Eve Ottenberg: The Insanity of NATO War Exercises in the Black Sea
Posted by sashimi on September 22, 2023, 9:09 pm
22 Sep 2023
(quote) Dr. Strangelove is alive and well in the pentagon. Specifically, the U.S. navy, apparently fixated on provoking nuclear World War III with Russia, regardless of president Joe Biden's duplicitously stated goal of avoiding global incineration. But then, you can't blame U.S. military sociopaths for not taking Joe "Nuclear Doubletalk" Biden at his word. No sooner does he swear up and down that he will NEVER give a certain weapon to Ukraine, than he turns around and supplies it to them. Any first-class dingbat pentagon warmonger, looking at this abysmal record of about-faces on Patriot defense systems, Abrams tanks, cluster bombs, F-16s and now maybe ATACMS, might well conclude the time is ripe for a show of force, a brazen NATO provocation. And that is exactly what occurred between September 11-15, when the western axis did what it does best - cause trouble - by holding a wargame with Romania, Turkey, France and the U.S. in the Black Sea.
Operation Sea Breeze kicked off on September 11, 2023. According to a U.S. navy press release, "This is a land and sea-based exercise with multinational Allies and Partners, aimed to enhance the capabilities of Black Sea and Partnership for Peace maritime security forces while progressively training and preparing the Ukraine Maritime Command Staff." Partnership for peace? Ho ho! Never mind that Ukraine's currently an inferno of war between the country with the world's most deadly nuclear arsenal, namely Russia and NATO - and I say NATO because, let's not kid ourselves, without NATO weapons, training and intelligence, Kiev's military would have folded last year. Never mind that, as the very informed observer Col. Douglas MacGregor remarked, Moscow regards the Black Sea the same way Washington regards the Great Lakes. Skip all that. The geniuses in the pentagon decided now was a great time further to provoke Russia by sending U.S. warships into its back yard.
There was speculation, also reported by MacGregor, that this war game would shield freighters shipping arms to Ukraine via the Black Sea - something Russia insists occurred under cover of the now-defunct grain deal. That was partly why Moscow ditched the deal. That and the fact that the west deliberately failed to uphold its end of the bargain - proving once again that its leader, the U.S. is, as Russian officials say, agreement averse, or more bluntly, not to be trusted, because the "rules-based order" means Washington can lie, cheat or steal and defy any treaty or deal it signed whenever and wherever it wants (just look what happened to the One China policy). So Russian grain and fertilizer couldn't get to market or even be delivered gratis to regions of famine (that's some grain deal!). Russian ships couldn't get insurance, and without access to the west's SWIFT banking system, everything stalled. Which was clearly the western intention. Meanwhile the lion's share of Ukrainian grain went not to starving Global South nations, ostensibly the purpose of the arrangement - but to well-fed Europe to keep food prices low!
So after this subterfuge, and Kiev using grain ships to import weapons, Moscow was fed up. But the U.S. navy wasn't, that is, if MacGregor's sources about Sea Breeze concealing arms transfers was correct. Even without weapons smuggling, this "freedom of navigation" exercise was wildly reckless. It's exactly the sort of idiocy that provoked the Ukraine War in the first place. It risked open confrontation between Russian and NATO, and we should thank our lucky stars (and the probable Kremlin calculation that Sea Breeze could only do minimal damage) that didn't happen. But trusting to luck is all people have, who suffer under an insane regime. Sea Breeze should have been cancelled.
Not doing so makes you wonder what our military men were thinking. Did they want a Gulf of Tonkin incident on steroids - to wit, one that was for real, not just a false flag? That is, were they hoping Russia would snap and sink some NATO ships? They knew very well, again per MacGregor, that NATO had no room to maneuver in the Black Sea and that if Moscow went ballistic over this, NATO could not retreat. They also knew Russia has superior force in the area. So did our so-called leaders intend to sacrifice some soldiers to ignite a nuclear holocaust? Because as we all know, that's where a direct showdown between Russia and NATO leads.
Or, more likely, did they think Moscow wouldn't dare strike back because so many red lines have already been crossed that none any longer exist? If so, that is a very perilous assumption. Because if such aggression keeps up - and the biggest NATO war game ever is planned for the Baltic Sea, also in Russia's backyard, in early 2024, just as those U.S. "freedom of navigation" joyrides through the Taiwan Strait occur more and more frequently - at some point the opposing sides may very well collide. And to repeat the obvious: that leads ultimately to hundreds of millions of people glowing in the dark at once, while five billion take the slower route to the cemetery, namely starving due to nuclear winter. (/quote) -- Cont'd at https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/09/22/the-insanity-of-nato-war-exercises-in-the-black-sea/
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