Eastern Europe and irresponsible journalism: In Europe and Russia, There’s Talk of War - by Jill Dougherty

Atomic War: often result of irresponsible Politicians and Journalists

"Recently, I grabbed a taxi in Moscow. When the driver asked me where I was from, I told him the United States. “I went there once,” he said, “to Chicago. I really liked it.”

“But tell me something,” he added. “When are we going to war?”

The question, put so starkly, so honestly, shocked me. “Well, I hope never,” I replied. “No one wants war.”

At the office, I ask a Russian employee about the mood in his working class Moscow neighborhood. The old people are buying salt, matches and gretchka [buckwheat], he tells me—the time-worn refuge for Russians stocking up on essentials in case of war.

In the past two months, I’ve traveled to the Baltic region, to Georgia, and to Russia. Talk of war is everywhere.

In Estonia, at the Lennart Meri security conference, we take a bus two and a half hours to the east of Tallinn, to Narva, a city on the border with Russia, for a discussion: “What is Narva Afraid of?” a variant on the geo-political debate: “Is Narva Next?”

In an interview widely quoted in the Russian media, a foreign affairs expert and a member of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Foreign Policy and Defense Council, Sergei Karaganov, told the German magazine Der Spiegel that Western propaganda against Russia “is reminiscent of the period preceding a new war.”

“The help offered by NATO is not symbolic help for the Baltic states,” he said. “It is a provocation. If NATO initiates an encroachment--against a nuclear power like ourselves--it will be punished.”

President Vladimir Putin himself plays both sides against the middle, warning the West that Russia will have to “strengthen the potential of its strategic nuclear forces” in order to counter the United States’ missile shield, while at the same time insisting it’s the West, not Russia, that’s destroying the balance that kept the world from nuclear conflict during the Cold War.

During the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in June, he tells the heads of international news agencies that the U.S. is lying when it claims its missile defense system will not threaten Russia:

As I browse in a Moscow gift shop, a t-shirt catches my eye: a buff-looking Vladimir Putin dressed in a black turtleneck and tight black pants, with the words “SAVE THE WORLD” in white letters across his image.

How? There’s no answer on this t-shirt and, in the real world, no magic prescription.
But all the talk of war isn’t as crazy as it seems, several Russians tell me. “They may not love us,” they say, “but they fear us.”

Note EU-Digest: This quoted article by Jill Dougherty is a perfect example of pro-NATO propaganda, support of the weapons industry and irresponsible journalism. It is packed with scary comments, refueling cold war fears and whipping up peoples emotions. 

The EU must speak out that it does not want another cold or God forbid a hot war war with Russia, and that it does not support NATO troop movements on Russia's borders, regardless of what the  US or the usually "short sighted" Eastern European EU members are saying.The NATO, being perfectly honest, is also an organization,  whose time has come and gone, and for the past 20 years certainly has not achieved any positive track record    

Read more:  In  Europe and Russia, There’s Talk of War

NATO:- are Eastern Europeans and Baltic States Serving two Masters? and why is NATO catering to them?

Have they outlived their purpose ?

The NATO's chief on Monday said the alliance will agree this week to send four multinational battalions to the Baltic states and Poland as part of its response to Russian meddling in Ukraine and a series of alleged provocations by Russian military.

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the troop surge in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland was meant to “send a clear signal that NATO stands ready to defend any ally”.

“We will agree to deploy by rotation four robust multi-national battalions in the Baltic states and Poland," he told a news conference ahead of a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels on Tuesday.

The Baltic states and Poland have expressed concern over perceived threats by Moscow, especially following the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and covert Russian military interventions on the side of Ukrainian separatists.

The announcement also comes after a series of risky military encounters between Russian and US military personnel.

In April, the US Navy vehemently protested what it described as a “simulated attack” by a Russian fighter jet, which flew within nine metres of a US destroyer that was conducting exercises in the Baltic Sea.

The Donald Cook was in international waters off the coast of Poland. Those waters are also close to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

Note EU-Digest: why is the US military  leadership of  NATO  playing with fire (and endangering the EU) to please Eastern European members of the EU. 

Whenever these same Eastern European members of the EU are asked to support EU programs related to the refugee crises or other important programs, they are usually un-supportive and take a very nationalistic and self-centered position. 

Hopefully Brussels and other EU member states will remind these Eastern European EU member states that they can not serve two masters. 

As the saying goes, you can't have your cake and eat it too ! 

The EU,  as a whole, needs to be reviewing the actual need for and value of NATO, a cold war creation, which has outlived its time and purpose within the context of the European Union.

Read more: NATO to deploy four battalions in bid to reassure Poland, Baltic allies - France 24

Russia says will retaliate if U.S. weapons stationed on its borders - by Gabriela Baczynska and Wiktor Szary

A plan by Washington to station tanks and heavy weapons in NATO states on Russia's border would be the most aggressive U.S. act since the Cold War, and Moscow would retaliate by beefing up its own forces, a Russian defense official said on Monday.

The United States is offering to store military equipment on allies' territory in eastern Europe, a proposal aimed at reassuring governments worried that after the conflict in Ukraine, they could be the Kremlin's next target.

Poland and the Baltic states, where officials say privately they have been frustrated the NATO alliance has not taken more decisive steps to deter Russia, welcomed the decision by Washington to take the lead.

But others in the region were more cautious, fearing their countries could be caught in the middle of a new arms race between Russia and the United States.

"If heavy U.S. military equipment, including tanks, artillery batteries and other equipment really does turn up in countries in eastern Europe and the Baltics, that will be the most aggressive step by the Pentagon and NATO since the Cold War," Russian defense ministry official General Yuri Yakubov said.

"Russia will have no option but to build up its forces and resources on the Western strategic front," Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.

He said the Russian response was likely to include speeding up the deployment of Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave bordered by Poland and Lithuania, and beefing up Russian forces in ex-Soviet Belarus.

Read more: Russia says will retaliate if U.S. weapons stationed on its borders - Yahoo News