Guard” bill going around to stop that.
“The mobilization of 3,000 reservists signals the US military is strained by maintaining a large troops presence in Europe.”
Er, no. They’ve been mobilizing reservists on and off since 1990, and in MUCH larger quantities than 3,000 (which if the mobilization was by unit would barely be two infantry regiments).
Clue:
“A spokesman for US European Command (EUCOM) said the authority will ‘not change current force-posture levels,’ suggesting the reservists might be used to rotate other troops out of Europe.”
If they activate any Selected Reserve units, the activation will likely be for 179 days or less for each unit (once a reservist has accrued 180 days of consecutive active duty, they qualify for extra benefits that they don’t get if they were always just a “weekend warrior”). They’ll put them in place of an active duty unit that’s not up to anything really important anyway, giving that active duty unit a few months of time back in the US to use up accrued leave, get some refresher training and re-outfitting, etc., then send them back and bring the reservists home.
The executive order specifies not more than 3,000 members “at any one time,” and not more than 450 from the Individual Ready Reserve.
The mobilized IRR troops will likely be various specialists who are always in short supply, because they do their active duty commitment and don’t re-enlist. The IRR is where they stick you when you’ve fulfilled your commitment to active duty or to Selected Reserve “weekend warrior” drilling.
Back when I was in, an enlistment was for eight years — six on active or drilling status, two in the IRR, which meant only that you had to keep them informed of where you were living in case they wanted you back.
With a number like 450, they aren’t going to be calling up grunts as combat replacements or whatever. They’re going to be calling up nuclear reactor techs, computer types, etc.
For purposes of comparison, the call-up number for Operation Desert Storm was 200,000, and for the first five years of the “war on terror” came to more than half a million. Three thousand neither an escalation of any note, nor a sign of “strain.” It’s “we’ve been doing this for a year, let’s get some temps in here so the full-timers can take a break back in the US instead of continuing to rack up months of accrued leave, delayed non-emergency medical procedures, and worn-out gear.”
I got lost in the technical details, but to be on the safe side, I’ll assume it’s worse than I originally thought.
OK, I’ll give you the TL:DR:
It’s what some people would refer to as a “nothingburger.”
They’ve been doing this on a much larger scale for 30 years.
The only respect in which it might be a “somethingburger” is if it’s just the first trial balloon prior to a larger mobilization. When I saw “activating reservists,” I immediately thought “oh, shit,” too, but the details say it’s “meh.”
Thanks, Thomas. That was more clear because I know the difference between burgers and $hit. LOL
It would be a something burger at 50,000.
Maybe & 100,000 for sure. Dont forget Putin put 140,000 on Ukier border, but did not even get an agreement to talk. Want action try 500,000
There aren’t very many nice things about “US-led coalitions,” including but not limited to NATO actions.
But there is one: The US is always expected to contribute the vast bulk of the troops involved, while its “partners” contribute token numbers, or even just equipment and stuff.
So it’s probably reasonable to gauge how close the US is to really kicking off a conventional war by how many troops it’s putting somewhere and whether it’s calling up large numbers of reserve and/or National Guard personnel.
I agree that 50-100k would indicate something big was coming (and I’m always watching for that — I have a small network of old Marine Corps friends who let me know if their old units get called up for anything, for example).
3k is more similar to how the food plant I used to work at would do things. In order to be a union member, you had to have been there for 90 days. So around the beginning of the summer, when they knew a bunch of people would be taking vacation, they’d hit up a temp agency for some workers who were told in advance the job would last 89 days. The only difference is that the factory would just take anyone and throw them into one of the least-skilled jobs, while this does involve already trained personnel.
Thank you, this helps. At the moment nothingburger. Worth watching. But with election cycle getting into gear,, do not think much will happen.
“The Pentagon said the reservists will support Operation Atlantic Resolve, the name for US military activities in Europe that have come in response to events in Ukraine since 2014…”
If it’s nothing out of the ordinary, why mention this specific operation as the reason?
Because presidential executive orders mobilizing troops are generally tied to existing things — previous executive orders, legislation, declarations of war, states of emergency, etc. — for everything from reporting them to Congress, to determining who the deployed troops report to, to determining where the money comes from to pay for them.
Here’s Biden’s message reporting the action and its justification to Congress.
By tying the deployment to Operation Atlantic Resolve, which has been going on for nine years now, Biden is specifying that it will be funded through the Pentagon’s “European Deterrence Initiative” budget line, that the troops involved will report to a particular HQ for orders (EDI probably has its offices at US European Command in Stuttgart, but I don’t know for sure), etc.
What would be OUT of the ordinary is if Biden announced a new operation with a new title. This is “I’m hiring a few people for third shift at the restaurant we run,” not “I’m launching a new fast food chain.”
Basically, expect to hear of a loved one dying in an. accidental shelling in the near future.
Ok, Anal Yzer
Too bad you don’t have any loved ones…
In a somewhat related post, the U.S. military is having trouble meeting its recruitment goals. Really? With the political correctness virus having affected almost everything in the U.S., including the new modern military, it’s no surprise that the military is having trouble getting enough bodies willing to volunteer. They may need another huge event in the states to try to get the population to ‘rally round the flag’, although I doubt it would have the same effect as the last event in 2001, as things have changed much since Boy George Bush was in office. Possible draft reinstated?
The military has been politically correct for as long as the military has existed. It tends to reflect the society around it. When I was in, it was bellyaching about “don’t ask, don’t tell,” having to annually take eight hours of classroom “training” about how it’s wrong to grab someone’s ass at work after Tailhook, etc.
