Tag: defense budget

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AMERICAN DISINTEGRATION, PART 4: THE U.S. MILITARY

Since 2009, American spending on defense has been reduced as a percent of GDP,  from 4.6 in 2009 to 3.8 in 2013. Russia spends 17.5 percent of GDP on defense, a figure that will increase to 21% by 2017.  China has increased its military budget at a pace faster than either the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. did at the height of the Cold War.

In addition to threats from other nations, the rising danger from terrorism requires a robust defense.  ISIS, for example, is well funded and some believe it is pursuing the acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability.

Despite the $700 billion spent on the President’s “Stimulus” package, a glaring defense vulnerability in the U.S. homeland—the need to protect the national electrical grid from an electro-magnetic pulse attack which would cripple the U.S. for decades—remains un-addressed and unfunded.

Sharp reductions in the defense budget are the most significant of the efforts to engage in questionable, short-term goals at the expense of the nation’s future. In an effort to fund massive increases in social spending, the military has suffered budget cuts at a time when the world has grown increasingly dangerous.

It is important to put this into context. By 2008, the U.S. military had already been sharply reduced.  From its high point in the last decade of the 20th century, the Navy had slipped from 600 ships to 284. The Air Force from 37 fighter commands to 20, and the Army from 17 divisions to 10.  Much of the remaining equipment was aged and worn from overuse in various wars.  The U.S. nuclear arsenal was rapidly becoming obsolete. America was dependent on Russia for certain rocket engines, and on China for certain other key ingredients in our weapons.

Significant new threats, such as cyber warfare, have emerged even as Washington has reduced defense spending.

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China has attained a level of military sophistication that equals and in some areas surpasses America’s.

Most worrisome, China and Russia have established a de-facto alliance aimed at the United States. Both nations, along with Iran, have established ties with Latin American and Caribbean states. Both assist client states, including Iran and North Korea, that individually and collectively present a significant danger to the U.S. and its allies.

Even in the face of these threats, the President continues to advocate unilateral reductions in the American nuclear arsenal and continues to oppose a viable anti-ballistic missile system to defend the homeland from a nuclear attack.

The disintegration of American military supremacy returns the planet to a state of affairs that existed before the Second World War, with probable consequences that are deeply disturbing. Russia now occupies the role of Nazi Germany, casting an envious eye on the territory of other nations.  Vladimir Putin has even adopted some of the language of the Third Reich, including using an excuse of protecting Russian ethnic groups outside of his nation’s borders as an excuse to threaten his neighbors.  China serves as the 21st Century version of imperial Japan, seeking to establish hegemony in Asia and beyond.

Those favoring cuts to defense note that the U.S. spends more than its adversaries. That must be tempered by the large hidden spending in nations without a free press, and in the fact that a significant portion of the U.S. defense budget goes to expenses other countries don’t include in their military spending figures.  It also fails to include the sobering realization that from Moscow to Beijing, Tehran to Pyongyang, and in terrorist camps throughout the world, it is the United States that is the main target.

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Russians Practice Nuke Strike vs. US

Russian nuclear-capable bombers engaged in maneuvers practicing the launching of cruise missiles against the United States last week, reports the Washington Free Beacon. The incident, which occurred as NATO leaders met in Wales, can be considered part of a larger nuclear exercise by Moscow.

The Kremlin’s growing enthusiasm for nuclear weapons and the means to launch them has been noted in several different areas.  Russia has moved theater atomic weapons to its European border, (Moscow has a ten to one advantage in tactical nuclear weapons) and modernized its equipment.  It has resumed bomber and submarine patrols off American coastlines.

As the United States and its allies have slashed defense budgets, and as President Obama has called for unilateral cuts in the American nuclear arsenal, the Kremlin has taken precisely the opposite course, providing greater funds for its military and building up its nuclear capabilities.
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Russia has also violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force treaty.  The INF agreement was a landmark diplomatic achievement in 1988, which provided for the complete elimination of an entire class of weapons, including ground-launched missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.  The possession or production of such weapons was strictly prohibited.

These facts have hardly been reported in the major media and seem to have had little to no influence on the White House’s ongoing bid to reduce American military funding.

