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.
Seems everyone in eastern Europe wants a piece of the anti-missile shield pie. Bulgaria is the latest former Warsaw Pact nation to voice its eagerness to President Barack Obama's slimmed-down, vague plan. But it's not only the Americans who are in demands. Now the Russians are finding eager parties as well to house their military hardware. Yes, it is only the sliver of a territory, the Moldovan breakaway region of Transdniester. But the news shows this U.S. project is stirring things up in the region, and could possibly lead to a new arms race.
If only the world worked the way Washington wished it would. The United States could then do whatever it wanted and then spin it as either benign, or inconsequential. In that fantasy world, what Washington did would comport with what it said it was doing. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Though more and more of the world's countries are voluntarily entangling themselves in Washington's mega-military pact, NATO, there are still a few holdouts, among them, Russia. Moscow has been incorrectly interpreting U.S. actions, prompting Washington to set the record straight.
Over and over again, NATO, read Washington and its tag-along European 'allies", repeat the same boilerplate: the alliance is not Russia's enemy, and therefore any of its military maneuvers and plans should not spark suspicion in the Kremlin. So Moscow's purchase of a state-of-the-art warship from NATO member France shouldn't raise anyone's blood pressure inside the military pact, right? Afterall, NATO and Russia are friends. Yeah, right.
