Washington is preparing for nuclear war in Europe

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Washington is preparing for nuclear war in Europe

Postby 82_28 » Sun Sep 03, 2017 12:31 am

I got nuthin' but some links to some shit that came out today. I have to defer to people who know much better than I. But, I don't think that sanity is going to somehow arise from everything we think we know and things that we don't. If war is what they want, I guess that is what we will get.

Washington is preparing for nuclear war in Europe

By Johannes Stern
2 September 2017

Amid mounting military and diplomatic tensions between the US and Russia, the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported Friday that the American Congress has taken the first steps toward Washington’s annulling of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

The INF, or Washington Treaty on Mid-range Nuclear Systems, is a bilateral agreement reached between the United States and the Soviet Union on the decommissioning of short- and mid-range missiles (with a range of between 500 and 5,500 miles), and the banning of their production.

The treaty, signed on 8 December 1987 by US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, led to a significant reduction of US nuclear weapons in Europe. The nuclear-armed mid-range Pershing II missiles, whose stationing in Western Europe five years earlier had triggered the largest peace demonstrations to that point in history, were withdrawn.

The danger now is “that the US will construct new missiles and station them in Europe,” warned the Süddeutsche Zeitung. A major shift would be set “into motion” and Europe would stand “on the brink of a new nuclear era … nuclear mid-range missiles were the horror of the Cold War … thirty years on, the spectre has returned.”

The reason for the potential ending of the treaty, according to the newspaper, is the “deep freeze” in US-Russia relations and announcements by both sides of intentions to “comprehensively modernise their nuclear arsenals.”

Characteristically, the explosive reports by the German press have been totally ignored by the US print and broadcast media.

The report came amid a hysterical campaign being mounted by the US and NATO over military exercises planned by the Russian military in western Russia, Belarus and Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad later this month, with Washington and its allies suggesting that they could be used as a “Trojan horse” to pre-position weapons stockpiles and prepare an invasion of the Baltic states.

The Pentagon has deployed seven US F-15C fighter planes to a base in Lithuania along with an additional 600 US airborne troops to the Baltics in advance of the war games.

This military build-up has been carried out in conjunction with a major US diplomatic provocation as the Trump administration has retaliated against Russia’s expulsion of US embassy personnel from Russia (itself a tit-for-tat response to earlier expulsions of Russians from the US) by ordering the shutdown of three Russian diplomatic facilities in Washington, New York and San Francisco. Moscow has charged that the action, which it said was accompanied by FBI searches of the San Francisco consulate and the residences of Russian diplomatic personnel, constituted a violation of international law.

The increasingly dangerous friction between the world’s two largest nuclear powers is unfolding in the context of growing war dangers internationally, particularly on the Korean peninsula. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Friday that the increasingly bellicose confrontation between the US and North Korea had left the region “balanced on the verge of a large-scale conflict.”

It is in this context that the reported threats of an escalation of nuclear brinksmanship on the continent of Europe pose such an imminent danger.

A NATO document classified as secret which was obtained by a joint research group made up of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and public regional broadcasters NDR and WDR contains 39 proposals on how NATO can take action against Russia. According to diplomats, “formal consultations within NATO” could take place in the autumn at the initiative of the US. The paper was “a compendium of all options available” carefully “divided up into the categories ‘conceivable’, ‘currently to be avoided’ and ‘not advisable’.”

Even the more than a dozen “conceivable” options, which NATO believes would be compatible with the INF agreement, “would exacerbate already tense relations,” according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Proposals include “increased rotation of B-2 and B-52 bombers from the US to Europe,” an “expansion of early warning systems and missile or submarine defence,” and the strengthening of “military and civilian infrastructure against attacks.” The increased readiness and capability for a nuclear retaliatory strike, “nuclear signalling,” is seen as “conceivable.”

Two proposals are especially provocative: “to expand the so-called nuclear targeting planning – i.e. identifying and confirming the targets for nuclear weapons,” and “to increase the operational readiness of those air bases that would drop these bombs in case of war.” On this, “NATO also advises caution,” the Süddeutsche noted. The confirmation of targets, i.e., the concrete planning of a nuclear assault, could rapidly provoke a nuclear war with Russia, which could potentially wipe out humanity.

According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, if the US abandons the INF treaty, “measures currently found in the ‘not advisable’ category [would be] conceivable: Construction, testing and stationing of a new class of missiles – a further step into a new Cold War.”

The German ruling class is extremely concerned by Washington’s increasingly aggressive war drive against Russia. Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel (Social Democrats, SPD) warned in an interview on Thursday against “repeating the worst mistakes of the Cold War. We are on our way to a Cold War 2.0. All of the good treaties on disarmament and arms controls from Gorbachev and Reagan are in acute peril. Europe is threatened once again with becoming a military training ground for nuclear weapons.”

