The outgoing Yushchenko regime recently assigned Ukrainian troops to the global NATO Response Force and hosted NATO Military Committee Chairman Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola who presented a draft cooperation plan for 2010-2011.
A member of the new president's Party of Regions, Vasil Hara, deputy chairman of the party's parliamentary group, recently stated "that by offering to deploy U.S. anti-missile systems on its territory, Romania is turning Ukraine into a risk zone."
He also affirmed that incoming President Yanukovich "will not leave Transdnestr without support." [22]
Recent developments, however, signal a new advance in U.S. and NATO strategy to neutralize potential adversaries' ability to respond to military aggression from the West. The extension of missile shield deployments and technology to the Black Sea and from there further east and south marks the confluence of hostile intentions toward Russia and Iran simultaneously.
In the third public warning on NATO expansion since last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently said "The West's ultimate goal is not Iran, but India and China" and "named the recent concentration of NATO forces around India and unrest in Pakistan as an argument." He added that NATO now "almost completely surrounded Russia" and advocated that "Russia should respond to the deployment of NATO forces along its borders." [23]
Earlier this month former president Hashemi Rafsanjani issued a similar warning, saying "the deployment of NATO forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Azerbaijan will constitute a serious threat to Iran...." [24]
In discussing Western pressure not to provide Iran with S-300 surface-to-air missiles for defense against prospective U.S. and Israeli attacks, Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Vladimir Nazarov recently said, "This deal is not restricted by any international sanctions, because these are merely defensive weapons," and recalled earlier Russian concerns about the U.S. and its NATO allies arming Georgia on the eve of the August 2008 war with Russia.
But, Nazarov rued, "Our calls were ignored. It should be recalled that the Georgian aggression resulted in deaths among Russian servicemen and Russian civilians." [25]
Russian concerns have not abated in the face of recent news.
The website of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe divulged that American airmen from the Ramstein Air Base in Germany have arrived at the modernized, massively upgraded Krtsanisi National Training Center in Georgia, "a forward operating base of sorts," to join American Marines there training the Georgian armed forces on a "mission that involves providing a top-notch service to fellow warfighters." [26] The Marines have been in the nation and at the Krtsanisi base since last August, and in October conducted the latest Immediate Response war games. Immediate Response 2008, which also included U.S. Marines, ended the day before Georgia invaded South Ossetia and triggered a five-day war with Russia.
U.S. Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke will arrive in Georgia on February 22 on a visit "devoted to the Georgian military contingent's participation in the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan." (Holbrooke was in the Persian Gulf on February 15 and while speaking in Qatar said of Afghanistan "We cannot make the disastrous mistake of 1989. The international community must stay in Afghanistan to help it," [27] meaning 1992 presumably, when the U.S.'s Mujahideen clients took over the nation, and "The U.S. has led and won similar wars in Kosovo and Bosnia...." [28])
Georgia is to send another 700 troops trained by U.S. Marines to Afghanistan to serve under American command shortly. Leading Georgian officials have unapologetically acknowledged that the training and combat experience provided them by the U.S. can be used for subjugating South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Any such attempt would guarantee another and far larger war with Russia which has expanded its military presence in both nations since the 2008 war. [29]
Georgia can also be used by the U.S. for military strikes against Iran by providing surveillance radar, air bases and its Black Sea waters for cruise missile launches.
The Russian Itar-Tass news agency revealed on February 12 that in addition to supplying Georgia with aerial drones, Israel is delivering a large consignment of arms and ammunition to the nation.
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