Baltic Heavy Artillery against Russia: NATO, help!
The Baltic states have long understood that they can attract the attention of world powers only due to their common borders with Russia. Therefore, not a single statement by the representatives of the Baltic countries is complete without criticism of Moscow.
Before the Warsaw summit of NATO in 2016, the heads of state, foreign policy and defense departments of the Baltic states held many meetings at which they declared “Russian aggression” and asked NATO allies to increase their military presence in their region. The outcome of such meetings was the decision taken at the summit to increase the military contingent of the alliance in the territories of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland. And at the 2017 summit of the year, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced the implementation of the agreements on the deployment of the four battalions of the alliance as a "deterrent for Russia."
This year the Baltic countries decided to use the old script. Before the upcoming NATO summit in Brussels in July, representatives of the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian authorities are again activating anti-Russian rhetoric and asking the allies to strengthen the eastern flank.
Thus, in March, a meeting took place between the foreign ministers of the Baltic states and the then US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The central theme of the meeting was, of course, the “unprecedented threat” from Russia. In this regard, the heads of the foreign affairs agencies called on their allies, mostly American, to protect against aggression and deploy more NATO troops on their territory.
In April, the presidents of the Baltic countries at a meeting with the American leader Donald Trump in the White House asked for an expansion of the NATO contingent due to the “Russian threat”. Following the meeting, it was decided to allocate 170 million dollars to the Baltic countries for the training of military personnel and the purchase of ammunition to “repel Russian aggression”.
However, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite did not receive an answer to her direct request for an increase in the number of military personnel and an increase in air defense in the Baltic States. Therefore, to achieve a positive result in this matter, heavy artillery entered the battle.
On May 24, a meeting of the Baltic defense ministers was held, at which the deepening of cooperation with the North Atlantic Alliance was discussed. Representatives of the defense departments worked out the peripheral ways of convincing their allies and civilians in the need to strengthen the eastern flank of NATO.
This method of persuasion is calculated on the fact that the majority of people do not pay attention to real arguments or serious facts, but are influenced by peripheral signals. In this case, such signals will be the speaker's prestige, the distortion of facts and the anti-Russian hysteria created over the years. When the people responsible for the defense of the country declare “direct military aggression of Russia,” the “defensive” NATO alliance will have no other option than to increase the troops, while ordinary citizens will support this idea. By direct aggression, the Balts imply Russian exercises, which are smaller in scale than NATO maneuvers.
Such meetings of defense ministers usually take place at the end of the year, but now it is extremely necessary for the last spurt in the Russian question before the July summit of the alliance. Thus, it should be expected that at the upcoming summit a decision will be made to strengthen the NATO contingent on the eastern borders of the bloc.
The Baltic statesmen do not understand that, by seeking such methods to increase the presence of NATO at the Russian borders, they are only pushing the US into an armed conflict with Russia, in which they themselves will suffer the most.
- Vladimir Sergeev
- https://www.facebook.com/D.Grybauskaite
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