More US troops and more countries deployed in Europe, particularly on the alliance’s eastern flank and closer to Russia’s borders, before NATO began an extraordinary summit at its headquarters in Brussels on March 24, a face-to-face meeting , which President Joe Biden attended to guarantee his own war, centered on the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.
At the emergency meeting, the war coalition pledged to be even more aggressive towards Russia: to double its troops near Russia’s borders and to send more weapons, including ballistic missile systems. It is clear that instead of encouraging a de-escalation of the conflict, it is precipitating it by using a non-NATO country as an immediate battlefield.
The war pact, which violated security agreements with Moscow after the end of the so-called Cold War, is at the heart of the current crisis. A knowledgeable first-hand source such as Stars and Stripes has said that the fighting in Ukraine could lead to a rethinking of US military stances in Europe and thus a build-up of US forces in the Cold War region, and this is happening.
The prediction is already coming true that 100,000 Pentagon soldiers are deployed in the Old Continent, the largest number since 2005 – when it guaranteed rapid deployment from there to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. The deployment, following what Biden ordered, tops 80,000 in January and also far exceeds the standing: 65,000 troops according to the United States European Command/Eucom, although more are added each year through rotating military training exercises. .
And they will continue to add… They say stop Russia.
The Europe, home to US military bases in 19 countries, including six Pentagon nuclear weapons sites, is under attack from across the Atlantic by new forces targeting Poland, Romania and the Baltic states (Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania).
As can be seen, the extension to former members of the Warsaw Pact settlement, which is a reconstruction of the NATO map, has been carried out gradually since 2014, although for the time being the highest position remains in Germany with 38,500 uniformed, in Italy with 12,000, and they have 10,000 in Poland and another equal number in the UK.
At the moment, several thousand Marines, including the 2nd Division of this military installation, are taking part in Cold Response in Setermoen, Norway, as part of approximately 30,000 soldiers from 27 NATO countries and other partners (such as Sweden and Finland), Norway’s largest military exercise since the end of the Cold War.
They say this edition of Cold Response, with this record number of troops, was scheduled well before February 24, but they don’t seem too concerned that Cold Response will fuel tensions even more when around 220 aircraft and more part This show are NATO military force of 50 ships stationed in an area relatively close to the line shared by Norway and Russia: 195.7 kilometers of land border between Sør-Varanger in Finnmark (Norway) and Petsamo district in Murmansk (Russia). 23.2 km sea border in the Varangerfjord.
Also benefits in the shade
It is said with good reason that in a war everyone loses, even those who may be the winners on the battlefield. But it’s not quite like that. Every war is a win for the military suppliers, for the so-called industry of death, for the big corporations who see tens of billions of dollars pouring into their fortunes in the short term…
The current war conflicts — which are not few, although now overshadowed by the media armies that only consider the Russian-Ukrainian confrontation worth reporting and keep the others silent to ensure its permanence, intensity and brutality — have seen the growth of the capital these consortia with ever more lucrative annual earnings figures since that fateful September 11th when Bush, the son, declared infinite war on terrorism and instituted his own terror for it.
On Friday, March 11th, President Joe Biden signed the US budget into law. A total of $1.5 trillion, including the largest military spending ever approved by this imperial nation, $782 billion (up 6 percent from the previous fiscal year) and nearly $30 billion over the White House’s original request.
The astronomical post also includes 6.5 billion in military aid to the nations of Eastern Europe, which in turn includes 3.5 billion in additional arms for Ukraine, which they supplied well before the war march.
Warnings, this cornucopia’s spiral, bringing with it a tremendous amount of pain and destruction with the dollars, does not end here as the additional funding for the Kyiv government “adds to the more than a billion that the United States already has spent over the past year to equip Ukrainian soldiers with modern weaponry, including Javelin anti-tank missiles made by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies, and Raytheon’s Stinger anti-aircraft missiles,” The Hill reported.
This political media outlet showed from Washington and named two of the great beneficiaries of this war, as they have been in the others, past, present or even those to come.
I can imagine the smug look on a defense industry lobbyist’s face as he told The Hill about the immediate impact of the Russo-Ukrainian events: “We’re going to have to fill in some of this ourselves, so it’s going to force the Pentagon to buy some more defense companies.” ” and complemented his approval with an almost certain prediction that next year the military budget will be even larger and “spend more money on acquisitions and [investigación y desarrollo]».
A few days ago, Washington DC’s own publication was headlined “Ukrainian Conflict Blessings for Defense Industry,” commenting that US allies in Europe have pledged to drastically increase defense spending to counter the Russian threat, “measures that will win new lucrative contracts.” for the arms industry.”
The Hill quoted William Hartung, senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft: “There’s a very good chance that contractors will benefit, and in the short term we could be talking tens of billions of dollars, which is no small feat, even for these big ones.” Company”.
In reality, while the United States and NATO tried to tease the Kremlin by announcing a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine day after day and for months, they armed that country while pushing for an increase in European war spending Lockheed Martin stock is up more than 25 percent in 2022, Raytheon stock is up 12 percent, General Dynamics stock is up 14 percent, and Northrop stock is up 16 percent.
Similarly, historian Jonathan Ng, in an essay published in Truthout entitled “The Arms Industry Sees the Ukraine Conflict as an Opportunity, Not a Crisis,” stated: “The deepening conflict over Ukraine dramatizes the power of militarism and the influence of defense contractors . A ruthless pursuit of markets intertwined with imperialism has fueled NATO expansion while fueling wars from Eastern Europe to Yemen.
“In reality, the enlargement of NATO was a major trigger of the crisis. And the conflagration was a gift to the armaments industry,” he says, warning of a decomposing culture: “NATO intellectuals are now openly talking about the prospect of an ‘infinite war'” and refers to the figures that the UN shows: at least 14,000 people have been killed in the Russo-Ukrainian war since 2014, more than 377,000 have died in Yemen.
Therefore, he quite correctly defines how to deal with these war vultures with what they fear most: “The threat to peace”.