Any US-Russian war is likely to quickly escalate into a nuclear war, since neither the US nor Russia would be willing to admit defeat, both have many thousands of nuclear weapons ready for instant use, and both rely upon Counterforce military doctrine that tasks their military, in the event of war, to preemptively destroy the nuclear forces of the enemy.
RAPA provides de facto NATO membership for Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova via RAPA
The Russian Aggression Prevention Act, or RAPA, “Provides major non-NATO ally status for Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova for purposes of the transfer or possible transfer of defense articles or defense services.” Major non-NATO ally status would for practical purposes give NATO membership to these nations, as it would allow the US to move large amounts of military equipment and forces to them without the need for approval of other NATO member states. Thus RAPA would effectively bypass long-standing
German opposition to the US request to make Ukraine and Georgia part of NATO.
Germans rightly fear placing US/NATO troops and US Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) in Ukraine, given the profound and
long-standing Russian objections against the expansion of NATO (especially to
Ukraine and Georgia) along with deployment of European
US/NATO BMD. Germany is acutely aware of the distinct possibility that the civil war raging in Ukraine could evolve into a Ukrainian-Russian war. Under such circumstances, deployment of US/NATO forces in Ukraine would make it virtually inevitable they would come into fight with Ukraine against Russia.
RAPA would accelerate the “implementation of phase three of the European Phased Adaptive Approach for Europe-based missile defense . . . by no later than the end of calendar year 2016.” In 2012, Russia’s highest ranking military officer stated that
Russia might consider a pre-emptive strike against such BMD deployments “when the situation gets harder.”
RAPA “Directs DOD [US Department of Defense] to assess the capabilities and needs of the Ukrainian armed forces” and “Authorizes the President, upon completion of such assessment, to provide specified military assistance to Ukraine.” RAPA would have the US quickly supply Ukraine with
$100 million worth of weapons and equipment, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, crew weapons, grenade launchers, machine guns, ammunition, and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles.
RAPA requires the Obama administration to
“use all appropriate elements of United States national power…to protect the independence, sovereignty, and territorial and economic integrity of Ukraine and other sovereign nations in Europe and Eurasia from Russian aggression.” This includes “substantially increasing United States and NATO support for the armed forces of the Republics of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia,” and “substantially increasing the complement of forward-based NATO forces in those states.”
Consequently, RAPA would produce significant buildups of US/NATO forces into Poland and the Baltic States, accelerate the construction of US BMD systems in Eastern Europe, and authorize substantial U.S. intelligence and military aid for Ukrainian military forces that continue to lay siege to the largest cities in Eastern Ukraine. If RAPA did not result in the deployment of US forces to Ukraine, it would certainly position them for rapid deployment there, in the event that the Ukrainian civil war escalates into a Ukrainian-Russian conflict.
RAPA intensifies support for ethnic cleansing in Eastern Ukraine
In Russia,
Putin now is under intense domestic political pressure to send Russian forces into Eastern Ukraine, in order to stop the attacks by the Ukrainian military on the cities there, which were once part of the Soviet Union.These attacks have created an absolute humanitarian catastrophe.
On August 5, 2014, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that
740,000 Eastern Ukrainians had fled to Russia. They go there because Russia is close, and because most of the refugees are ethnic Russians, a fact that explains why the
Russophobes in Kiev have been quite willing to indiscriminately bombard their cities.
What is taking place in Eastern Ukraine amounts to “ethnic cleansing,” the forced removal of ethnic Russians from Eastern Ukraine. This is a process that is
fully supported by the US; RAPA would greatly enhance this support.
Ukrainian military forces have surrounded
Donetsk – a city of almost one million people – and have for weeks conducted daily attacks against it using inaccurate
multiple-launch rockets, heavy artillery fire,
ballistic missiles carrying warheads with up to 1000 pounds of high explosive, and
aerial bombardments. Water supplies, power plants, train stations, airports, bridges, highways, and schools have all been targeted, along with the
general population. In
Lugansk, a city of more than 440,000 people, a humanitarian crisis has been declared by its mayor, because the siege of the city has left it with
little medicine, no fuel,
intermittent power, and no water since August 3 (three weeks at the time of this writing).
After the separatists of Eastern Ukraine demanded autonomy from Kiev, and then reunion with Russia, the government in Kiev branded them as “terrorists”, and sent its military forces against them in what they euphemistically call an “
anti-terrorist operation.” Framing the conflict this way makes it politically acceptable to refuse to negotiate with the separatists, and easier to justify in the US and Europe, which have grown accustomed to “the War on Terrorism.” However, the thousands of Ukrainians being killed and hundreds of thousands of being driven from their homes are just ordinary people, trying to live ordinary lives.
