Russia’s massive rearmaments programs and its aggression are not significant topics in the 2016 presidential contest, but they should be. The Republican candidates, who stand most to gain by publicly criticizing the massive failure of the Obama/Clinton “Reset” with Moscow may be frightened of receiving the same undeserved ridicule Mitt Romney did when he brought up the issue in the 2012 campaign.
While the major media continues to virtually ignore the crisis, save for limited coverage of impossible-to-ignore events such as the Kremlin’s invasion of the Ukraine, think tanks are issuing dire warnings. Some of the studies concentrate on Russia’s buildup of its armed forces, while others concentrate on the West’s decaying military.
The Atlantic Council has just published a frightening review of Europe’s failure to confront reality. In it’s recently released “Alliance at Risk” Report, the organization reports:
“Despite Russian aggression in Ukraine and growing threats along NATO’s southern flank, many European allies find it difficult to increase their defense capabilities and meet the commitments they made at the Wales Summit. Its key recommendations:
- “To deter any Russian move into the Baltic States, NATO should establish a permanent presence there.”
- UK military “hollowed out to such an extent that the deployment of a brigade, let alone a division, at credible readiness would be a major challenge.”
- German defense spending “does not even begin to match the requirements” as the German armed forces “have been chronically underfunded since 1990.” “Germany cannot ‘pool and share’ its way out of the crisis of an underfunded Bundeswehr—in the end, you need to buy things.”
- The French defense budget “may not be good enough to maintain an adequate force structure and posture, particularly in a much more challenging threat environment.”
- France will not be able “to significantly increase defense spending without breaking the EU Commission’s expenditure benchmark and risking a crisis with Berlin.”
- “Italy’s current military structure is clearly unsustainable and burdened with legacy processes and approaches.”
- ”The Polish military should create a robust, cost effective reconnaissance strike force based on the Russian and Chinese models.”
- “Norway cannot meet its defense obligations without a significant increase in its defense expenditures and a major reallocation of defense resources in favor of operations.”
- “Norway is becoming increasingly vulnerable to Russia’s growing inventory of long-range, precision-guided weapons, and to advances in Moscow’s offensive cyber capabilities.”
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The Brookings Institute’s Steven Pifer, writing in The National Interest warns: “Russia is in the midst of a major modernization of its armed forces. This has been driven by Vladimir Putin’s ambition to restore Russia’s hard power and supported by the revenues that flowed into the Kremlin’s coffers between 2004 and 2014, when the price of oil was high. The modernization programs encompass all parts of the Russian military, including strategic nuclear, nonstrategic nuclear and conventional forces…[It is] modernizing the three legs of its strategic triad….[and] Moscow’s nonstrategic nuclear weapons are more worrisome. To begin with, there is Russia’s violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by testing a ground-launched cruise missile to intermediate range. While such a missile likely will not pose a direct threat to the United States, it constitutes a treaty violation and would threaten U.S. allies, as well as other countries, in Europe and Asia.The outside world has less visibility regarding Russia’s nonstrategic arsenal than Russia’s strategic forces. It appears, however, that the military has developed a range of nonstrategic nuclear capabilities, including cruise missiles, short-range ballistic missiles and aircraft. By contrast, the United States has steadily reduced the number and types of weapons in its nonstrategic nuclear arsenal, which now consists solely of the B61 nuclear bomb.
Russia is also modernizing its general-purpose forces, having set itself a goal of making 70 percent of the army’s equipment modern by 2020. This is coupled with changes in operational tactics, some of which were developed after the Russian army’s poor performance in the 2008 conflict with Georgia. The use of special operations forces in Crimea—referred to by Ukrainians as “little green men” for their lack of identifying insignia—proved effective. The Russians showed the ability to quickly mass fire on targets when regular army units entered Ukraine in August 2014 and again in early 2015.
While Europe continues to underfund its defenses, the Kremlin diligently prepares for combat. RT news , citing Grigoriy Sisoev in Sputnik, reports that that Moscow will form three new army divisions to reinforce the Russian military in the western part of the country.