#Russia just conducted a special forces training assault with a clandestine insertion just 70 miles from the location of the #TrumpPutinSummit.
Does this look like a nation that is about to stop its imperialistic ambitions?@20committee @lauferlaw @edwardlucas @IlvesToomas https://t.co/lVUMkZA6xp
— Petri Mäkelä (@pmakela1) July 10, 2018
> Jump executed from Mi-8AMTSH, height 2,5km and 3km away. All special forces operators who participated have done at least 100 jumps.
— Aki Heikkinen (@akihheikkinen) July 10, 2018
Interesting to see do we get a follow-on presser of marine landings.
— Aki Heikkinen (@akihheikkinen) July 10, 2018
Just to clear things up for people not familiar with the area: Gogland was taken by Soviet Union in 1944, it's part of Russia. Only like 40km from city of Kotka, Finland. Check the map: pic.twitter.com/41XCMfekAw
— Aki Heikkinen (@akihheikkinen) July 10, 2018
There’s a reason that both Finland and Sweden have moved towards a war footing over the past year and this type of Russian military behavior is it.
There’s already been a lot of commentary this week about the President, his attitudes toward NATO and the EU, what may or may not happen at the NATO summit this week, speculation about worst case scenarios over what the President might do at the NATO summit this week, and speculation about worst case scenarios over what the President might do at his one on one summit with Vladimir Putin next week. There’s not much more that both can be said and/or needs to be said. Expect it to be bad and hope it isn’t the worst case.
The President of the United States does not believe in alliances. This is one of the few consistent positions he’s held and, as we’ve discussed here repeatedly, it dates back to 1987. The President of the United States views every relationship as zero-sum. That in order for one side to win, the other side has to lose. And that for the President winning means not just coming out ahead, but doing so by cruelly punishing one’s counter-party. And the President doesn’t really have any understanding of, nor care to learn anything about, why the US built the post World War II and then the post Cold War order the way it did. As I wrote back in January 2017:
It is true that both NATO and the EU were created at a different time and for reasons that are only partially why they are important today. The real genius of both NATO and the EU, regardless of how they’ve developed and recognizing that no institution or organization ever develops perfectly and that reasonable, rational adjustments to both institutions should be made as needed, is that they knit Europe together. Despite what the populist-nationalist or national-populists or whatever they finally agree on calling themselves say, the purpose of NATO and the EU isn’t the destruction of sovereignty or national independence. Rather both organizations serve as a forcing function. They force the European member states of both organizations to work together, to cooperate, to recognize that sometimes there are bigger and more important issues than simply national interests.
The proof that NATO and the EU have been successful is that there has not been a war in Europe between European states over national interests*, including national pride or economic disputes since the end of World War II. By stitching Britain and France and Germany and Belgium and Denmark and Spain and Portugal and France and Greece and Italy and Iceland and Norway and now all the member countries from Central and Eastern Europe together, NATO has made war in Europe among the Europeans less likely. The same for the EU. When Germany and France have a dispute they and their allies no longer spill blood and treasure across the fields of Belgium. Instead they meet in Belgium and talk it out. The forcing function, forcing these states and societies to work together, means that the uniformed and civilian personnel of all these countries have studied and travelled and worked and vacationed all over Europe. They all have counterparts and colleagues from the other European NATO and EU member states. Their children’s friends are the children of their colleagues from other countries. This is the real, tangible benefit of the EU and NATO. It’s not a common market or a mutual defense pact. The real benefit is that the EU and NATO have broken the reality of over a thousand years of conflicts, capped off by World Wars I and II, in Europe and among the people of the nation-states that make up Europe.
This is what the President doesn’t understand, doesn’t want to understand, and even if he was forced to learn it, would discount it because it makes no sense to how he understands the world. For the President the world – the personal world, the professional/business world, the world of politics, and the global system – are red in tooth and claw. They are all a war of all against all where the strong survive and the weak are prey. And might makes right. NATO and the EU were designed and intended to break that dynamic within both Europe and the global system. To break the constant cycles of a war every generation in the core of Europe. Wars that in the 20th Century came very close to consuming the entire world. Preventing that, even if it appears costly in up front commitments, is a tremendous bargain in preventing the waste of blood and treasure that a major war in Europe would cost.
Open thread!
* I am aware that the conflict in the Balkans, the war between the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims of what was Yugoslavia, was a European war. However, it was on the periphery of Europe and didn’t divide the continent and lead to a broader war such as World War I or World War II. More recently, Russian irredentist violence in Georgia, Crimea, and the Donbass is also war, but here too the major powers at the core of Europe haven’t take sides against each other leading to a much broader and deadlier conflict. This isn’t to downplay the reality, the suffering, the destruction, and the loss of life in any of these conflicts, just to put them in perspective.
The Russian Planning for Next Week’s Summit is Going Well!Post + Comments (133)