The NATO leviathan wants more prey, and the elites in Bosnia are offering their fractured, internationally supervised state, on the military tray. At a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Tallinn, Bosnia had the honor of being issued the dazzlingly named Membership Action Plan, or MAP, which spells out the dos and don'ts to joining the globe's preeminent war machine. Amid a period of warming relations with Russia, NATO is doing its darnedest to piqued Russian paranoia. Croatia and Albania were lassoed into NATO last year. Montenegro got its own MAP back in December. If the statelet of Montenegro and the basket case of Bosnia join, NATO jumps to 30 members.
To much fanfare, the United States and Russia have announced they have hammered out all the details of what is being billed as the most comprehensive nuclear arms treaty in nearly two decades. The "New START Treaty" demands each side cut their strategic nuclear arsenals by about a third. The agreement is due to be signed in Prague on April 8th, just days before U.S. President gathers powerbrokers in Washington to talk nuclear disarmament, a 'cause' of his outlined in a Prague speech last April. However, the treaty still must be ratified by both countries' legislatures, and the Russian State Duma will likely be skeptical if the treaty is not linked to U.S. pledges not to expand its 'missile defense' program, something Washington categorically rejects. And as the two sides were backslapping over the no-nuke pact, reports leaked of fresh Pentagon plans to boost 'military assistance' to several former Soviet republics.Yes, START is a step forward, but just one in a race whose finishing line at times seems to fade further into the distance.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen just can't understand why Russia doesn't see NATO action the same way NATO does. At an international conference in Warsaw, the capital of one of Europe's more accomplished Russophobe nations, Rasmussen said Russian thinking was "outdated." NATO is not Russia's enemy he said, and had no plans to invade its great land mass. In fact, Rasmussen said, NATO seeks "partnership" with the Kremlin. In the next breath, Rasmussen said NATO will keep nuclear weapons in Europe, keep its doors open to new members, (hint hint Georgia and Ukraine) expand its "mission", and support US "missile defense" in Europe. But, Rasmussen continued, if any nation was stirring things up in Europe, it is, you got it, Russia.
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