The nations he mentioned and alluded to are threatened by no non-European nations, surely not by non-existent Iranian long- and intermediate-range missiles, so Rasmussen was referring to a country partially in Europe. Russia.
U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden was in Poland for two days last week to also "reassure" his host nation's government that Washington - and NATO - were steadfast in commitment to the nation's "defense." Against Russia.
His discussion included the stationing of American SM-3 interceptor missiles, which will augment the deployment of 92 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles, which will in turn be operated by 100 U.S. troops to be stationed in Poland. This represents the first deployment, and a permanent one at that, of American armed forces in the country. Over the last three years the Pentagon has taken similar measures to base an initial force of 4,000 troops at seven new bases in Bulgaria and Romania.
A report on the Voice of Russia website on October 22 referring to the latter deployments bore the headline "The US moving its military bases to Russian borders."
Later in Romania "Mr. Biden...repeatedly referr[ed] to a central pledge of the NATO pact - that an attack on one member would be viewed as an attack on all members - as a reminder that the United States would not be idle if Russia threatened its neighbors." [6]
While the American vice president was touring Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania last week and as NATO was holding its defense ministerial in Slovakia, the U.S. Senate held hearings on NATO expansion at which, inter alia, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, now chairing NATO's committee on its new Strategic Concept, and former ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker and former NATO top military commander General John Craddock testified.
Senator and past presidential candidate John Kerry stated, "I hope we can...use this hearing to address the prospects for future NATO
enlargement to include Balkan nations, Georgia, and Ukraine." [7]
Earlier last week NATO Secretary General Rasmussen was paraphrased as saying the bloc "would consider staging military exercises in the Baltic Sea states to rebut concerns in the region about the newly reassertive Russia." [8]
The heads of states of the three Baltic nations took him at his word.
At a conference in the capital of Latvia on October 24 new Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite demanded that "The three Baltic States must act together in requesting their Alliance partners...work out, as soon as possible and taking into account the new threats, NATO defense plans for the Baltics." [9] She didn't specify what the "new threats" are any more than did Biden and Rasmussen, but a cursory glance at a map of northeastern Europe would provide the answer.
She spoke for her allies President Valdis Zatlers of Latvia and President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia, a decades-long resident of the U.S., in stating "Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are full members of the Alliance and active security providers participating in NATO's operation in Afghanistan and other missions. Therefore, we deserve to have security guarantees and concrete defense plans for our countries." [10]
The quid pro quo, then, is this: By providing troops to the U.S. and NATO for the war in Afghanistan nations like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland receive in turn a commitment from Washington and Brussels to support them - including with the NATO Article 5 military assistance clause and the American nuclear arsenal - in any confrontations with Russia. A reciprocity that also increasingly exists with NATO partner states like Georgia and Ukraine, both of which were granted an unprecedented Annual National Program by NATO and a complementary Charter on Strategic Partnership with the U.S. in late 2008. In the case of Georgia, within months of its August 2008 war with Russia.
Lithuania's Grybauskaite was even more urgent in her comments last Saturday, stating "We appeal for and demand security in the form of a NATO emergency plan for the Baltic region." [11]
Even though NATO, including American, warplanes have flown ongoing patrols in the Baltic region, a three-minute flight from Russia's second largest city, St. Petersburg, since 2004, and although the U.S. and its allies conducted the Baltic Eagle NATO Response Force multinational exercise in Latvia this past June, the 12-nation Baltic Operations (BALTOPS) war games in the same month, and the Loyal Arrow 2009 NATO military exercises in the Bothnian Bay in the Northern Baltic Sea, which included "the largest display of air power in the area's history" [12], in yet the same month. {Among several other purposes, the Afghan war is being used to complete the NATO integration of formally neutral Finland and Sweden, both of which have hundreds of troops in the nation and have engaged in combat operations there.)
Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo recently said "that NATO has defence plans in the Baltics....One has to keep in mind that the plans exist on a variety of levels and formats." [13]
The day before the conference in Latvia the USS Cole, target of a bomb attack in Yemen in 2000, arrived in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. USS Cole, an "Aegis-equipped guided missile destroyer, will stay in the Estonian capital until October 27," it was reported. [14]
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