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U.S. Navy Attacked

Reviewed in its entirety, the Obama Administration’s various measures that have reduced the American military, given concessions to adversaries, and directly attacked the morale of U.S. service members by reducing benefits constitute an assault on American national security as great as any direct attack from a foreign power.

In the latest move, The Navy Times reports that The United States Navy is pressuring 8,000 senior enlisted personnel, staff chiefs, to “prove their value” or retire. According to a report published in the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, “all active-duty and full-time support staff chiefs with three years in rate and 19 years in service will be evaluated… Selected Reserve and Voluntary Training Unit chiefs in similar positions will also face scrutiny.”

Sildamax is very affordable. //kamagradepot.com/ Erectile dysfunction is one amongst the most popular illness present in all of the males that will icks.org discounts on viagra be also known as sexual disorder. Celebrities, nutritionists, health experts and acai canada viagra sales users, all seem to be raving about the food’s potential to add to one’s health and transform one’s life for good. Erectile dysfunction must be cured in order to icks.org lowest viagra price be a man again. So, buy some cialis 40 mg linked here ginseng tea and health supplements. The U.S. Navy, which has been reduced from 600 ships to 284 since 1990, faces major new threats from across the globe. Russia has committed vast funds to modernizing and expanding its naval forces. It has returned to Cold War bases in Cuba. China has developed a powerful navy that in size and sophistication is a major threat to the American Pacific fleet, regional nations, and international commerce.

As Russia and China substantially increase the size and capabilities of their naval forces, the one advantage retained by the diminished American navy is the experience of its personnel.  Efforts to encourage sailors with extensive experience to retire eliminates that last, remaining advantage.

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Wishful thinking is not a strategy

The positions on military issues adhered to by the White House, most Democrats, and isolationists such as Rand Paul, which can best be described as wishful thinking, continue to pose a danger for U.S. National Security.

The media has, for the most part, not provided adequate coverage of the international arms buildup by enemies of the West, at the same time that America and its allies continue to allow their military capabilities to deteriorate. Lop-sided treaties have also played a role in adding to the growing danger.  The New START nuclear arms treaty, for example, left Russia with a 10 to 1 advantage in tactical nuclear arms and didn’t place any restrictions on China at all. The sanctions that were supposed to deter Iran’s nuclear program have been weakened, and North Korea continues to enhance its growing atomic weapons program, which they can now launch with ICBMS against the American homeland.

cipla viagra online The fertility of men and their ability to supply oxygen. buy viagra without rx It also helps protect against Macular Degeneration. Though, the extent of endocrine inhibition really varies reckoning on http://robertrobb.com/lessons-learned-at-mikes-place/ on line levitra the kind of endocrine taken. If any of your friends is suffering from any sexual problems, suggest this product to him for a joyful married life. viagra online overnight The White House’s response to this existing and growing crisis has been to agree to further slash U.S. military capabilities.  In addition to dangerous budget cuts, the Obama Administration has now announced that the U.S. military will no longer manufacture land mines. Doing so endangers American forces in hotspots worldwide.

Washington can’t continue to pretend its way out of this crisis, even if the media continues to ignore the issue.

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The diminished state of the United States Navy is correctly seen as a dire national security threat.  But it also has ramifications in other areas, as well.

Seth Cropsey, who has studied the plight of the U.S. Navy, writes in his book “Mayday, the decline of American naval supremacy” that countering the drug trade will be far more difficult due to the neglect of U.S. maritime power. “U.S. seapower in the form of both naval and Coast Guard ships search the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and eastern Pacific for drug runners…Illegal drugs that enter the United States divert money from the economy, encourage corruption among law-enforcement authorities, generate crime from the source of origin to their end use in the United States…and are a bountiful source of revenue for foreign criminal groups that conduct the trade. According to U.S. government officials, the money from this illicit harvest is now becoming a source of revenue for criminal groups that may sympathize with al Qaeda. Military commanders…are more blunt.  They see an increasing presence in the region of Islamic extremists with illegal drugs to sell and a nurturing of ties between jihadists and often less ideological but equally profit-minded drug cartels of Latin and Central America.”
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Combined with the Obama Administration’s extremely lax enforcement of America’s southern border, the vanishing presence of the U.S. Navy renders America virtually unprotected from the rabid collection of criminals, terrorists and others who intend to commit harm to the citizenry.

