But this month has brought even more dramatic and dangerous news.
The Pentagon has authorized the completion of a $6.5 billion arms
deal with Taiwan with an agreement to deliver 200 Patriot Advanced
Capability anti-ballistic missiles.
The Peoples Republic of China is infuriated, as Washington would
be if the situation were reversed and Beijing provided a comparable
arsenal of weapons to, for example, an independent Puerto Rico. [5]
As though that action was not provocative enough however, on January
20 the Polish Defense Ministry announced that a U.S. Patriot missile
battery, and the 100 American soldiers who will operate it, would
not be based on the outskirts of the capital of Warsaw as previously
announced but in the Baltic Sea city of Morag, 35 miles [6] from
Polands border with Russia.
The Mayans said that as we approach 2012, time will speed up, a
year will pass in a day. Here we have yet one more impending crisis.
I can't keep up.
rkm _______
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17169
Dangerous Crossroads: U.S. Moves Missiles And Troops To Russian
Border Nuclear and Conventional Arms Pacts Stalled
By Rick Rozoff
Global Research<http://www.globalresearch.ca/>, January 23, 2010
Stop
NATO<http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/u-s-missile-shield-system-dep
loyments-larger-sooner-broader>
2010 is proceeding in a manner more befitting the third month of
the year, named after the Roman god of war, than the first whose
name is derived from a pacific deity.
On January 13 the Associated Press reported that the White House
will submit its Quadrennial Defense Review to Congress on February
1 and request a record-high $708 billion for the Pentagon. That
figure is the highest in absolute and in inflation-adjusted, constant
(for any year) dollars since 1946, the year after the Second World
War ended. Adding non-Pentagon defense-related spending, the total
may exceed $1 trillion.
The $708 billion includes for the first time monies for the wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq which in prior years were in part funded
by periodic supplemental requests, but excludes what the above-mentioned
report adds is the first in the new administrations emergency
requests for the same purpose:
A purported $33 billion.
Already this month several NATO nations have pledged more troops,
even before the January 28 London conference on Afghanistan when
several thousand additional forces may be assigned for the war
there, in addition to over 150,000 already serving or soon to serve
under U.S. and NATO command.
Washington has increased lethal drone missile attacks in Pakistan,
and calls for that model to be replicated in Yemen have been made
recently, most notably by Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate
Armed Services Committee, who on January 13 also advocated air
strikes and special forces operations in the country. [1]
The Pentagon will begin the deployment of 1,400 personnel to Colombia
to man seven new bases under a 10-year military agreement signed
last October 30.
[2]
This year the U.S. will also complete the $110 million dollar
construction of new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania to house
at least 4,000 American troops. [3]
The Pentagons newest regional command, Africa Command, will expand
its activities on and off the coasts of that continent beyond current
counterinsurgency operations in Somalia, Mali and Uganda and drone
flights from a newly acquired site in Seychelles. [4]
But this month has brought even more dramatic and dangerous news.
The Pentagon has authorized the completion of a $6.5 billion arms
deal with Taiwan with an agreement to deliver 200 Patriot Advanced
Capability anti-ballistic missiles.
The Peoples Republic of China is infuriated, as Washington would
be if the situation were reversed and Beijing provided a comparable
arsenal of weapons to, for example, an independent Puerto Rico. [5]
As though that action was not provocative enough however, on January
20 the Polish Defense Ministry announced that a U.S. Patriot missile
battery, and the 100 American soldiers who will operate it, would
not be based on the outskirts of the capital of Warsaw as previously
announced but in the Baltic Sea city of Morag, 35 miles [6] from
Polands border with Russia.
The missile battery and troops are scheduled to arrive in March or
April. As part of the Obama administrations new missile shield
project, one which will be integrated with NATO to take in all of
Europe and extend into the Middle East and the Caucasus, the Patriots
will be followed by Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptor deployments
on warships in the Baltic Sea and, for the first time ever, a
land-based version of the same. The Pentagon will deploy command
posts of SM-3 missiles, which can intercept both short- and mid-range
missiles. [7] An SM-3 was used by the Pentagon to shoot a satellite
out of orbit in February of 2008 to give an indication of its range.
Further deployments will follow.
