Western Europe through NATO and the E.U. forms the primary bridgehead of America into Eurasia.
According to Brzezinski: "[NATO and the E.U. constitute] America's most important global relationship. It is the springboard for U.S. global involvement, enabling America to play the decisive role of arbiter in Eurasia the world's central arena of power and it creates a coalition that is globally dominant in all key dimensions of power and influence." [1]
The secondary bridgeheads of America into Eurasia are: (1) Japan and South Korea; (2) the Arabian Peninsula; and (3) the U.S. and NATO military forces in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is why the expansion of the U.S. missile shield from a U.S. project to a NATO project should come as no surprise. The globalization of NATO isd part of that process. The inclusion of the missile shield project under the helm of NATO was already in the pipeline in the 1990s. In fact, the statements that NATO just adopted the missile shield project in 2010 are bold faced lies.
U.S. and NATO Missile Proliferation
Records of active NATO missile system proliferation go all the way back to 2006 with the Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence (ALTBMD) program. Within NATO, the U.S., Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and the Czech Republic have been working together for years in establishing a missile shield system. While Israel, India, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, and Ukraine under its former Orangist government have all been partners.
NATO even drafted a missile coordination policy in the same year as the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, 2003. The draft was ratified by NATO the next year, in 2004. France was also working on its own ballistic missile (SAMP-T) system, while the Dutch, Germans, and Americans were jointly developing the integrated Extended Air/Theater Missile systems through Project Optic Windmill.
"The Ring of Fire" and the New Iron Curtain: The Three Theatres of the Inter-Continental Missile Shield Project
The missile shield project is really a triad of three missile shields that form a global missile shield system surrounding Eurasia. The three theatre segments of the missile shield are based in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. East Asia includes both Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. Moreover, there are also overlapping zones that link the triad of missile shields. These are: (1) the Mediterranean, which links Europe and the Middle East; (2) the Indian Ocean, which links the Middle East and East Asia; and (3) North America.
North America acts as the strategic depth of this weapons system and in reality is its command centre. The system is linked to North American missile defences over the U.S., Canada, and Greenland. North America also serves to augment the missile systems in both East Asia and Europe.
While Iran has been cited as a justification for a missile shield in Europe, the location of military facilities in Greenland says something else. Geographically, Greenland is not a proper location to monitor any possible North Korean missile threat or located in the best place to monitor any possible Iranian missile threat. Greenland is ideal for monitoring Russian missiles that would travel over the Arctic Circle as the most logical route.
The European missile project is primarily aimed at Russia, while the East Asian missile project is aimed primarily at China under the pretext of defence against North Korea. The Middle Eastern portion of the missile project is in Israel and the Persian Gulf, hosted by countries like Saudi Arabia, and aimed at Iran and Syria. The establishment of a missile shield in Turkey will primarily be aimed against Iran and Syria and will also provide the cover for an Israeli attempt to attack Iran. In this context, many voices in Turkey have been raised in opposition to Turkish participation in the NATO missile shield project. This includes the leader of the People's Voice Party of Turkey who has said that the missile shield project could lead to World War III. [2]
From New Iron Curtain to Star Wars: The Militarization of Space
In regards to the Asiatic missile project, Australia has also been working with the U.S. and Japan. There is also a drive to raise a missile shield in South Asia with India. This effectively means that Eurasia would be encircled by a ring of missile systems.
This is also why Russia has been working closely with its allies in Kazakhstan, Belarus, and China on missile defences and China has developed a missile system that can destroy US-NATO satellites.
The multi-layered U.S. and NATO global missile shield system is tied into to the militarization of space.
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
NOTES
[1] Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Geostrategic Triad: Living with China, Europe, and Russia (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies Press, November 3, 2000), p.29.
[2] Serkan Demirtaş, "NATO shield could cause World War III, Turkish party leader says", Hürriyet Daily News and Economic Review, November 24, 2010.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
The policy of resetting relations with Russia, launched to help resolve other more acute problems, has become Obama's most successful foreign policy initiative. The ratification of the New START treaty, although it is more of a technical document than any kind of real breakthrough, is proof that the current U.S. administration can drive its point home.