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Part II: Can NATO Survive?

The Russian invasion of Ukraine shouldn’t have come as a shock to NATO.

Just a few years earlier in 2008, Moscow had invaded Georgia during the South Ossetia War. Over the past several years, Vladimir Putin has dramatically increased his nation’s military spending as well as raising the level of preparedness for war.

RUSSIA PREPARES FOR WAR AS NATO DISARMS

 Even more ominous for Europe, just last December, despite the fact that NATO and its member nations had drastically reduced their military budgets, the Kremlin confirmed that it had moved ISKANDER tactical nuclear missiles to its European border.

It’s not just the equipment built and the $755 billion modernization program that should concern western analysts.  Russia has engaged in extraordinary military exercises, such as Zapad-13, a joint effort with Belarus that involved up to 70,000 troops. The Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences  described the effort:

“The use of Belorussian troops as an amphibious landing force from hoover craft, shows not just the level of integration between the Russian and Belorussian armed forces, it also should raise some concerns about Russian capacity to conduct landing operations. They should not just be linked to the number of dedicated amphibious units.

“The air defence forces trained to intercept approaching bombers with a fighter escort. Very clearly a task connected with a conventional war. The same goes for the amphibious landings supported by ship-to-shore bombardments.

“The use of UAV`s for target identification and damage assessment, both for the artillery and for ground attack aircraft, point at a quite high level of sophistication when it comes to fighting a modern war. The extensive use of well protected communication systems, both by Russian as well as Belorussian units, is also an import step in enhancing the ability to fight in an environment where electronic warfare is an important part.

“Live firing with long range systems as Smerch and especially Iskander, combined with the use of UAV´s, show an increased capability for “Deep Strike” with ground based systems. This should be disturbing for anyone contemplating to use fixed installations as harbours and airfields within the range of these systems. For example NATO, when considering how to reinforce the Baltic States in case of a crisis.

“The mobilization of reservists in the St. Petersburg area was of course a test if the system works, but it should also lead to some thoughts about the size of the Russian military. It is far too easy to fall in to the trap of just counting regular units, and also to assume that only state of the art units are useful in a future war. The latter depends entirely on who is the opponent.

“Altogether we see a rapidly increasing Russian capability to mount large scale, complex, military operations in its neighbourhood, coordinated with operations in other areas. It would be a mistake to see this just a problem for the Baltic States. It should have implications for most of Russia´s neighbours, and also for other parties interested in the security and stability in the Baltic Sea region.”

“Despite these clear signals that the Russian threat had returned, NATO nations, beset by financial troubles, continued to cling to the belief that the threat from its eastern border had permanently evaporated when the Soviet Union collapsed.”

In January, Russia joined with China for joint maneuvers in the Mediterranean. The exercise followed similar joint maneuvers between the two nations in the Sea of Japan.

US MILITARY REDUCTIONS ARE A KEY PROBLEM

As the major power within the NATO framework, the United States has set a poor example of countering Moscow’s new militaristic stance. A 2013 Heritage study noted:

“When President Obama took office, the armed services of the United States had already reached a fragile state. The Navy had shrunk to its smallest size sincebefore World War I; the Air Force was smaller, and its aircraft older, than at any time since the inception of the service. The Army was stressed by years of war; according to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, it had been underfunded before the invasion of Iraq and was desperately in need of resources to replace its capital inventory.

“Since the President took office, the government has cut $1.3 trillion from defense budgets over the next ten years. The last such reduction was embodied in sequestration. At the time sequestration was passed, the top leaders of the military, and of both parties (the very people who enacted sequestration), warned that it would have a devastating effect on America’s military.

“And so it has. The defense sequester was the worst possible thing to do to the military, at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way. Coming on the heels of the reductions from 2009-2011, it has resulted in large cuts to the Pentagon accounts that support day-to-day readiness. The Navy is routinely cancelling deployments. Earlier this spring, the Air Force grounded one-third of its fighters and bombers. The Army has curtailed training for 80 percent of the force. Our strategic arsenal-the final line of national self-defense-is old, shrinking, and largely untested. All this is happening at a time when the recognized threats to America-from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, the inaptly named “Arab Spring,” and a resurgent and spreading al-Qaeda-are manifestly rising.”

