Thought U.S. anti-missile shield mumbo jumbo was jettisoned under the Nobel laureate, Barrack Obama? Think again. Far from trashed, U.S. missile plans are stronger than ever under the left-wing Obama. A Pentagon official has said the U.S. anti-missile shield system will 'cover' the entire of Europe by 2018. And another Pentagon official says the new START treaty on reducing U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear missiles actually "reduces the constraints" on building such a system. That is a huge sticking point between the Russians and Americans. The Russians insist a link between START and anti-missile defense. U.S. officials, not surprisingly, don't see it that way.
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.
The more things change...... Well, you know the rest of it. Nobel peace prize winner Barack Obama promises peace and pie in the sky. On the foreign policy front, hardliners in the U.S. worried the 'liberal' Obama would sell out the U.S. to all its enemies. As proof, they pointed warily at his 'reset' intentions with Russia. But reality is often at odds with rhetoric. In eastern Europe, the Obama administration continues to pursue an essentially expansionist policy not much different than the bumbling, footloose cowboy Bush Junior. Despite the flowery rhetoric, however, the essentials of the two U.S. leaders are almost indistinguishable. The latest proof? Romania has announced talks are now underway with Washington on deploying some 20 interceptor rockets on that eastern European country's territory.
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.
Another piece in Washington's global military puzzle has been placed in a forgotten, poor country on Europe's eastern edges, Romania. That country's president, Traian Basescu has announced his country will host Washington's leaner, and meaner, missile 'defense shield.' Moscow, naturally, is angered by the move, which comes as Russia's military establishment has labeled NATO enlargement as one of the country's main threats. Astonishingly, NATO, which has expanded up to Russia's borders, can't understand why.
France is planning to sell one of its most advanced warships to Russia in a move that would greatly beef up Moscow's military might.
However, former Soviet states are jittery about the Russians getting their hands on a Mistral warship, the second largest in the French fleet. Some in Washington are warning the first ever sale of such high tech military equipment by a NATO country to Russia could upset regional stability.
Eight million dollars is a drop in the bucket for the United States Congress, which is busy as bees tacking on as long a string of zeros as possible to the ever ballooning U.S. debt.
But the U.S. lawmakers' decision to allocate that paltry sum to Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, has irked the leadership in Baku, and possibly put a dent in relations between the U.S. and Azerbaijan, long in the crosshairs of U.S. foreign policy mandarins for its fossil fuel wealth.
