Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Leaks: secret NATO plans for a US-led war against Russia

Si son dati del fanculo coi french.
Causa la vendita delle portaelicottero.
Mentre noi piazziamo i Lince.
Causa il surriscaldamento del pianeta l'Atlantico si sta allargando.
US State Department cables released by WikiLeaks have unveiled secret
NATO plans for a US-led war against Russia over the Baltic states.
The cables, first reported by the Guardian newspaper Tuesday and
posted on the WikiLeaks site, underscore the growing geo-strategic
tensions between the US and Russia even as the Obama administration
has emphasized a “reset” in relations that was supposed to overcome
the conflicts left over from the Bush administration.
The secret plans spell out preparations for a full-scale war with
Russia that would see the immediate deployment of nine divisions of
US, British, German and Polish troops in the event of any Russian
incursion into the former Soviet Baltic republics.
The plans also specify German and Polish ports that would be used to
receive naval assault units and US and British warships destined for
battle with Russian forces.
Despite these details, there is no indication in the cables of the
potentially catastrophic implications of such an armed clash between
the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
While some analysts in Moscow insisted that Russian intelligence was
well aware of the contingency plans, their public exposure by
WikiLeaks prompted statements of protest by Russian officials and
demands for an explanation from NATO.
The contingency plans that would send US troops into combat against
Russian forces were developed in the wake of the Russian-Georgian
clash of August 2008 that followed Georgia’s unsuccessful attempt to
overrun the breakaway territory of South Ossetia.
As the cables spell out, the governments of Latvia, Estonia and
Lithuania, which were brought into the NATO alliance in 2004, began to
lobby US officials for the development of a NATO strategy for the
defense of their territories against a Russian attack.
The US embassy in Latvia began by informing Washington about the
concerns of the government in Riga even as the fighting was going on
in South Ossetia. An August 15, 2008 message cited discussions with
Latvian leaders who expressed the sentiment that “this could easily be
them” and reported “Latvians are beginning to worry if membership in
(NATO) provides them the assurances of their security that they had
hoped for.’
The documents, marked secret and classified, trace the evolution of US
policy from these first demands by the Baltic states in the wake of
the Russian-Georgian conflict through to the actual elaboration of a
contingency plan for a military confrontation with Russia that was
secretly adopted in January 2010.
The cables indicate that US officials were anxious not to publicly
antagonize Moscow, even as they sought to put into place the war plans
demanded by the Baltic states. A report classified as secret from the
US ambassador to NATO, recounting a meeting with the three Baltic
state ambassadors, asserts, “We are not returning to the cold war.”
NATO and Russia had established formal relations in 1997 based on an
agreement that explicitly stated, “NATO and Russia do not consider
each other as adversaries.” The problem confronting US officials was
how to draft a policy that clearly cast Russia as an enemy without
upending ties with Moscow.
In a cable drafted in October 2009, US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder
spelled out the problem. “Leaders in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania
are pressing hard for NATO Article 5 (which compels all NATO states to
come to the defense of any other member state under attack)
contingency planning for the Baltic states,” he began, noting that
President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had
already stated their support for such plans.
The problem, Daalder pointed out, was that such plans “would require
specifying Russia as a potential threat,” something which Germany and
other NATO member states opposed. He wrote: “As we saw during the
debates over the Russia-Georgia war, many Allies will take great pains
to avoid even the suggestion that the Alliance and Russia are on a
course toward a new Cold War.”
He suggested that Washington could get around the evident
contradiction by expanding an existing contingency plan for the
defense of Poland to include the Baltic states or by adopting “generic
plans” for a NATO response to aggression that would not name the
states involved but would be applicable to the Baltic countries.
Among the concerns expressed by Daalder was that in the absence of a
contingency plan, the Baltic states would not trust NATO for their
defense and “will have to consider developing a force structure
focused on territorial defense rather than on expeditionary
capabilities.” The specific “expeditionary” role that the US
ambassador had in mind was the deployment of Lithuanian, Latvian and
Estonian troops in the US-led war in Afghanistan.
The cable indicates that it was Germany that first raised the
suggestion that the contingency plan for Poland—codenamed “Eagle
Guardian”—could be widened to include the Baltic states. This was the
path that Washington ultimately backed. NATO approved the plan on
January 22, 2010 but made no public announcement.
A January 26 cable signed by Hillary Clinton from the State Department
to US diplomats in NATO countries and to the American embassy in
Moscow spelled out the need to maintain strict secrecy in relation to