Indications such as the largely unreported U.S. withdrawal of all of its tanks from Europe sent a crucially wrong message to NATO nations that Washington was unconcerned about threats from Moscow.

EUROPEAN MILITARIES BECOMING TOO WEAK TO FIGHT
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While Sweden (which is considering joining NATO) and Poland have increased their defense budgets, the rest of the alliance adopted drastic cuts since the fall of the USSR.

The 2012 Brookings analysis emphasized:

“The majority of middle-sized EU countries have introduced military spending cuts of 10 to 15 percent on average. And several of the smaller EU member states have reduced their defense spending by more than 20 percent, leading to the loss of entire military capabilities.

“According to Andrew Dorman, although the United Kingdom has officially cut its defense budget by 7.5 percent over four years, in reality the reduction is nearly 25 percent. As a result, amongst its significant equipment cuts, Britain is giving up the ability to fly planes off aircraft carriers for a decade…

“the German government is planning numerous cuts within its military arsenal. These include reselling 13 A400M transport aircraft, even though Germany is likely to have to pay significant indemnities to its partners in the A400M program.

“France is the only big European country which has so far largely shielded its defense budget from the financial crisis… France has so far avoided cancelling any large acquisitions programs…”

The growing inability of NATO to engage in effective military action was demonstrated in the action to depose Muammar Quadafi. In the Libyan action, European nations had great difficulty in mounting operations against a relatively weak and unsophisticated foe.

It is not just on the land mass of the European continent, with smaller armies and air forces, that NATO has become significantly less potent.  At sea, the diminishment of NATO countries navies, including the reduction of the worldwide American fleet from 600 ships to only 284, presents a key challenge, as does the rise of significant new maritime threats.  An American Enterprise Institute study noted:

“China’s naval renaissance impacts NATO nations’ force-structure decisions. As the United States turns more of its interest to the Pacific, baseline security requirements in the Mediterranean will become more important to Europe’s NATO navies, perhaps creating greater incentive to resource them. Additionally, both France and the United Kingdom see themselves as global nations with global interests that extend far into the Pacific. If these nations perceive China’s rise as threatening these interests, they will likely find their navies too small to provide any real impact, given the great distances involved and the paucity of ships to maintain constant presence. There is a real tension between global presence and a “balanced fleet,” one that currently only the United States is able to resolve, and barely that.”

NATO SOUGHT TO REASSURE RUSSIA

 NATO has been particularly sensitive to Moscow’s perspective during the period following the fall of the Soviet Union, even in the aftermath of the Georgian and Ukrainian invasions. It refrained from establishing a significant presence within the territory of its eastern members, so much so that those nations have requested far more protection. It’s patrols in that area have been minimal.

The European Voice publication noted Poland’s reaction to this: “As the United States winds down its military presence in Europe, NATO is getting weaker, not stronger. Poland is worried about this. It has started a big military modernisation, based on the (unstated) assumption that it may have to fight alone.”

A Lexington Institute study  concluded in February noted:

“The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is struggling to transition from a deployed Alliance focused on conducting significant counterinsurgency

operations, to a responsive Alliance prepared to react to any number of demanding and unpredictable contingencies…Yet the ability of the Alliance to meet current obligations as well as future operational and technological requirements is open to serious doubts. For more than two decades, NATO spending on defense has declined to levels today that are perilously close to disarmament. Senior U.S. officials have repeatedly warned NATO that its failure to invest adequately and appropriately in defense places the future of the Alliance at risk…

“[Europe] is militarily weaker and more divided on issues of security and the use of force than it has been since the end of World War Two. both the spectrum of potential crises NATO must face and their geographic diversity continue to increase. The U.S military draw down and the pivot to Asia will stress Washington’s ability to commit forces to NATO. Not only is NATO defense spending continuing to decline and the Alliance’s force structures continuing to shrink but decisions regarding the character of residual forces and the allocation of remaining defense resources are skewed in ways that make it more difficult to deploy effective military power, particularly for expeditionary activities of significant scale. NATO has had to reduce the size of its core crisis response capability, the NATO Response Force (NRF). The lack of coordination among national ministries of defense on force structure changes and modernization programs makes it difficult to ensure adequate capabilities in some areas while there are clear surfeits in others. Non-U.S. NATO continues to lag in its investments in critical enablers for modern, knowledge-intensive power projection military operations.”