The New York
Times reports the Ukrainian military strategy has been to bombard separatist-held cities and then send paramilitary forces to carry out “chaotic, violent assaults” against them. Many of the Ukrainian paramilitary forces were recruited from
ultra-nationalist,
neo-Nazi political parties; the
Azov battalion flies the “
Wolfs Hook” flag of Hitler’s SS divisions. Considering that more than 20 million Russians died fighting the Nazis during World War II, the presence of openly Nazi militias attacking ethnic Russians in Ukraine creates extreme anger in Russia.
RAPA supports plans in Kiev for an attack on Crimea
The Russian Aggression Prevention Act demands that Russia “withdraw from the eastern border of Ukraine,” which is by definition, the Russian border. In other words, RAPA provocatively demands that Russia remove its own military forces away from its own borders, while Ukrainian military forces are meanwhile massed on the other side, attacking predominantly Russian cities.
RAPA also demands that “Russian forces must have withdrawn from Crimea within seven days of the enactment of the Act.” Not likely to happen, given that
(1) Crimea was part of the Russian empire from 1783 until 1954,
(2) withdrawal from Crimea would require Russia to abandon its only warm water port at Sevastopol, where Russian forces have been based, by internationally recognized
treaty, since 1997, and
(3)
more than three-quarters of all Crimeans voted “yes” to reunify with Russia, a vote which Russia accepted by its subsequent annexation of Crimea.
Thus, in the eyes of Russia, the requirement to “withdraw from Crimea” amounts to a US demand that Russia surrender Russian territory.
Putin has just taken the entire Russian Duma (the Russian House of Representatives) to Crimea, to address them there and strongly make the point that there will be no withdrawal from Crimea.
RAPA, however, stipulates that the US does not recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea, and creates sanctions and legal penalties for anyone who does. RAPA therefore provides both military and political support for
Ukrainian President Poroshenko’s stated goat that Ukraine will retake Crimea.
This goal was recently echoed by the Ukrainian defense minister, who was applauded by the Ukrainian Parliament when he told them that the Ukrainian army will “have a
victory parade in Sevastopol“. These statements are taken seriously in Moscow, where they are viewed as a promise to attack Russia. Thus,
Putin’s advisers are telling him he must fight today in Eastern Ukraine, or tomorrow in Crimea.
Any Russian military intervention in Eastern Ukraine would certainly be described in the West as Russian aggression in pursuit of empire, which would trigger deafening demands that US/NATO forces act to support Ukraine. Should NATO intervene, subsequent Russian military action against any NATO member would trigger the alliance’s Chapter 5 mutual defense clause, committing it to war with Russia.
Any major Ukrainian attack upon Crimea would make war with Russia inevitable. Ukraine appears to be preparing for such an assault by drafting all men of ages 18 to 60 years, in a
forced mobilization of its armed forces, which also includes calling up its active reserves of
one million men, and bringing more than
1000 battle tanksout of storage. Putin is being told by his close advisers that
Ukraine will have an army of half a million men in 2015.
RAPA would provide hundreds of millions of dollars to train and arm the rapidly expanding Ukrainian armed forces, and position US/NATO forces for rapid intervention on the side of Ukraine in the event of a Ukrainian-Russian war. Thus, the many political and military provisions of RAPA would certainly act to fully encourage Ukraine to carry out its stated policy to retake Crimea. The
Republic of Georgia attacked Russian forces in 2008 with far fewer US promises of aid. Of course, RAPA would also arm Georgia, too.
RAPA moves the US towards nuclear war with Russia
A US/NATO-Russian war would instantly put US and Russian nuclear forces at peak alert, with both sides anticipating a nuclear first-strike from the other. Both the
US and
Russia have changed their nuclear war-fighting plans to include the use of preemptive nuclear first-strikes; both nations have “tactical” nuclear weapons designed for battlefield use.
The
US has 180 B61 nuclear bombs deployed on six military bases of five other NATO states, which would be released to these NATO members in the event of a US/NATO-Russian war.
Russia also has at least 1300 tactical nuclear weapons, and
Russian war doctrine specifies their use against overwhelming conventional (NATO) forces. Any use of “tactical” or “battlefield” nuclear weapons, by either side, would likely trigger an equal or greater response from the other.
During the first Cold War, the US studiously avoided any direct military confrontation with Russia, because it was widely thought that such a war would inevitably escalate to become a nuclear war – which would utterly destroy both nations. However, there seems to be little thought or discussion of this in the US today, despite the fact that both the US and Russia appear to be preparing for such a war.
In May, the increasing tensions in Ukraine led both nations to almost simultaneously conduct
large nuclear war games. Long-range
Russian nuclear bombers tested US air defenses16 times in a ten day period (July 29 – August 7). US and Russian leaders are either unaware or choose to ignore the fact that such “games” and “tests” are a dress rehearsal for human extinction.