the agreement.
“The United States believes strongly that such planning should not be
discussed publicly. These military plans are classified at the NATO
SECRET level,” the cable states. “Public discussion of contingency
plans undermines their military value, giving insight into NATO’s
planning processes. This weakens the security of all Allies.”
The document adds: “A public discussion of contingency planning would
also likely lead to an unnecessary increase in NATO-Russia tensions,
something we should try to avoid as we work to improve practical
cooperation in areas of common NATO-Russia interest.”
The cable concludes with recommendations for dealing with any media
inquiries on the contingency plans. Such non-answers as “NATO does not
discuss specific plans” and “NATO is constantly reviewing and revising
its plans” are suggested. The diplomats are instructed to stress that
NATO planning “is not ’aimed’ at any other country,” which in this
case it most definitely was—at Russia.
Russia’s ambassador to NATO said Tuesday that Moscow would demand that
the Western alliance abrogate the Baltic contingency plan, saying that
the plan stood in direct contradiction to assurances given at the
recent NATO summit in Lisbon.
“We must get some assurances that such plans will be dropped, and that
Russia is not an enemy for NATO,” said the Russian envoy, Dmitry
Rogozin. “I expect my colleagues from the NATO-Russia Council to
confirm that Lisbon has made all the difference.”
Rogozin dismissed NATO’s claims that the contingency plan was not
aimed at any one country. “Against whom else could such a defense be
intended?” he asked. “Against Sweden, Finland, Greenland, Iceland,
against polar bears, or against the Russian bear?”
Meanwhile, the Guardian quoted an unnamed official at the Russian
foreign ministry as saying that the documents had provoked “a lot of
questions and bewilderment.”
“Russia has repeatedly raised the question about the need to ensure
that there is no military planning aimed against one another,” the
source said.
The revelations have surfaced under conditions of mounting tensions
between Washington and Moscow over the US Senate’s failure to ratify a
new START treaty on nuclear arms reduction and differences over
Washington’s drive to set up an anti-missile network in Europe.
Cooperation between Moscow and Washington notwithstanding, the US war
in Afghanistan and the strategic drive by US imperialism to assert its
hegemony in Central Asia are an inevitable source of conflict.
Underscoring these growing tensions, the Russian navy reported
Wednesday that US and Japanese forces suspended war games in the Sea
of Japan after two Russian Ilyushin-38 anti-submarine aircraft flew
over the area.
“The area is our zone of responsibility,” said Roman Markov, a
spokesman for the Russian navy. “The airplanes carried out a planned
flight in an area of the Russian Pacific Fleet’s regular activity. Our
pilots did not violate any rules of international air space.”
The military exercise involves some 34,000 Japanese and more than
10,000 US military personnel along with scores of warships and
hundreds of aircraft. They were suspended out of concern that the
Russian aircraft could gather secret data on US and Japanese
capabilities.
Relations between Moscow and Tokyo have soured in recent weeks over
the dispute between the two governments over the control of a string
of islands stretching south of Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula. Known in
Russia as the Southern Kuriles and in Japan as the Northern
Territories, they were seized by Soviet forces in World War II.
Last month, Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev made a brief surprise
trip to one of the islands, provoking angry protests from Japan. Last
weekend, in an apparent response, Japan’s Foreign Minister Seiji
Maehara flew past of the islands on a Japanese coast guard plane. An
unnamed Russian official responded to the fly-by: “No one, Japan
included, is banned from admiring the beauties of Russian nature.”
Other dispatches released by WikiLeaks point to the tensions within
the NATO alliance over relations with Russia. In particular, a
February 2010 cable from the US embassy in Paris records a clash
between US Secretary of State Robert Gates and France’s Foreign
Minister Herve Morin over French plans for arms sales to Moscow.
Gates, the cable reports, “raised US concerns over sales of a Mistral-
class helicopter carrier to Russia as sending a mixed signal to both
Russia and our Central and Eastern European allies.” The Pentagon
chief went on to recall that while French President Nicolas Sarkozy
had negotiated the ceasefire agreement that ended the fighting between
Russia and Georgia in 2008, Moscow had not lived up to the agreement.
Morin replied, according to the cable, by asking “rhetorically how we
can tell Russia we desire a partnership but then not trust them.”
The cable also quotes Morin expressing the view that “a European
Missile Defense system is both unwise and unnecessary,” adding that
Gates “refuted Morin’s contention.”
An appended note indicating back-channel discussions between US and
French officials states: “Following the meetings, Morin’s critical
comments on Missile Defense were disavowed by senior officials at the
MoD and the MFA, who said that his views were his own and that the
U.S. should essentially ‘erase’ what he had just said.”

 Russia
tanto per ricordare chi è che non è mai uscito dalla guerra fredda

NATO plans for a US-led war against Russia over the Baltic states.
già noto grazie...