Poland is about to host the largest multinational military exercises on its
territory in more than a decade . The “Anakonda-16” exercises, involving 31,000
troops from more than 20 countries, are intended to showcase the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization ’s unity and speed one month before the alliance’s
summit in Warsaw. The U.S. Army will play a key role, with a mechanized
regiment based in Germany simulating a mission to rescue the Baltic states
from a Russian attack.

The exercises come just weeks after the United States inaugurated the first of
two controversial missile-defense installations in Eastern Europe. Next year, the
Pentagon plans to quadruple military spending in Europe to $3.4 billion and
begin rotating an armored brigade through Eastern Europe — in addition to extra
NATO forces to be deployed to Poland and the Baltics.

The Kremlin’s response to Anakonda-16 is predictable. Russian President
Vladimir Putin has already threatened Romania for participating in the U.S.
missile shield. The large-scale maneuvers will only fuel the Kremlin narrative
that Russia is being encircled by hostile forces. European peaceniks, too, won’t
have to look far for new evidence of American war-mongering.

The escalating standoff resembles the chicken-egg conundrum. NATO argues
that a return to containment and deterrence is the regrettable result of Putin’s
2014 attack on Ukraine. The Kremlin and its apologists answer that military
intervention was necessary to forestall the U.S.-led alliance’s inexorable
eastward encroachment. All debates over the Ukraine conflict start and end with
NATO’s role.

In the case of Ukraine, NATO is a red herring. The former Soviet republic was
never under serious consideration for membership, and barely a fifth of
Ukrainians supported joining the alliance in polls taken before the Russian
invasion.

NATO actually bowed to the Kremlin when Germany and France blocked a
straight path to membership for Georgia and Ukraine in 2008. Months later,
Russia occupied two breakaway regions in Georgia in a prelude to the
annexation of Crimea and the creation of two puppet states in eastern Ukraine.
To be accepted into NATO, an applicant country may not have any outstanding
territorial disputes .

It’s easy to forget that it was reunified Germany that initially pushed for NATO
enlargement after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Far from being a
diabolical Pentagon plot, the issue was hotly debated on both sides of the
Atlantic. Although dismayed by Western triumphalism after the Cold War, former
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called it a “myth” that Western leaders had
promised not to enlarge NATO.

After being situated on the Cold War frontline for more than four decades,
Germans were eager to extend the NATO security bubble as far east as
possible. The West was operating on the naive assumption that Russia had a
shared interest in seeing the newly independent countries of Eastern Europe turn
into stable, flourishing democracies. In fact, the Kremlin — even before Putin —
preferred a buffer zone of weak, divided kleptocracies that had no chance of
joining Western institutions or serving as an example for Russia.

“Expansion” is not the best word to describe NATO’s enlargement because it
implies that the 12 Eastern European nations who have joined since 1999 were
somehow passively involved. Having been trapped in the Soviet sphere of
influence after World War Two, Poles, Lithuanians, Czechs, and Hungarians went
for the best insurance policy around. Ultimately the decision to join NATO was
taken by sovereign, democratic states incapable of defending themselves but for
whom neutrality was not an option.

Moscow is not doomed to antagonism with the West. Russia has allied itself
with Western European powers for more than two centuries. As he was running
for his first presidential term in 2000, Putin said that he neither viewed NATO as
an enemy, nor would he rule out joining the alliance — as an equal. Those last
three words are key to understanding his anger with NATO today.

From the Kremlin’s point of view, it’s infinitely worse to be ignored than to be
considered a worthy rival. Unfortunately, Putin’s rise coincided with the
presidency of George W. Bush, who ran roughshod over the sensibilities of friend
and foe alike. Putin’s outreach was rebuffed. In the face of Bush’s militant
unilateralism, Moscow’s membership in the United Nations Security Council, the
Group of Eight and the NATO-Russia Council proved useless.

Bush’s interest in Eastern Europe was primarily to reward nations that had
participated in his “coalition of the willing” during the war in Iraq by bestowing
NATO membership or promising to base elements of a planned U.S. system to
shoot down missiles originating in the Middle East.

When President Barack Obama took office in 2009, he first had to dig himself
out of the rubble of Bush’s disastrous foreign policy. The new president
declared a “reset” in relations with Russia and froze missile defense plans for
Eastern Europe, arguably the most contentious issue between Washington and
Moscow.

In the end, Obama approved a pared-down version of the Bush missile shield
because it would have been politically difficult to abandon a project involving
Eastern European allies. Although the laws of physics prohibit the new
installations from targeting Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons, missile defense
serves the Kremlin well as an example of NATO encirclement.

Obama originally wanted to cooperate with Putin on issues of common concern
and continue to ignore him wherever else possible. The American president
failed to appreciate the post-imperial phantom pains still plaguing Russia.
When Obama spoke about a future without nuclear weapons, Putin heard him
say Russia should be stripped of its only credible deterrent. When the White
House pivoted to Asia and withdrew the last U.S. tank from Germany in 2013,
the Kremlin saw it as waning American commitment to Europe.

Putin’s lightning occupation of Crimea and manufactured insurrection in eastern
Ukraine took NATO by surprise. Even if Eastern Europeans remained wary of
Moscow’s intentions, the rest of the alliance had come to view Russia as a
grumpy neighbor rather than a stealthy adversary.
NATO’s efforts to reassure eastern allies with rotational forces from the United
States or Germany are a crucial first step to restoring balance in Europe. But
missile defense is a political football that poses no real threat to Russia.
Eastern Europeans are using it to get U.S. boots on the ground, while the
Kremlin can raise it as the hobgoblin of encirclement.



The United States may have provoked Putin through ignorance, arrogance or
negligence — but not belligerence. That’s why NATO is in such a mad scramble
to catch up.





www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-nato-russia-commentary-idUSKCN0YS0B6

NATO is just been stupid and careless. nobody wins WW3. It will be a MAD situation (mutual assured destruction) and everybody dies from nuclear winter. Even the so called missile defence shield isnt effective against modern ICBMs(talk of decoys and EMPs). Its like shooting a bullet with another bullet.