The Senate was actually voting on who the boss is, rather than on anything to do with nuclear weapons cuts. The administration acted decisively and with real political mastery. But in 2011, the situation facing Obama will be much worse: the House of Representatives will be Republican-dominated and Democrats will hold only the slimmest of the majority in the Senate. However, the energetic efforts taken over the last few weeks have enabled the administration to curtail the feeling of creeping, imminent catastrophe created by the loss of the mid-term elections in November.
The ratification of the New START treaty will crown this reset policy. It is a tangible sign that the goals formulated 18 months ago have been attained. The new nuclear arms reduction treaty has been signed, sanctions against Iran introduced, cooperation in Afghanistan expanded, and tensions over the planned ballistic missile shield in Europe eased.
However, the past year and a half has witnessed a transition from deep crisis to a functional U.S.-Russian dialogue, and now both sides need a new forward-looking policy. They have created the atmosphere for it, with relations between their leaders now, for the first time in years, resembling something akin to trust.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pinpointed the main reason why U.S.-Russian relations have improved under Obama. He said in his final interview this year that Obama is "a leader who fulfills his promises."
Although Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton were thought to be on friendly terms, as were Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush, agreements reached under their various stewardships were not always honored.
The situation in the United States, however, is changing. Obama will have to work under pressure from Congress, and virtually no one in the current Republican leadership has a neutral, let alone positive, attitude to Russia. In other words, the president's good will, which thus far we have had no reason to doubt, may not be sufficient for his policy toward Russia to be continued.
Political obstacles are compounded by conceptual problems. Americans have proposed expanding arms control talks to include tactical nuclear weapons and restoring control over conventional forces in Europe. But this unnecessary remix of old discussions would only push the two countries deeper into the past.
The proposed talks are based on the obsolete principle of the balance of forces, whereas the time of confrontation between the two systems Moscow and Washington represent is over and cannot be restarted in its previous form. The START-3 treaty has in fact revived the principle of a "civilized confrontation" formulated by Ronald Reagan as "Doveryai, no proveryai" (Trust, but verify). It was therefore logical that the U.S. administration, when arguing for ratification, claimed the new treaty would aid the resumption of mutual inspections, which ended when START-1 expired. All other arguments nonproliferation, a nuclear free world, etc. are mere lip service.
The situation regarding the ballistic missile shield seems absurd. Judging by the debates in the U.S. Senate and the Russian State Duma, it has sowed the seeds of unending discord by fomenting political differences. The shield's latest trial failed (the second failure that year) even though the Pentagon has been accused of creating hothouse conditions for the tests. A report by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of
Congress charged with examining matters relating to the receipt and outlay of public funds, expressed its concern over the increase in spending on a project that has such an uncertain future.
So, should we fight over an illusion?
We cannot be sure about relations between Russia and the United States in the 21st century. At least the Cold War paradigm was clear-cut and understandable. START-3 is the last of the big treaties designed to regulate the two superpowers' rivalry in conditions when that very rivalry formed the backbone of global politics.
But the global situation has changed, and the international community is no longer tracking the ups and downs of U.S.-Russia talks. Iran and North Korea will attempt to produce their own nuclear bombs irrespective of how many missiles and warheads Russia or the United States may have, and China is steadily increasing its arsenal irrespective of what the nuclear giants do.
The U.S.-Russian relationship will only change when Moscow and Washington admit that much less depends on them in the world than they are accustomed to think, and that keeping the confrontations of yesteryear alive is actually a total waste of time and effort.
It is difficult to imagine Moscow and Washington as allies. But it would be unwise to rule out the possibility of any alliance in a world of such "mutable geometry," where the lineup of forces is not set in stone but is an ever-changing quality.
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"
Interview with Rick Rozoff, the manager of the Stop NATO website and mailing list and a contributing writer to Global Research.ca.
Standard Missile-3 launch
My first question regards Russia, and NATO, and the integrated ABM shield that Russia has been for want of a better word pushing for implementing a sectoral defence architecture, what Russia was looking for. What are the chances of this happening, in your opinion?