Peer-reviewed
scientific studies predict the environmental consequences of a war fought with only a fraction of US and/or Russian strategic nuclear weapons would likely
wipe out the human race. Scientists predict that even a “successful” US nuclear first-strike, which destroyed 100% of Russia’s nuclear forces before they could be launched, would create catastrophic changes in global weather that would eliminate growing seasons for years. Most humans and large animals would starve to death.
Nuclear war is suicide for humans, but our leaders still have their fingers on the nuclear triggers. There seems to be absolutely
no awareness, either in our Federal government or in the American public, of the existential danger posed by nuclear war. Such ignorance is embodied by The Russian Aggression Prevention Act, which if enacted will put us on a direct course for nuclear war with Russia.
Steven Starr, Senior Scientist, Physicians for Social Responsibility
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Dangerous Crossroads: US-NATO To Deploy Ground Troops, Conduct Large Scale Naval Exercises against “Unnamed Enemy”
Global Research, August 24, 2014
The World is at a dangerous Crossroads.
The Western military alliance is in an advanced state of readiness. And so is Russia.
Russia is heralded as the “Aggressor”. US-NATO military confrontation with Russia is contemplated.
Enabling legislation in the US Senate under “The Russian Aggression Prevention Act” (RAPA) has “set the US on a path towards direct military conflict with Russia in Ukraine.”
Any US-Russian war is likely to quickly escalate into a nuclear war, since neither the US nor Russia would be willing to admit defeat, both have many thousands of nuclear weapons ready for instant use, and both rely upon Counterforce military doctrine that tasks their military, in the event of war, to preemptively destroy the nuclear forces of the enemy. (See Steven Starr, Global Research, August 22, 2014)
The Russian Aggression Prevention Act (RAPA) is the culmination of more than twenty years of US-NATO war preparations, which consist in the military encirclement of both Russia and China:
From the moment the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States has relentlessly pursued a strategy of encircling Russia, just as it has with other perceived enemies like China and Iran. It has brought 12 countries in central Europe, all of them formerly allied with Moscow, into the NATO alliance. US military power is now directly on Russia’s borders. (Steven Kinzer, Boston Globe, March 3, 2014, emphasis added)
NATO’s top commander in Europe General Philip Breedlove (right) (AFP Photo / John Thys)
On July 24, in consultation with the Pentagon, NATO’s Europe commander General Philip Breedlove called for “stockpiling a base in Poland with enough weapons, ammunition and other supplies to support a rapid deployment of thousands of troops against Russia”.(RT, July 24, 2014). According to General Breedlove, NATO needs “pre-positioned supplies, pre-positioned capabilities and a basing area ready to rapidly accept follow-on forces”:
“He plans to recommend placing supplies — weapons, ammunition and ration packs — at the headquarters to enable a sudden influx of thousands of Nato troops” (Times, August 22, 2014, emphasis added)
Breedlove’s “Blitzkrieg scenario” is to be presented at NATO’s summit in Wales in early September, according to The London Times. It is a “copy and paste” text broadly consistent with the Russian Aggression Prevention Act (RAPA) which directs President Obama to:
“(1) implement a plan for increasing U.S. and NATO support for the armed forces of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, and other NATO member-states; and
(2) direct the U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO to seek consideration for permanently basing NATO forces in such countries.” (S.2277 — 113th Congress (2013-2014))
More generally, a scenario of military escalation prevails with both sides involved in extensive war games.
In turn, the structure of US sponsored military alliances plays a crucial role in war planning. We are dealing with a formidable military force involving a global alliance of 28 NATO member states. In turn, the US as well as NATO have established beyond the “Atlantic Region” a network of bilateral military alliances with “partner” countries directed against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
Major US-NATO Naval Exercises
War preparations are invariably accompanied and preceded by major military exercises.
US-NATO multi-warfare naval exercises are to be conducted off the Florida coastline under operation FLEETEX, with the participation of the US, Canada, Germany and Turkey.
The underlying premise of these war games is “global warfare”. All four NATO member states are adjacent to strategic sea corridors, which are contiguous to Russian maritime areas, respectively the Bering Sea and straits (US), the Arctic Ocean (Canada), the North Sea (Germany) and the Black Sea (Turkey).
The Florida war games are predicated on multi-country integration and coordination of naval operations directed against an unnamed enemy:
FLEETEX are multi-warfare naval exercises designed to promote force integration and test multiple war fighting skill sets. Ships from the U.S., Canadian, German and Turkish navies will participate in the exercises. This port visit and FLEETEX are part of a series of training exercises in which SNMG2 will participate during its deployment to the Western Atlantic. This is the first time in several years that a NATO task force has conducted transatlantic operations in North America. These events offer multiple opportunities for training at the highest levels of maritime operations.
