... killer weapons in its strategic toolbox: energy and military power. But the use of energy weapons is also self-inflicted wounds for Russia, making it difficult to use them on a large scale, while the use of weapons of war seems unimaginable in the post-Cold War era.
From Russia's perspective, every step NATO pushes eastward brings the security threat to Russia closer. It is clear that the next targets of NATO enlargement will be Ukraine and Georgia, an issue that was on the agenda at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, which means that NATO's military ...
... to transform into an inclusive Euro-Atlantic security community, has, because of Russian actions in Ukraine, sailed off the cliff and into a new military confrontation. Rather than capitalize on the historic opportunity created when at the end of the Cold War the decades-long NATO-Warsaw Pact military standoff was dismantled, the two sides are now rapidly re-militarizing a new central front that cuts through Europe’s potentially least stable regions. Putting the brakes on this trend and finding ways to send it in a safer ...
The threat of nuclear war between Russia and the West, long relegated to Cold War history, reappeared last year as the crisis in East-West relations escalated.
Russian strategic bombers now fly long-range patrols near the coast of the US and its NATO allies, while Russian missile tests and military exercises involving simulated use of nuclear weapons raise the specter of nuclear war. The US responds as its defense analysts discuss options for boosting nuclear deterrence in Europe to counter Russian ...
... Moscow Time and such a big machine, without any measures to reduce its observability, is naturally visible from the ground at a distance of over 300km. A Su-27 took off to perform a visual identification. This is standard procedure: the main task of NATO aircraft based on a rotation system in the Baltic region is to intercept and visually identify Russian aircraft. Often, after transmitting back to base the state to which the unknown aircraft belongs and its tail number, the interceptor returns to ...
... potential means of containment at the expense of expeditionary forces that could be utilized in regions far removed from Central and Eastern Europe.
So what will the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force – or the “Spearhead Force”, as NATO likes to call it – look like?
25 years after the end of the Cold War we are witnessing a return to the paradigm of mutual deterrence, with no side seeming prepared to resume the work of the NATO–Russia Council.
ACUS, RIAC, ALN Report “Managing Differences
on European Security in 2015”
The
Very ...
... was closely watching the maneuvers and then holding its own games indicates either naivety or hypocrisy. Essentially a self-exiting process, mutual military activities will build up until politicians willingly adopt the path of de-escalation. A real cold war is still far away but the sides are working hard to make it happen. The U-turn is feasible only if Russia and the United States, NATO's military and political leader, resolve their fundamental differences, first of all about Ukraine, which appears unlikely in the near future. Until then, expect many more reports on the Russian threat coming from Western media and think tanks.
An ...
... on the same scale as during that period. To be honest, I think that possibly from our historical vantage point the more interesting question is not so much how we can compare it with the Cold War but how the way our relations have developed since the Cold War. It seems clear that there has been a major ramping up of the level of Russian military activity in 2014 compared to 2013. Certainly that spur has been reported first by individual national governments and also by NATO in terms of scrambling aircraft and the level of activity that has been observed. If you go further back before 2013, then obviously there was a period when there was no activity of that kind.
I think one of the important distinctions to make is ...