By all indications after the meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Sochi, there are no prospects of this occurring in terms of using your wording an integrated ABM system. NATO, with the US constantly barking orders at it, as it seems, is definitely opposed to a sectoral approach that would permit the integration of Russian interceptor missile, radar and other, operations within NATO.
NATO insists on doing it alone, if you will. And, as always when it makes overtures to Russia, bringing Moscow in as a junior partner. We have to recall that at the Lisbon Summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization last November the US missile system, what is called the Phased Adaptive Approach initiated by the Obama administration two years ago, has been endorsed heartily, that is unanimously, by NATO.
So, what we are talking about is a continuation of the US interceptor missile system in Europe, throughout Europe, covering the entire continent, excluding perhaps Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Overtures have been made for the last decade to try to enlist Ukraine as part of the NATO project. And those efforts are still not dead, if they haven't born fruit to date.
First of all, I think, at the root of this issue is what is the true intention of the so-called Aegis Ashore, or Phased Adaptive Approach the Obama administration and former Secretary of Defence Robert Gates' project which is a four-phased programme to bring Standard Missile-3 interceptors, which to date have been ship-based, and to place them on land.
The reports are, as the third and the fourth phases arrive in the upcoming years, that as many as 20 Standard Missile-3 advanced types will be placed each in Poland and Romania and that's in addition to the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 theatre interceptor missiles that are already placed in Poland. And then, of course, the ship-based versions on Aegis class cruisers and destroyers will be deployed as Washington sees fit in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and the Baltic Sea.
What we're seeing is an almost impenetrable missile shield being erected along the entire western flank of Russia. Russia is not allowed to be an integral part of that system and with projected or anticipated more sophisticated versions of the Standard Missile-3 that are able to intercept both intermediate and perhaps even long-range missiles, in the words of several Russian officials, civilian and military, this potentially threatens Russia's strategic interests.
So, you mean, is there any hope that they have been wrangling over this for a long time?
The fact is that Dmitry Medvedev became the first Russian or Soviet head of state ever to attend a NATO summit, as he did in Lisbon last November, while NATO was formally endorsing a continent-wide system that some people refer to as "Son of Star Wars".
Perhaps somebody in the Kremlin at that time had hopes that NATO would listen to reason. But I think the evidence of the Sochi NATO-Russia Council meeting suggests that NATO is not budging, it is not prepared to compromise.
Some Russian experts say there was much progress made in Sochi. You see the opposite?
I'm just quoting Russian officials, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, both on the issue of Libya, the war against Libya, as well as the interceptor missile defence system, which is still fantastically described by the US and by NATO, by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as being aimed at some 23 countries, I believe, some astronomical number of nations that are supposedly developing ballistic missiles.
But nations that are usually identified are, of course, Iran, Syria interestingly enough, given the current situation in that country and I cannot, for the life of me, understand in terms of trajectory or anything else why 20 advanced Standard Missile-3 interceptors are to be placed in Poland to intercept missiles from Iran. It's as nonsensical as the George W. Bush version putting ground-base midcourse missiles there.
Backing up a little bit: some experts say that NATO should have been disbanded when the Warsaw Pact was dissolved. NATO was designed, as a fact, to contain the USSR and continues to operate in such a manner. What do you think about that statement? As far as the ABM shield goes, I agree with you about trajectory and the location I mean that there could be no other reason for it rather than to contain Russian missiles.
Patriot Advanced Capability missiles were placed in Poland, in the city of Morag, 60 kilometers from Russian territory. Against whom else have these missiles been deployed, with accompanying US military personnel who are manning them?
You now have the first permanent deployment of foreign troops in Poland since the breakup of the Warsaw Pact 20 years ago. NATO should never been formed, but that having been done in 1949 most surely it should have been a precondition, as a matter of fact, for the former Soviet government of President Gorbachev that, while discussing the breakup of the Warsaw Pact and so forth, a quid pro quo, reciprocity, should have been demanded, that NATO should have been disbanded.
