Viktor MARAKHOVSKY, in RusVesna.su, translated by Tom Winter -
| Polish Airman, in front of US, Polish, and NATO flags, stares at the threat from Russia |
Great Russian threat: About Europe's preparation for our aggression
We have to start with a curiosity. The special service of the Republic of Latvia, the Security Police, issued a report on the protection of the country for 2016 - with the forecast for the current year.
The document declares the major threat is Russia's growing aggression. And it is not funny, they've all somehow gotten used to it.
The curious fact is that on thirty-two pages of pictures our country is mentioned in different forms more often than Latvia itself (410 times against just 368). And this is in the total absence of any real conflicts, ultimatums, demands or everything else on the Russian side.
The document, meanwhile, makes the confident conclusion that this year the situation will remain just as tense.
The Russian Danger will be preserved and will be the main one, therefore the defense capability of the Baltic state and measures to counteract the Russian force must be strengthened. Including financially.
This case of a remote European province, dear readers, is interesting in that it, in fact, answers the question "why the whole of Europe and America are going out of their mind about Russian aggression and the need to resist it." For it is a reference example and model of what is happening in the rest of the Free World.
The doodah in all this: In reality, the powerful Baltic special service, which strongly protects the country from the Russians, has a staff of a hundred and fifty people. This includes secretaries, bosses, and drivers. That is, the real possibilities of a proud Baltic republic resisting aggression "in which case" is easy to imagine.
If it is difficult to imagine, then the example is close.
In neighboring Lithuania this month there were exercises in one of the counties, based on this scenario: the territory was captured by "polite people" who occupied the police department and other key points.
As the organizers stated with regret, the armed services completely failed the simulated invasion, and local residents did not even react to the appearance everywhere of people in uniforms with no identification marks.
That is, the real value of all this defense hysteria is clear. And nevertheless a continuous increase in allocations for "protection from Russians" is evident.
Why do we consider the anecdotal Baltic case typical? Because the same thing is going on in other European countries.
It's not just about the Baltics. Poland, for example, has been increasing its defense budget since 2014. This month, there is a report they will spend about nine billion dollars on Patriot rocket systems in the event of a Russian invasion. Each rocket is 3.5 million dollars.
Installation - four million dollars. At the same time, the system itself will soon be half a century old, and its effectiveness against modern Russian weapons is known only by the former Polish defense minister Anthony Matserevich.
Germany is increasing its military spending: to now since pre-sanction times it has gone up 2.7 billion euros, and Chancellor Angela Merkel recently, as we recall, promised Donald Trump to bring it to 2% of GDP in the next five years. Particular attention is paid to "counteracting Russian soft power" and protection from Russian fake news.
Sweden, just at the end of the last year and the beginning of this year, has become sharply more active, putting a garrison (about a hundred people) on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, and in March, for some reason, they re-opened the old bunkers built in anticipation of a nuclear war.
Well, and so on. The only exception is Hungary, which has the smallest military budget in Eastern Europe (0.95% of GDP). Of course, it promises to raise it to the level required by NATO - certainly, in about nine years. But so far it isn't doing it.
But Hungary, as we remember, is a European bad sheep, and its prime minister Viktor Orban is anti-liberal and "one who undertands Putin." In many respects precisely because he cynically does not participate in the general Western spree founded on the Russian Terror.
The kicker is that all these injections occur in parallel with completely rational assessments:
Swedish officials say that in case of real Russian aggression, the country will last about a week. The German paper Die Zeit ascertains that the strength of the Bundeswehr is the smallest in its whole history, and there are doubts whether it is at all functional.
Then, following the results of numerous NATO "war games," it is concluded that in any case, it is pointless to defend the territory of the Baltic region - it departs to the "aggressor from the East" by default.
This parallel coexistence of the two universes, of course, has its problems: if it is clear that Russian aggression can not defended against, and evidence of an approaching Russian invasion is in a deplorable shortage, then it is difficult to knock out money for development.
However, in recent years, experts in full warfare with Russia have come up with a completely iron argument. A kind of magic spell and universal mantra. And this mantra is "hybrid aggression."
This is not accidentally come upon. From the point of view of "military budgetary PR," this is like the high-tech projects of Ilon Musk, which one day will necessarily come to fruition, but for the time being they require investments, and the earnings are just on the sale of shares.
Because it's one thing to beg for money to counter unidentified spies, unidentified saboteurs and imaginary Russian tanks, and quite another thing - when the concept of "hybrid aggression" can draw as much as pop shows like "Voice of KiViN", or even a tour of Gazmanov.
Therefore, in fact, the top topic of defense policy in Europe has become, so to speak, a spiritual struggle against the corrupting influence of the East. This is the rubric for getting money. Under it, there are groups of information counteraction, tips on hybrid security, and all that.
And no one wonders why Russia, which spent twenty years building its own transit capacities that bypass the Baltic States, would suddenly seize this depopulated and de-industrialized space with its wild percentage of retirees.
Or invade Sweden, where there are neither Russian citizens nor Russian fleet. Or Poland, where soon there will not even be Russian graves.
Such questions pose a picture of the world and therefore are not asked in a decent society. People are supposed to think "today the Crimea, and tomorrow Poland."
In reality, the fight against an imaginary enemy, of course, can only be imagined. Therefore, a significant part of the knocked-out funds (not those that are spent on the Patriots and those that are against Russia's information resistance) is garnered through the padding out of fat analytical facebook reviews with pictures and infographics (which no one reads) and the establishment of sparkling "Russian media resources to expose Putin's Regime."
The products of the latter really make you weep. The problem is that no one -- except the manufacturers themselves and the subordinate bots -- is looking. But in the modern world, it seems, no one has long worried about any reality other than the financial one. And this is the rare case when escape from reality is rather a positive phenomenon. To paraphrase a famous joke: Oppose an imaginary Russia as much as you like. Then you can even win every day.
Follow us on Facebook!
Follow us on Twitter!
Donate!
from Fort Russ http://ift.tt/2pUbRld
Big Russian threat: On Europe's preparations for our aggression - Like This Article
0 Response to "Big Russian threat: On Europe's preparations for our aggression - Like This Article"
Post a Comment