He continued: “It is wrong for Mrs. Merkel to remain silent on this. Germany of all countries must raise its voice against this. We have to stick to being a power for peace and oppose an arms spiral. In that context, I found the statement by [SPD Chancellor candidate] Martin Schulz that we must focus on finally ridding our country of nuclear weapons to be correct.”

Schulz and Gabriel are in the midst of an election campaign, and are well aware that the vast majority of Germany’s population—like that of the rest of the planet—opposes military rearmament and war, and would welcome the withdrawal of the US nuclear weapons still stationed in Germany.

The two Social Democratic politicians are by no means committed to peace, but are rather leading representatives of German imperialism. They oppose the US plans for nuclear rearmament because a return to the conditions of the Cold War would endanger Germany’s own plans for global power and increase Berlin’s dependence on the US. It would undermine Germany’s economic and geopolitical interests, which are ever more at odds with those of Washington.

In July, Gabriel strongly criticised the latest US sanctions against Russia. Although Europe and the US had “jointly and in close consultation answered Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and Russia’s actions in eastern Ukraine,” it was not possible to accept “the threat of unlawful extraterritorial sanctions against European companies participating in the expansion of European energy supplies!” The supply of energy to Europe was “a European affair and not one for the United States of America!”

Following the latest threats from the US, the Social Democrats are leading the way in attempting to transform the widespread opposition to Donald Trump’s right-wing, militarist policies into support for German militarism. Asked whether he thought “the fear of many Germans that Trump could overreact and incite a war is justified,” Gabriel answered, “I am concerned that the US will be forever lost to the West. Some of the people around Donald Trump want to replace the rule of law with the law of the strongest. We must assert ourselves against this.”

Papers published by think tanks and the major political parties give a sense of the methods German imperialism intends to use to “assert” its interests. In “Principles for a Social Democratic Security and Defence Policy,” the SPD writes, “To be equal to the increased demands for international deployments to tackle crises, cyber defence, and the defence of our own population, we need a modern armed forces capable of action. We need an army in which […] troops capable of deploying are ready for crisis situations. For this we have to better equip the army with personnel and material.”

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP) is the only party participating in Germany’s federal election campaign that opposes the US build-up of nuclear weapons from the standpoint of the international working class, and fights for a socialist strategy to combat social inequality, militarism and war. To the capitalist warmongers on both sides of the Atlantic, we counterpose the unity of the international working class. Under conditions of the mounting danger of nuclear war, this perspective assumes enormous urgency.


http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/09 ... o-s02.html

U.S. Army unprepared to deal with Russia in Europe

The U.S. Army’s rapid reaction force in Europe is under-equipped, undermanned and inadequately organized to confront military aggression from Russia or its high-tech proxies, according to an internal study that some who have read it view as a wake-up call as the Trump administration seeks to deter an emboldened Vladimir Putin.

The Italy-based 173rd Airborne Brigade, a bulwark of the NATO alliance that has spent much of the last decade and a half rotating in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan, lacks “essential capabilities needed to accomplish its mission effectively and with decisive speed,” according to the analysis by the brigade, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, the unit's paratroopers were the first American troops to reach the Baltic states to deter another potential incursion on NATO’s eastern flank.

But the assessment details a series of “capability gaps” the unit has identified during recent training with Ukrainian troops with experience battling Russian-backed separatists, who have used cheap drones and electronic warfare tools to pinpoint targets for artillery barrages and devastated government armored vehicles with state-of-the-art Russian antitank missiles.

Some of the shortfalls, like the brigade’s lack of air defense and electronic warfare units and over-reliance on satellite communications and GPS navigation systems, are the direct results of the Army's years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the enemy has no air power or other high-end equipment and technology.

“The lessons we learned from our Ukrainian partners were substantial. It was a real eye-opener on the absolute need to look at ourselves critically,” Col. Gregory Anderson, who commissioned the report earlier this year during his stint as the brigade’s commander, told POLITICO after it had obtained a copy of the report. “We felt compelled to write about our experiences and pass on what we saw and learned.”

The report has so far been distributed only through internal channels to the Army staff and other military headquarters.

The analysis comes to light as Russia gears up for one of the largest military exercises in the post-Soviet era — a weeklong war game called Zapad that could involve as many as 100,000 troops and will be held later this month in Belarus. It also comes as the Pentagon seeks to step up its effort to deter Russia, including by rotating other American ground units on a temporary basis into Eastern Europe and the Baltic countries to demonstrate resolve. That’s part of an Obama administration effort known as the European Reassurance Initiative.