The fact that instead, within one decade, from 1999 to 2009, it increased its membership by 75%, going from 16 countries to 28 countries, all 12 new countries in Eastern Europe, of course, from the Baltic to the Adriatic Seas. And every one of them either former members of the Warsaw Pact Albania for a short while or former republics of Yugoslavia is a clear indication NATO expansion eastward is not only to contain Russia. I would argue it's meant to confront Russia.
David Guyatt Wrote:Full Spectrum Dominance in all it's glory, eh.
Dominance being the right word too.
David, I miss you. I miss your wisdom, your experience, your presence, your conversational skills, your articles, your comments. I tip back a snifter of hand-warmed Dram Buidheach in your honor from time to time. May your retirement be in a location safely tucked away from the oncoming madness.
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"
Despite chest-pounding Russian protests, the US is moving ahead with plans to install a missile defense shield to protect NATO European territory, and has committed four of its 60 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to sit off the coast of Spain.Geoff Ziezulewicz of Stars and Stripes reports that the ships will deploy to the 6th fleet in Rota, and bring with them a full Lockheed Martin Aegis combat system with a long list of heavy ordnance and a "detect to kill" radar array.
The radar system, and the ability to send missiles to destroy incoming ballistic missiles, is what the Russians are so upset about.
At over 500 feet in length, and costing almost $2 billion apiece, the Arleigh Burke class are among the largest destroyers in the American fleet and play a key role in missile defense.
Along with the array of radar, the Navy's website points out the full weapons systems carried on each ship includes:
96 cell Mk 41 vertical launch system BGM-109 Tomahawk RGM-84 HarpoonSSM RIM-66M Standard medium range SAM (has an ASuW mode) RIM-161 StandardBallistic missile defense missile for Aegis BMD RIM-162 ESSMSAM RUM-139 Vertical Launch ASROC RIM-174A Standard ERAM
one 5 inch (127 mm/54) Mk-45 Mod 1/2 (lightweight gun)
one 5 inch (127 mm/62) Mk-45 mod 4 (lightweight gun)
two 20 mm Phalanx CIWS, two 25 mm bushmasters
two Mark 32 triple torpedo tubes (six Mk-46 or Mk-50 torpedoes, Mk-54 in the near future)
The official Navy line seems to be downplaying the role of the ships in the Missile Defense Shield, saying the destroyers will be tasked with a variety of missions within the 6th Fleet's 20 million square miles of sea.
It will be interesting to see how far they actually stray from European coast.
What the heck is NATO? What's it about? What's it for? Not many people bother to ask any more. As with many New World organizations originally created under the guise of a temporary measure or a situation-based project or specific goal-oriented institution (think IMF, think World Bank), this one too has far exceeded its supposed originally intended mission, its sphere of control and operation, its size and budget, and basically everything it was marketed under when it was established. Also, as with all these institutions long-past and long-exceeding their originally marketed role, people cease to question or even critically think of the actual purpose, performance and results of supporting, keeping and funding this costly new world military body called NATO.So, what was the supposed' role of this gigantic hawk of imperials' tool originally? Check all the legitimate' reference bodies of literature, and what you get is what was marketed and sold over six decades ago:The North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The NATO headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, and the organization constitutes a system of collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party.…For its first few years, NATO was not much more than a political association. However, theKorean War galvanized the member states, and an integrated military structure was built up under the direction of two U.S. supreme commanders. The first NATO Secretary General,Lord Ismay, famously stated the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down"…After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the organization became drawn into the Breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s which resulted in NATO's first military operations in Bosnia from 1991 to 1995 and later Yugoslavia in 1999.…The September 2001 attacks signaled the only occasion in NATO's history that Article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty has been invoked and consequently the 11 September attacks were deemed to be an attack on all nineteen NATO members. After 11 September, troops were deployed to Afghanistan under the NATO-led ISAF and the organization continues to operate in a range of roles sending trainers to Iraq, assisting in counter-piracy operations and most recently enforced a NATO-led no-fly zone over Libya in 2011.…Okay, so after the fall of the Soviet Union the enemy went from Russia to the Serbs, and later, after 9/11, the enemy became Al Qaeda, aka terrorists, and went on to include select' dictators designated as certain dictatorships.' It went from defense to ethnic conflicts, from terrorism to reinterpreted and reinvented human rights causes.How about the membership; the team? Well, right after the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. promised the Russians that they will not expand beyond Germany:In May 2008, Gorbachev repeated his view that such a commitment had been made, and that "the Americans promised that NATO wouldn't move beyond the boundaries of Germany after the Cold War".