In his book 2017: War with Russia
published a few months ago, former deputy commander of NATO Sir
Alexander Richard Shirreff predicts that to prevent NATO expansion
Russia will annex eastern Ukraine and invade the Baltic state of
Latvia in May 2017. Most dismiss the book as sensationalist fantasy,
but it draws attention to the fact that NATO is in fact aggressively
expanding, and holding large-scale war games in Romania, Lithuania,
and Poland, and Russia is truly concerned.
Why Latvia? Shirreff is not alone
in trying to depict Latvia and the other Baltic states (Estonia and
Lithuania) as immanently threatened by Russia. The stoking of Baltic
fears of such are a principle justification for NATO expansion.
The argument begins with the
assertion that Vladimir Putin (conflated with Russia itself, as
though he were an absolute leader, a second Stalin) wants to revive
the Soviet Union. His occasional comment that the collapse of the
USSR was a “catastrophe” is repeatedly cited, totally out of
context, as proof of this expansionist impulse. It continues with the
observation that there has been tension between Russia and the Baltic
states since their independence in 1991. And while Russia has never
threatened the Baltic states with invasion or re-incorporation, the
fear mongers like to conjure up Sir Richard’s World War III
scenario.
So it’s not difficult to
understand why NATO, in its largest war games since the end of the
Cold War, would choose Poland, which borders both Russia (the
Kaliningrad enclave) and Lithuania, as their setting. Dubbed
Anaconda-2016, the ten-day exercise involves 31,000 troops from 24
countries including non-NATO members Kosovo, Macedonia and Finland.
Germany, whose foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has actually
criticized the exercise as “saber-rattling and warmongering,” has
sent 400 military engineers but no combat troops.
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