FLEETEX will feature anti-air, anti-submarine, live fire and ship handling scenarios designed to provide high-end warfare training and valuable experience through integrated task group training. SNMG2, CSG8 and Canadian forces will train together as a force to learn how to work as a cohesive unit in response to a variety of threat scenarios.
SNMG2 ships currently deployed to North America include the U.S. flagship, USS LEYTE GULF (CG 55), the German ship FGS NIEDERSACHSEN (F 208), and the Turkish ship TCG KEMALREIS (F 247).
….
During the port visit, SNMG2 will coordinate with representatives from the Canadian navy and Carrier Strike Group 8 (CSG8) to prepare for the exercises…
“Any opportunity we have to train with multiple NATO navies simultaneously is extremely valuable,” said Rear Adm. Brad Williamson, Commander SNMG2. “This period will allow us to build integration and teamwork, and I’m excited to train with and share experiences between Allied shipmates.”
SNMG2 is permanently available to NATO to perform a wide range of tasks, from real world operations to exercise participation. Composition of the force varies as allied nations contribute assets on a rotational basis. SNMG2 will be led by a U.S. Navy admiral and flagship until June 2015. (For further details see North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Allied Maritime Command HQ MARCOM Public Affairs Office, http://www.aco.nato.int/snmg2-is-in-florida-to-prepare-for-fleetex.aspx, August 18, 2014, emphasis added)
Black Sea War Games
It is worth noting that FLEETEX is one among several US-NATO naval war games directed against an unnamed enemy. In July, NATO conducted naval exercises in the Black sea, in an area contiguous to Russia’s maritime borders.
NATO’s “Breeze” formally hosted by Bulgaria took place from July 4 to July 13, with the participation of naval vessels from Greece, Italy, Romania, Turkey, the U.K. and the U.S.
The underlying scenario was the “”destruction of enemy ships in the sea and organization of air defense of naval groups and coastal infrastructure.”
The exercises were “aimed at improving the tactical compatibility and collaboration among naval forces of the alliance’s member states…” (See Atlantic Council , see also Russia, U.S. ships sail in competing Black Sea exercises, July 7, Navy Times 2014)
Ironically, NATO’s July Black Sea games started on exactly the same day as those of the “unnamed enemy”[Russia], involving its Crimea Black sea fleet of some 20 war ships and aircraft:
Russia has made it clear they don’t welcome NATO’s presence in the Black Sea. Russia’s navy let it be known that it is following the exercises with reconnaissance aircraft and surveillance ships.
“The aviation of the Black Sea Fleet is paying special attention to the missile cruiser USS Vella Gulf which, though not formally the flagship of the ‘Breeze’ exercises, effectively is leading them,” a Russian naval source told NTV. (Ibid)
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‘Most convincing evidence’: Russian embassy trolls NATO with toy tanks
Published time: September 04, 2014 20:15
Some of Russia’s diplomats have joined a digital diplomacy row as they trolled NATO by “leaking” on Twitter the alliance’s “most convincing evidence” of Russian troops’ alleged presence in Ukraine.
The Twitter account @RussEmbassyUAE, which is the official Twitter of the Russian Embassy in the United Arab Emirates, posted a picture of tiny toy trucks, tanks and armored vehicles all lined up on the ground, with the words: “#NATO’s latest evidence of #Russian armor invading #Ukraine has been leaked! Seems to be the most convincing ever!”
Users on the social media network seem to have liked the “toy tweet” – the picture was retweeted over 1,000 times and nearly 500 people added it to their “favorites.”
This is evidently a response to NATO’s release of satellite images described as a
“proof” of Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine.
A handout photo provided on August 28, 2014 by DigitalGlobe via NATO allegedly shows Russian military units moving in a convoy formation with self-propelled artillery in the area of Krasnodon, Ukraine (AFP Photo / HO / DigitalGlobe)
The images were ridiculed by Russia’s Defense Ministry, while an alliance of seven former US intelligence officers – the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) – said it was on a par with the“same dubious, politically ‘fixed’ kind used 12 years ago to ‘justify’ the US-led attack on Iraq.”
A digital “war” of maps and pictures first started on Twitter between Canada and Russia on August 27, when @Canada at NATO tweeted a map showing two bordering states – one part was labeled “Russia” while another, Ukraine, was labeled as “not Russia.”
Their Russian counterparts, @Russians at NATO, have hit back with their own map, where they clearly marked the disputed Crimea region as Russian territory.
This recent trolling of NATO coincides with the military alliance’s meeting in Wales, where Russian troops’ alleged presence in Ukraine is one of the key topics.
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