[SUP][23][/SUP]That promise lasted for a few years, and then without designating Russia as the enemy extraordinaire, NATO expanded and added: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. And a few years after Romania, NATO agreed to the accession of Croatia and Albania and invited them to join, and invited Ukraine and Georgia to become members. No one mentioned any specific threat or enemy. No one really' asked.Lately NATO has been busy going after resource-rich nations in Central Asia and the Caucasus for its new round of membership acquisition:Due to the recent decision of the Pentagon to develop military cooperation with Azerbaijan by offering a 10 million dollar military support for the improvement of the Azeri military marine performances in the fight against terrorism, there are voices in Baku that support the interest of both parts in developing bilateral military cooperation till the level of Azerbaijan's membership to the North Atlantic Alliance. In fact, there are estimates that this is likely to happen on medium term.Now we hear about NATO centers and offices in the oil-rich Middle East. Here is the latest on that front:NATO to Open Centers in Kuwait & Other Gulf StatesBrussels: Kuwait and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) are discussing plans to open a centre in Kuwait City, a Nato official has said.The centre, the first of its kind in the Gulf, will help bolster relations and cooperation between the Gulf country and the international organization under the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI).The initiative was launched at the Alliance's Summit in the Turkish city in June 2004 to contribute to long-term global and regional security by offering Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries practical bilateral security cooperation with NATO.…So I'm asking again: What the heck is NATO? Why do we need NATO? What is it about? What is it for? What is it after? And why don't most bother to examine this imperialistic war machine's legitimacy to exist?
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev opening a radar station in Kaliningrad,the Russian enclave bordering Poland
The German news magazine Der Spiegel reports on the growing tensions between the U.S. and Russia in an article called A New Arms Race Looms between Russia and US. Der Spiegel wrote, "Evidence of that new arms race came last Tuesday [Nov 6], with Medvedev's appearance in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which borders the NATO and EU members Poland and Lithuania. The president pointedly activated a radar station. Medvedev had already announced that Russia would install modern Iskander short-range missiles near the NATO border if the US didn't back down. The missiles can be fitted with nuclear warheads and would be directed at the planned US defense positions in Europe, which are scheduled to be ready by 2020."
The U.S. maintains its (and NATO's) surrounding Russia with "missile defense" systems is directed at Iran. We've been repeatedly told though by award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh at The New Yorker that Iran has no nuclear weapons nor any long-range missiles. What do you think is up?
The U.S. has already begun to deploy third-generation Patriot missile offense systems in Poland (PAC-3 they are called). Does Poland really fear they will be attacked by Iran? "If the mullahs have a target list we believe we are quite low on it," Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in an interview with Foreign Policy during his trip to Washington last year. But Sikorski admitted that Poland's real interest in the system is to be an active player in the new emerging security infrastructure in Europe, which includes NATO's endorsement of missile defense. "Our part of Europe has so far very few NATO installations," he said. "This is the game that seems to be the next project, so we decided to get involved."
So NATO then is driving this new arms race across Europe, surrounding Russia. But who controls NATO? Who is driving the NATO military expansion to surround Russia? It's a circle, you always come back to U.S. foreign policy and the military industrial complex that stands to make alot of money by signing up all the NATO countries as partners in the missile offense program because all NATO systems must be "interoperable" which means they must all be linked together technologically. The technology flows from Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, etc..... It's a dangerous and expensive circle game - clouded by the rhetoric about an exaggerated nuclear threat from Iran.
It appears that the UK is about to be or is now isolated from Europe with Cameron's decision not to march to Merkosy's drum. Does anyone have any opinions on what this will mean for NATO, the US's apparent bully sock puppet? Seem to remember that the UK and France were also about to or have signed a pact whereby their respective armed forces would work much more closely together. Is the stake thru the heart of that one too? Thoughts anyone?
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