Ten days later Polish Chief of General Staff General Franciszek Gagor presided over a ceremony for the deployment of his nation's seventh contingent of troops to NATO's Afghan war front - Poland will soon have 2,600 soldiers there, its largest-ever overseas military deployment - and said "the experience gained in the mission has tangibly accelerated the modernization of the Polish armed forces." [8]
Last autumn Defense Minister Klich divulged plans to spend $16.2 billion (12.4 billion euros) "to modernize Poland's armed forces," with fourteen new programs including "air defense systems, combat and cargo helicopters, naval modernization, espionage and unmanned aircraft, training simulators and equipment for soldiers...." [9]
Seven years ago the Polish government signed a contract to purchase 48 U.S. F-16 fighter jets, reported to be the most expensive arms deal in the nation's history.
Why Poland requires a modernized army nineteen years after the end of the Warsaw Pact and moreover in a Europe "whole, free and at peace" was not addressed.
What in fact is the case is that the war in Afghanistan is a mechanism employed by the U.S. and NATO to provide wartime combat training to the armed forces of several nations bordering Russia - Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Norway and Mongolia - for contingency plans far closer to home. Last August Georgian Defense Minister Davit (Vasil) Sikharulidze "told The Associated Press in an interview that...training by the U.S. Marine Corps will not only give his troops the skills necessary to fight alongside NATO allies in Afghanistan, but also could come into play if another war broke out between Georgia and Russia." [10]
Recently Lithuania's Foreign Minister Audronius Azubalis visited NATO headquarters in Brussels where he was summoned over the bloc's 21st century global military doctrine to be formally adopted in Lisbon, Portugal this December.
Azubalis "stressed that the Article Five of the North Atlantic Treaty, which sets out the principle of collective defense, had to remain the key element of the new Strategic Concept," and said "it is necessary for NATO to be more visible in member states, when organizing exercises and trainings, and when developing infrastructure." He also "highlighted the importance of U.S. nuclear presence in Europe and stated that an appropriate NATO's policy had to be implemented with regard to new threats." [11]
So-called collective defense under the rubric of NATO's mutual military assistance clause, moving NATO bases and military equipment to Russia's borders, and maintaining American nuclear weapons in Europe have nothing to do with the war in Afghanistan or defense against such new NATO casus belli as global warming, rising sea levels, water shortages, piracy, a drop in food production and others identified by the bloc's secretary general last autumn in London.
Also last week the armed forces of Estonia and Lithuania participated in the opening exercises of the Baltic Battalion Project (BALTBAT) Intelligent Eagle 10 operation in preparation for the two nations' forces serving with the NATO Response Force, "a high-readiness and technologically advanced allied force made of land, air and maritime components capable of quick deployment at any time in any place for a full spectrum of operations."
The maneuvers were "conducted in several phases: surveillance of a fictitious operation area and the elaboration on an operation plan and preparation for combat action training...." [12]
At the same time a NATO "group of experts" delegation arrived in the Estonian capital of Tallinn to deliver a presentation on the Alliance's Strategic Concept. Next month, April 22-23, NATO is to hold a meeting in Tallinn with the foreign ministers of 56 nations, 28 full members and an equal amount of military partners from around the world. The gathering "will mark the first time that the new Strategic Concept is discussed at the ministerial level." [13]
The U.S. Navy announced on March 23 that it was sending personnel from its military station in Rota, Spain to Latvia to lay the groundwork for the Baltic Operations (BALTOPS) 2010 exercises later this year. "BALTOPS is an operation sponsored by Commander, United States European Command, and is an exercise aimed to promote a mutual understanding of maritime interoperability between U.S. Navy, NATO, and non-NATO participants." [14]
Two years ago NATO opened a so-called cyber defense installation in Estonia, as the bloc itself described it at the time "after a major cyber attack on Estonian public and private institutions prompted NATO to conduct a thorough assessment of its approach to cyber defence." The alleged perpetrators were Russian of course.
"At their meeting in October 2007 Allied Defence Ministers called for the development of a NATO cyber defence policy which was adopted [in] early 2008." [15]
Last week Jamie Shea, NATO's Director of Policy Planning, identified what he called cyber attack capabilities as "the fifth dimension of warfare after space, sea, land and air...." [16]
Prominent Western, especially U.S., officials have been demanding a NATO Article 5 response to cyber attacks for the past three years.
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