CONCLUSION

 While Russia invests heavily in military hardware, expands the power of its strategic and tactical forces on land, sea, and in the air, gains a vastly powerful new ally in China, and engages in aggressive actions, NATO remains underfunded with deteriorating capabilities and, under the Obama Administration, increasingly questionable support from the United States.

It is a blueprint tailor-made to invite aggression.

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Pretending that threats don’t exist

The state of world crises can be summarized in a single sentence: While Russia and China rapidly and substantively build their military might to unprecedented levels of strength and skill, the United States and its allies continue to slash their funding on defense.

The net effect is obvious and worrisome. Both China and Russia, and their surrogates Iran and North Korea, have taken note of this new world order, and are acting without the balance of power restraint that has prevented a world war since 1945.

The Obama Administration has engaged in a suicidal game of “let’s pretend.”  Consistently, in the face of all reality and evidence, it continues to discount the clearly rising possibility of major conflict.  It virtually ignored China’s assault on the Philippines in 2012, in which Beijing’s naval vessels claimed portions of Manila’s exclusive economic zone.  It completely failed to respond to Moscow’s assault on the Ukraine   with the two most important effective tools at its disposal: a cessation of the budget cuts to the U.S. military, and the development of federal land energy assets that would have diminished Russia’s main source of income, gas and oil sales.

The President talks tough.  He announced a pivot to Asia, but doesn’t have the naval assets  to make that strategy anything more than just talk.  He announces his support for NATO, but withdrew all American tanks  from the European continent.
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The White House has announced its plans to reduce the already antiquated American nuclear arsenal,  and continues to oppose the full implementation of an American anti-ballistic missile system.  However, it refuses to make an issue of Moscow’s own developed ABM system.  It accepts, without protest, the Kremlin’s ten to one advantage in tactical nuclear arms.

When the USSR began placing theater nuclear missiles in Europe during the latter half of the 20th century, President Reagan countered with the U.S. Pershing missile.  Moscow saw it would gain no advantage, and an agreement by both sides was reached stopping deployment of such weapons. The Obama Administration didn’t follow this example, and now Russia’s ISKANDER missiles, unopposed, threaten Europe.  While Putin has committed over $700 billion to new armaments over its already large budget and China spends vastly more each year, the White House continues to seek defense budget cuts.

It’s not a question of hawks or doves, or even of domestic budget priorities.  It’s reality vs. let’s pretend.

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Military Voters Organize Against Failed Obama Policies

During his tenure in office, President Obama has, in the words made popular in the John Lennon song, “give peace a chance.”

  • He slashed military spending even as potential adversaries raised theirs.
  • He advocates for a unilateral American reduction in nuclear weapons.
  • He signed an arms control treaty that left Washington at a distinct disadvantage.
  • He withdrew American troops from Iraq and announced a withdrawal date from Afghanistan.
  • He pulled back on purely defensive measures such as the anti-missile system.
  • He refused to allow energy drilling on federal lands that would have limited Moscow’s oil and gas-financed ability to finance its vast military buildup.
  • He withdrew all U.S. tanks from Europe.
  • He has pursued the closing of militarily vital industrial plants.
  • He refused to fulfill treaty obligations with the Philippines and Ukraine when they were assaulted by China and Russia.
  • He did not retaliate against Islamic fundamentalists for the assault on Benghazi.
  • He has not responded to the growth in Russian, Chinese, and Iranian military influence in Latin America.
  • He has weakened sanctions against Iran’s nuclear development program.
  • Where U.S. troops are deployed, he has made the rules of engagement so stringent that American troops are killed before they even get permission to fire back.
  • He advocates putting U.S. troops under the jurisdiction of the U.N. criminal court, a move guaranteed to handcuff and endanger them further.
  • During his re-election campaign, the votes of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines stationed overseas were mysteriously delivered late.