The 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Vicenza, Italy, parachuted into Iraq in the early days of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and saw intense combat in Afghanistan. While its roughly 4,000 soldiers would be no match for a Russian assault on Europe on their own, the 173rd is considered a primary element in deterring Moscow from threatening NATO's borders — particularly since the departure of two U.S. Army tank brigades from Germany was completed in 2013.

Yet years of deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan, where the 173rd mostly confronted ragtag groups of insurgents, have dulled some of its skills in the type of higher-end combat that Russia has been sharpening in Ukraine, the report found.

Some of the problems the report identifies have low-tech solutions that the Army could implement relatively easily. Amazingly, camouflage nets to hide vehicles from enemy helicopters or drones are “hard-to-find luxuries for tactical units.”

To fill other gaps, the report pins hope on a pair of new Army vehicle programs that could help the brigade if they are fielded soon enough.

The 173rd’s aging up-armored Humvees, designed to protect against roadside bombs in Iraq, would be “easy prey” for Russian armored vehicles, and the report recommends replacing them with the forthcoming Ground Mobility Vehicle, a much lighter-weight, more mobile truck. The Army announced this summer that it is buying nearly 300 of these vehicles from General Dynamics to equip the 173rd and stateside paratroop and special operations units, although none will carry the 30 mm guns that the report recommends some be outfitted with.

The report also calls for the brigade to be equipped with a small contingent of light tanks, which would offer much-needed protection to forward scouts against Russian anti-armor missiles. That solution is likely a ways off. The Army is only expected to issue a formal request for proposals for its light tank program later this year, a first step to developing a new weapon system.

Even if the service quickly settles on an already available prototype, it will be several years before the new vehicles reach the 173rd or other Army units. In the meantime, the brigade will have to rely on heavy armor units that rotate regularly from stateside bases.

The common thread running through the paper is the challenge posed by Russia’s jammers and other electronic warfare tools.

An enemy equipped with these “could effectively neutralize a GPS system from 50 miles away using one-fifth the power of a tactical radio,” the report estimates, so “we should assume that GPS will be either unavailable or unreliable for the duration of the conflict if the [brigade] faces a near-peer threat or sophisticated non-state actors.”

Here, too, some of the solutions are low-tech. High-frequency or HF radios are more difficult for enemy electronic warfare specialists to pinpoint and jam than the satellite radios that have become the norm for U.S. units over the past 15 years. HF radio equipment and training have fallen by the wayside in the American military during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but not in some allied militaries.

The shortfalls have required the 173rd to call on allies from Latvia to help it learn how to communicate in the face of Russian jamming — a stark indicator of how badly knowledge of a key communication method has degraded in the American force.

In February, according to the paper, a Latvian military communications specialist spent a week teaching HF techniques to the 173rd, and since then, the brigade’s paratroopers have honed their HF proficiency during a joint exercise with Latvian troops in Germany. To fix the problem, though, the Army needs to systemically resume teaching HF radio communications stateside, the report says.

U.S. artillery also relies heavily on GPS, and as the 173rd has learned during exercises in the Baltic states, there is more to breaking that dependency. Before GPS, artillerymen used a set of star charts called the Army Ephemeris to precisely estimate their positions before targeting the enemy — and the Army has not updated those charts in more than two decades.

To better protect against jamming and spoofing and go on the offensive against enemy drones, the brigade and other Europe-based units have recently bought off-the-shelf commercial systems, and a more capable Army system is scheduled to come online in 2023 — but the report says the 173rd needs better jamming gear sooner than that, along with 10 small teams of electronic warfare specialists to use it.

Meanwhile, according to a military source who spoke with POLITICO, a sister unit from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment in Poland has had to depend on Romanian troops to operate short-range anti-aircraft guns. And the paratroop brigade lacks “essential capabilities needed to accomplish its mission effectively and with decisive speed.

“These ideas and proposals are potentially useful for all airborne brigades, and for the Army writ large,” the report notes.

Some former Army officers who have read the report agree, and hope the document acts as an alarm bell for the service at a time of renewed focus on Eastern Europe and tension with Russia.

“The report is framed as being about the 173rd, but it’s really about more than the 173rd. It’s about what the Army needs to do,” said Adrian Bonenberger, a former infantry officer who fought with the brigade in Afghanistan and now lives in Ukraine, studying and writing about the conflict there. “If Russia uses electronic warfare to jam the brigade’s artillery, and its anti-tank weapons can’t penetrate any of the Russian armor, and they’re able to confuse and disrupt and quickly overwhelm those paratroopers, we could be in for a long war.”


http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/0 ... sia-242273
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
User avatar
82_28
 
Posts: 11194
Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2007 4:34 am
Location: North of Queen Anne
Blog: View Blog (0)

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 43 guests