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.
NATO is looking to limber up in the Baltic Sea region later this month. No push-ups here. Soldiers for the globe's dominant military pact will be playing war games with lots of expensive toys to show, as a NATO spokesman put it, "solidarity with NATO's Baltic members." US naval forces are already 'training' in the Black Sea with Georgian troops. The military maneuvers come with Russia negotiation with France for four more high-tech warships. That has Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia sweating a bit.
Tensions between Russia and Poland have clicked up in the past few days with the two states eying nervously the military announcements of the other. Warsaw has decided where it will place U.S. Patriot missiles, that just happens to be close to Russia's enclave of Kaliningrad. Moscow has fired back, announcing plans to beef up its Baltic fleet, but denied it had anything to do with Warsaw's announcement, then denied the whole thing!