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The end result has been a dramatically more dangerous world, with military activity in Europe and Asia on a scale not seen since the end of World War II, as well as the resurgence of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

In response, a unique movement has been started by former and current members of the U.S. armed forces to get out the vote in 2014 in attempt to strengthen the legislative branch’s ability to halt Mr. Obama’s dangerous foreign policy missteps.

The movement is spearheaded by the founders of the organization, Special Operations Speaks,  which was formed in the aftermath of the Benghazi debacle. According to the organization,

“Interestingly enough, when GWB was president you heard about the military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan almost daily.  With Obama in the White House, however, the mainstream media has been strangely quiet.  More than 1,000 American soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan in the last 27 months.  This is more than the combined total of the nine years before…The Commander in Chief is AWOL.   There is a deep disgust, a fury, growing in the ranks of the military against the indifferent incompetence of this president…But there is now a movement afoot in the Armed Services to launch a massive get-out-the-vote drive against this President.”

As global events spin out of control, it is increasingly likely that not only those with military experience but also voters deeply concerned about the likelihood of a major war caused by  the White House’s demonstrably unsuccessful foreign policies will make their concern felt at the ballot box.

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Can NATO Survive?

After a successful conclusion to the Cold War, can the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) regroup to respond to the new threat from Moscow?

Vladimir Putin’s intentions were made clear in a telling comment by Andranik Migranyan, head of the Kremlin-controlled “Institute for Democracy and Cooperation” reported in the Fiscal Times in response to analogies between Russia’s actions in Ukraine, and Germany’s in the 1930’s:

“One must distinguish between Hitler before 1939 and Hitler after 1939…the thing is that Hitler collected [German] lands.  If he had become famous only for uniting  without a drop of blood Germany with Austria, Sudetenland and Memel, in fact completing  what Bismarck failed to do, and if he had stopped there, then he would have remained a politician of the highest class.”

Moscow’s worrisome military moves are not restricted to former Soviet satellites.  In December, the Kremlin confirmed  that it had deployed ISKANDER tactical nuclear missiles on NATO’s border. The move was not in response to any western action.

There have also been a number of incidents in which Moscow’s nuclear-capable bombers and submarines have come threateningly close to the airspace and coasts of NATO nations both in Europe and the United States.

Richard Perle, former chair of the Defense Policy Board for President George W. Bush and current fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, recently stated in a Newsmax interview that Putin is attempting to “put Humpty Dumpty back together again and re-create something that looks like the old Soviet Empire.”

NATO’s forces have shrunk considerably since the end of the Cold War, symbolized by the diminishing military budgets of both European nations and the United States.  The United States has also unilaterally withdrawn all of its most vital land weapons, tanks, from the European continent.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea in early 2014, which the United States and the European Union say violated international law, will likely poison relations with NATO for the foreseeable future. “We clearly face the gravest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,” said Secretary-General Rasmussen of Russia’s intervention.

Russia’s invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, as well as its deployment of ISKANDER tactical nuclear weapons to its European border, have brought back the threat most had thought vanished with the fall of the Soviet Union.  But NATO’s individual governments, including most importantly the United States, have slashed military budgets.

NATO’s sharp reduction in forces, even in the face of increasing threats, has brought into question the viability of the alliance.  A 2012 Brookings Institute study

“There have long been debates about the sustainability of the transatlantic alliance and accusations amongst allies of unequal contributions to burden-sharing. But since countries on both sides of the Atlantic have begun introducing new – and often major – military spending cuts in response to the economic crisis, concerns about the future of transatlantic defense cooperation have become more pronounced.

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“The alliance’s Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has warned that “if European defense spending cuts continue, Europe’s ability to be a stabilizing force even in its neighborhood will rapidly disappear.” While Norwegian Defense Minister Espen Barth Eide has claimed that “exercises have shown that NATO’s ability to conduct conventional military operations has markedly declined. […] Not only is NATO’s ability to defend its member states questionable, it might actually deteriorate further as financial pressures in Europe and the US force cuts in military spending”

Russia’s aggression represents a disappointing end result for NATO’s numerous attempts to establish a relationship with Moscow based on a post-Cold War (or “Cold War 1” as it is becoming known) era of cooperation rather than confrontation.  According to a recent NATO document, 

“Over the past twenty years, NATO has consistently worked for closer cooperation and trust with Russia.  However, Russia has violated international law and acted in contradiction with the principles and commitments in the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council Basic Document,   the NATO-Russia Founding Act,  and the Rome Declaration.   It has gravely breached the trust upon which NATO-Russia cooperation must be based.”