I have family that recently retired from the military and he’s indicated that there’s a ton of people wanting to get out as soon as possible primarily because of all the ‘new’ mandated training and the ‘hate whitey’ attitude that now exists in the military as well.
Yep. Your family member is correct.
What your family member may or may not have mentioned is that that’s how it was when I got out in 1995, and when my brother retired a few years later, and when my grandfather mustered out of the Navy in 1946, and probably on December 4, 1783 when George Washington bid farewell to the Continental Army at Fraunces Tavern.
Can’t say I can comment if things were the same when General George Washington was riding Blueskin, a little before my time.
Here’s the thang, Bill. It’s my belief that some of those willing to enter the service are just too damn fat. Not trying to body-shame anyone, but when I was young, overweight people barely existed, let alone obese ones.
I’m guessing that the military has weight standards. And here in Amerikkka, overweight is the new norm. Chris Christie would certainly be an appropriate visual example of the Amerikkkan people.
By all means, fat shaming is necessary. When my wife fat shamed me for 6 months, I did what it needed to be done to shut her trap.
Lol! Luckily I weigh exactly five pounds more than I did in high school…farming, cutting hay, landscaping and caring for livestock does for ya 😉
You wouldn’t believe what a workout it is currying a horse that’s rolled in the mud…or shedding out her winter coat.
Yes, you are right. I read an article that said a pretty significant portion of young recruits aren’t physcially able to complete basic training.
Someone — it may have been you — was saying the other day that the military is advertising to geezer veterans on Facebook, telling them it’s “never too late” to come back. So they may be taking, or preparing to take, 80-year-old food blisters on mobility scooters, who did two years in the Army between the Korea and Vietnam wars, and offering them military pay and benefits to do simple admin, maintenance, and such so that they can slot what 18-year-olds they DO manage to attract into combat arms jobs. They’re already on Social Security, so it’s not like they aren’t already collecting government checks.
No, wasn’t me on that one.
I did about a week or two ago. My guess was us older folk could man the non combat roles while the young-uns sacrificed life and limb. At least until they ran out of the younger ones….
When you hit Marine Corp boot camp, you won’t leave there until you are physically fit; at least that’s how it was during Nam.. I went in at 245 lb, and came out at 165..
It was certainly that way as of 1985 — I weighed 138 pounds when I got to boot camp, and 155 when I got out. Muscle weighs more than flab.
Larry Johnson has reported that it seems Biden is preparing for the US to go to war with Russia. According to Johnson, this is the scariest time in his life. Worse than the Cuban missile crisis. All of these escalations made by the US will be met in kind by Russia.
Makes sense, he’s trying really hard to start WWIII, he’s eventually going to need soldiers to fight it.
More nonsense by Biden. The US has been rotating reserves through Europe for years. It’s not new or unprecedented, as this trainwreck administration would have us believe.
Also there are not 100,000 ‘troops’ in Europe. Most are non combat personnel in the world’s most bloated, inefficient military.
Putting all US combat ready troops together in Europe is difficult but the true number is closer to 30,000-45,000. US forces pose no threat to the Russian military (there are now ~500,000 Russian troops ready to go into Ukraine), which are superior on every measure.
In fact, the American military in Europe is not just woefully unprepared for a hot conventional war against Russia, but would have been savaged by Ukraine’s army as it existed in Feb 2022, which was annihilated by Russian military forces by June 2022.
How could the democratic party establishment could pick a demented man like Biden for president. Do they really want to reelect that train wreck of an administration in the next election? Would this nation be that crazy and reelect such a miserably failed demented war monger again?
The criminal US/NATO syndicate is the real global danger. Western democracies are governed by insanely criminal minds. People without morals or a sense of humanity. They are brutal and ruthless people.
No, he said Putin already lost the war in Iraq.
RASPUTIN!
https://youtu.be/DrtgtHOrP94
stupid MFs
So let’s do a thought exercise.
1. Half of America thinks the 2020 election was fraudulent.
2. If it was then there is NO valid elected President and Commander in Chief.
3. Therefore, any order from an illegitimate usurper is not valid.
4. An illegal order should be ignored!
FJB
The party in power doesn’t give a damn about the Constitution unless it benefits them somehow, and with the Deep State all in on protecting the Biden Crime Family, it doesn’t matter how many illegal or unconstitutional acts they commit, whether legally or illegally they don’t care as long as they can push their radical agenda through. The American people in great measure have been so emasculated, and so dependent upon government handouts, that they won’t raise a fuss about anything that the party in power does. But that’s not excusing the other party, in reality, we have one party and they’re both all in on war and measures that increase their power and control.
The Deep State doesn’t give a damn one way or another about the Biden Crime Family.
In fact, the Deep State doesn’t give a damn one way or another about anything, because the Deep State is an aggregate entity composed of many people with similar but not identical incentives rather than a single over-arching conspiracy with specific goals or an “agenda,” radical or otherwise.
The Deep State is all those regime employees who don’t automatically change from election to election. Individually, their main incentive/goal is to keep their jobs (including getting promoted) and the powers that go with those jobs. In the aggregate, the incentives are 1) to maintain the status quo, and 2) to increase the discretionary power of the state.
True points.
LOL Russian soldiers are becoming battle hardened American week end soldiers will be cannon fodder , and like the rest of the NATO LACKEYS without air supremacy they won`t put boots on the ground , every war NATO has fought in the last 25 plus years they have had the skies to them selves not any more , America has done it`s best to create a no fly zone over Ukraine which has had some success but with the introduction of drones it`s advantage Russia .