The new, post-George W. Bush administration, interceptor missile
system will employ existing missile systems based on land and at
sea.Deployment of the revised missile defense would extend through
2020. The first step is to put existing sea-based weapons systems
on Aegis-class destroyers and cruisers.
[8]
Subsequently, a mobile radar system would be deployed in a European
nation.More advanced, mobile systems would be put in place later
elsewhere in Europe. Their centerpiece would beLockheeds Terminal
High Altitude Defense interceptor missiles and improved Standard
Missile-3 IB missiles made byRaytheon. [9]
Last December Washington signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)
that formalizes plans for the United States military to station
American troops and military equipment on Polish territory and opens
the way for the promised Patriot missiles and US troops to be
stationed in Polandas part of an upgrading of NATO air defences in
Europe. [10]
In October, shortly after U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden visited
Warsaw to finalize the plan, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Stanislaw
Komorowski met with his opposite number from the U.S., Assistant
Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Alexander
Vershbow, and announced that the American missiles will be combat-ready,
not dummy varieties as Washington earlier suggested. The same report
added that Earlier, Ukrainian and American officials stated that
Ukrainian territory may be used in some way in the new antimissile
shield. [11] Poland borders Russias Kaliningrad enclave, but Ukraine
has a 1,576 kilometer (979 mile) border with Russia.
The State Department issued a press release on the agreement to
deploy American troops to Poland, the first foreign forces to be
based there since the end of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, which stated
The agreement will facilitate a range of mutually agreed activities
including joint training and exercises, deployments of U.S. military
personnel, and prospective Ballistic Missile Defense deployments.
[12]
A Pentagon spokesperson said U.S. Army Europe will help the Polish
Armed Forces develop their air and missile defense capabilities.
Considering the cooperative training we already do with the Polish
Armed Forces, this Patriot training program is just another extension
of that effort. [13]
If earlier plans to deploy ground-based midcourse missiles to Poland
evoked, however implausibly, an alleged Iranian missile threat, the
Patriots can only be meant for Russia.
Russian Lieutenant-General Aitech Bizhev, former commander of the
United Air Defense System of the Commonwealth of Independent States,
told one of his nations main news agencies:
Its completely unclear why the air defense group of the northern
flank of NATO needed strengthening NATO has manifold superiority
over Russian conventional armaments as it is.
It cant be ruled out that the stationing of the Patriots in Poland
may be followed by other actions in building up the American military
infrastructure in Eastern Europe. [14]
The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) on the Reduction
and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms expired on December 5
and has been extended, but no agreement has been reached on a new
pact, 48 days later.
At the end of last year Russias Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was
asked about the delay and identified the main impediment to resolving
it: What is the problem? The problem is that our American partners
are building an anti-missile shield and we are not building one.
He further defined the problem: If we are not developing an
anti-missile shield, then there is a danger that our partners, by
creating such an umbrella, will feel completely secure and thus can
allow themselves to do what they want, disrupting the balance, and
aggressiveness will rise immediately.
In respect to how prospects for the reduction, much less elimination,
of nuclear arms in Europe and North America were faring, Putin
added, In order to preserve balancewe need to develop offensive
weapons systems, [15] reiterating a statement by his nations
president, Dmitry Medvedev, a week before. The timing of the
announcement that the Pentagon will soon station Patriot missiles
so close to Russian territory will not help matters. Nor was the
State Departments contention that the START follow-on agreement is
not the appropriate vehicle for addressing the issue of missile
offense and defense. [16]
A month before, Russian news media revealed that Russias Strategic
Missile Forces (SMF), the land-based component of the nuclear triad,
will put on combat duty a second regiment equipped with Topol-M
mobile missile systems by the end of 2009.
The Topol-M missile, with a range of about 7,000 miles (11,000 km),
is said to be immune to any current and future U.S. ABM [Anti-Ballistic
Missile] defense. It is capable of making evasive maneuvers to avoid
a kill using terminal phase interceptors [for example Patriot
missiles], and carries targeting countermeasures and decoys. [17]
Just as supplying Taiwan with Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3)
theater anti-ballistic missiles led China to conduct a ground-based,
midcourse missile interception on January 11, so moving U.S. military
hardware and troops nearer Russia bodes poorly for a nuclear arms
reduction agreement.