Russia’s NATO envoy, Aleksandr Grushko, responded in a statement reported in the Russian publication RT that “…NATO still has a double standard policy. And Cold War stereotypes are still applied towards Russia…”

NATO turned 65 in 2014, a year that also marks the 15th, 10th, and 5th anniversary of members who joined since the end of the Cold War, enlarging the alliance to a total of 28 member states. It is, arguably, the most successful military alliance in history, winning its original goal of preventing a Soviet invasion, without having to actually go to war.

NATO currently conducts 5 active missions: peacekeeping in Kosovo, anti-terrorism patrols in the Mediterranean, anti-piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa, assistance to the African Union in Somalia, and fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. But it is the Russian threat that looms largest.  NATO seems unprepared to deal with.

Particularly under Vladimir Putin, Russia, despite numerous NATO overtures for peace and cooperation, has viewed NATO’s growth with anger.  Moscow, which spends a greater percentage of its GDP   (4.1%) on defense than either the U.S. (2.4%) or NATO nations (averaging about 2%)  maintains that it opposes NATO growth because it views it as a threat to its nation, despite all evidence to the contrary. A more accurate analysis indicates that the alliance prevents the Kremlin from re-forming the Soviet Empire in a different format.

The Council of Foreign Relations  notes that NATO’s Bucharest summit in the spring of 2008 sharply deepened the distrust. The alliance delayed “Membership Action Plans” for Ukraine and Georgia but declared its support for eventual full membership for both, despite repeated warnings from Russia of political and military consequences. Russia’s invasion of Georgia in the summer, following Georgian shelling of South Ossetia after what it termed an occupation by Russian forces, was a clear signal of Moscow’s intentions to protect and enlarge what it sees as its sphere of influence.

Many had hope that Moscow’s opposition to NATO’s growth had been resolved in 1997, when the alliance and Russia adopted a security agreement in which Moscow consented to NATO’s growth in return for a promise that masses of troops, equipment or nuclear missiles would not be placed on Russia border. The hope was not realized.

The Report continues next week.

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Quick Analysis

Last US tanks leave Europe

The news is quite startling: There are no longer any American tanks stationed in Europe. The story has been largely ignored by the major media. The information was provided in an article in the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes.

According to the Department of Defense, at its peak, Germany, the main center of NATO activity during the first Cold War, was home to 20 U.S. armored divisions, with about 6,000 tanks. Despite the glaring revival of threats from Moscow, the United States no longer has any tanks, the pivotal weapon in land combat, stationed on the entire continent. The entire combined tank forces of all NATO nations on the European continent (including the United Kingdom and Turkey) does not come close to equaling Russian numbers.

Mr. Obama’s extreme views on the lack of need for tanks became an issue in the 2012 campaign, when vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan  criticized the President’s attempt to shut down the only American plant that produces them.

For those who believe that airpower can be used to deter the massive advantage Russia has in tanks, there is further bad news: Washington is seriously considering retiring the Air Force’s tank-killing fighter, the A-10 “Warthog.” According to Defense Secretary Hagel’s February statement,  “The A-10’s age is also making it much more difficult and costly to maintain. Significant savings are only possible through eliminating the entire fleet, because of the fixed cost of maintaining the support apparatus associated with that aircraft. Keeping a smaller number of A-10s would only delay the inevitable while forcing worse trade-offs elsewhere.”
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There are no new weapons systems or innovative methods coming on line that will take over the tank’s front-line tasks.  Indeed, even if there were, there are no funds available to fund them. Another armored development program, the Ground Combat vehicle, a multi-purpose platform, has been defunded.

According to current plans, by 2020, there will be only 30,000 American troops in Europe, approximately one-tenth of the maximum strength during the first Cold War. This spring, further cuts to U.S. military infrastructure in Europe will be presented.

These actions take place in the face of massive new funding for the Russian military, as well as exceptionally aggressive behavior on the part of the Kremlin.