On the non-strategic front, the 1990 Treaty On Conventional Armed
Forces in Europe (CFE) limiting the amount and expansion of major
armaments on the continent is also seriously jeopardized by U.S.
and NATO missile shield plans.
The adapted CFE (Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional
Armed Forces in Europe) of 1999 has not been ratified by any member
of NATO, which has linked it with so-called frozen conflicts in the
former Soviet Union. The August 2008 Georgia-Russia war was a
consequence of that obstructionist and belligerent policy. The
establishment of permanent U.S. and NATO military bases in Kosovo,
Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania and now Poland is a gross violation
of and may prove the death knell for the CFE.
Russia suspended the observance of its treaty obligations under the
CFE on July 14, 2007 because of extraordinary circumstanceswhich
affect the security of the Russian Federation and require immediate
measures. [18]
The circumstances alluded to were the U.S. project of establishing
missile interception facilities in Eastern Europe and the general
movement of NATO bases and forces to the Baltic and Black Sea
regions.
On November 29 of last year Russia released a draft of a proposal
for a new European security agreement the Kremlin says should replace
outdated institutions such as NATO and the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). [19]
Chinese analysts Yu Maofeng and Lu Jingli contend that Moscow was
motivated by its concerns over U.S. and NATO missile plans, NATOs
eastward expansion to its borders, the 1999 war against Yugoslavia,
Western-sponsored color revolutions in other former Soviet states
and NATO members non-ratification of the Treaty On Conventional
Armed Forces in Europe. [20]
For the past thirty years each successive American president has
unveiled an ostensible plan to eliminate nuclear weapons, if none
before now has received the Nobel Peace Prize while in office [21].
Each in turn then escalated reckless arms buildups and armed
aggression abroad in an effort to achieve global military dominance.
The current U.S. commander-in-chief with his foreign policy entourage
of Robert Gates, James Jones and Hillary Clinton is no exception.
[22]
Notes
1) Yemen: Pentagons War On The Arabian Peninsula Stop NATO, December
15, 2009http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/yemen-pentagons-war-on-the...
-peninsula
2) Rumors Of Coups And War: U.S., NATO Target Latin America Stop
NATO, November 18, 2009http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/rumors-of-coups-and-war-u-...
arget-latin-america
3) Bulgaria, Romania: U.S., NATO Bases For War In The East Stop
NATO, October 24, 2009http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/bulgaria-romania-u-s-nato-...
r-war-in-the-east
4) AFRICOM Year Two: Seizing The Helm Of The Entire World Stop NATO,
October 22, 2009http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/africom-year-two-taking-th...
f-the-entire-world
5) U.S.-China Military Tensions Grow Stop NATO, January 19, 2010http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/u-s-china-military-tension...
6) New York Times, January 21, 2010
7) Voice of Russia, December 14, 2009
8) U.S. Missile Shield System Deployments: Larger, Sooner, Broader
Stop NATO, September 27, 2009 Black Sea, Caucasus: U.S. Moves Missile
Shield South And East Stop NATO,September 19, 2009http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/283U.S. Expands Global
Missile Shield Into Middle East, Balkans Stop NATO, September 11,
2009http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/u-s-expands-global-missile...
into-middle-east-balkans
9) Bloomberg News, January 14, 2010
10) Polish Radio, December 11, 2009
11) Russia Today, October 16, 2009
12) Stars and Stripes, December 21, 2009
13) Ibid
14) Interfax Ukraine, January 20, 2010
15) Reuters, December 29, 2009
16) Ibid
17) Russian Information Agency Novosti, November 18, 2009
18) Time, July 14, 2007
19) Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, November 30, 2009
20) Strategic considerations behind Russian proposal for new European
security treaty Xinhua News Agency, December 1, 2009http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-12/02/content_12571639.htm
21) Obama Doctrine: Eternal War For Imperfect Mankind Stop NATO,
December 10, 2009http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/obama-doctrine-eternal-war...
erfect-mankind
22) White House And Pentagon: Change, Continuity And Escalation
Stop NATO, March 19, 2009http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/white-house-and-pentagon-c...
ntinuity-and-escalation
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NATO<http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/u-s-missile-shield-system-dep
loyments-larger-sooner-broader>, 2010
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