Tag: nato

Conscription may be on its way back after Nato warns of all-out war with Russia

Atop military officer has warned people could be conscripted into the armed forces after Nato admitted it is preparing for an all-out war with Russia.

Admiral Rob Bauer, chairman of Nato’s military committee, delivered a chilling message that civilians must brace themselves for the prospect of being called up for military service.

In a stark warning, he said we must all be ready for a full-scale conflict with Russia in the next 20 years that would completely change lives.

The 61-year-old also said large numbers of civilians would need to be mobilised in case World War Three breaks out and that governments would need systems in place to manage the process.

‘We have to realise it’s not a given that we are in peace,’ he told reporters after a meeting between Nato defence chiefs in Brussels.   Continue reading

‘And that’s why we have the plans, that’s why we are preparing for a conflict with Russia.

‘But the discussion is much wider. It is also the industrial base and also the people that have to understand they play a role.’

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NATO: Next 20 Years Not ‘Hunky Dory’ and Public Needs to Prepare Itself to Survive ‘The First 36 Hours’ of War

NATO militaries are better prepared for war now than they were a year ago but broader society hasn’t yet realised it needs to as well, and if the public starts panic-buying radios, torches, and bottled water to “survive the first 36 hours” then “that’s great”, the alliance’s military chief said.

The most senior military officer in the North Atlantic Treat Organisation (NATO) has said while the Ukraine war has stalled for both sides, the Russian ability to regenerate force is becoming a concern and a potential conflict between Russia and the alliance itself — rather than a proxy like Ukraine — will be “a whole of society event” the West is not yet ready for. Speaking to the press at NATO headquarters in Belgium, Dutch Admiral and Chair of the alliance’s Military Committee Rob Bauer painted a bleak picture of an unpredictable future which the wider public should now be preparing for, rather than compartmentalizing war as something that happens a long way away, and impacts professional soldiers only.

Challenged on the preparedness of the West for Russian aggression, Admiral Bauer said NATO militaries had come on considerably recently, and as a defensive organisation NATO existed to be prepared for Russian aggression. But times were changing and the public needs to be ready too. He said: “the big difference with a year ago is a lot of things have happened in the armed forces and defence organisations. What hasn’t happened is in our societies, the understanding that it is more than the military that has to be able to operate in a conflict or in a war. It is the whole of a society that will get involved whether we like it or not.”

A visibly agitated Baurer responded to one journalist accusing military leaders of attempting to frighten the public with their announcements, the press writer citing a Swedish general telling the public that war is coming and they should be ready for it had led to “panic buying” of self-preparedness items. Bauer said if the public are “surprised” to suddenly discover they are to be part of a whole-of-society effort to repel Russian aggression then “that’s great”.

The admiral responded to the question that this shock could spur individuals to become more prepared. He said in remarks likely meant for the public: “the people, they have to understand they play a role. Society is part of the solution… you need to have water, you need to have a radio on batteries, you need to have a flashlight with batteries to make sure you can survive the first 36 hours. Things like that, that’s simple things but it starts there.”

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Leaked German Military Docs Warn of WWIII with Russia by 2025, Hundreds of Thousands of Troops Deployed in Europe

Leaked classified documents from the German military have warned of a potential full-blown war between Russia and NATO in which hundreds of thousands of troops are deployed in Europe.

Germany’s Bild, the largest circulation newspaper in Europe, has claimed to have obtained classified documents from the Bundeswehr labelled “Classified Information – For Official Use Only” in which the Defence Ministry lays out details for a possible “path to conflict” between Russia and NATO beginning as soon as next month.

Under the scenario laid out by the German military, the Kremlin would begin a mobilisation of 200,000 soldiers in February and launch renewed efforts to capture the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, which it failed to do so at the outset of the invasion in 2022. This would be followed by a series of cyber attacks and other forms of hybrid warfare waged by Moscow intended to destabilise the Baltic states.

Using the destabilisation and potential clashes in border regions as a pretence, Russia would then — the Gemran planning assumptions state — deploy 50,000 soldiers to western Russia and Belarus by September, with massive troop buildups along the Polish and Lithuanian borders as well as the deployment of medium-range missiles to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad between Lithuania and Poland to pre-empt an alleged NATO attack.

The German military then predicted that by December, when the United States will likely be in the transition period between presidents — assuming the defeat of President Joe Biden — a border conflict with “riots with numerous deaths” will be artificially sparked by Russia in the Suwałki Gap, a strategically important corridor between Lithuania and Poland that separates Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave.

The border crisis would be used as justification for Russia to send soldiers onto NATO territory to seize the Suwałki Gap while the United States will be in a state of flux. In the plans,  the German army predicted that this would ultimately spark a full-scale war between the West and Russia, with hundreds of thousands of troops being mobilised throughout Europe and fighting to break out by the summer of 2025.

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The Foreign Policy Blob’s Desperate Attempt To Preserve NATO

There are multiple indications that members of the foreign policy establishment are increasingly worried that the American people are growing weary of Washington’s strategic overextension and the excessive costs in treasure and blood that role imposes.  Elites show their nervousness through desperate attempts to preserve the policy status quo.  One recent example was the effort in Congress to limit the president’s powers and options regarding NATO.

In December 2023, hawks finally achieved their goal when both the Senate and House approved a provision attached to the National Defense Authorization Act that would bar a president from withdrawing the U.S. from NATO without the approval of two-thirds of the Senate or separate legislation passed by both houses of Congress. Washington Post analyst Meagan Vasquez notes that “the bipartisan attempt to add checks and balances highlights the lengths Congress is willing to go to protect the U.S.-NATO relationship amid ongoing Russian aggression and after years of criticism of the military alliance during Trump’s presidential tenure.”

Yet even the Brookings Institution’s Michael E. O’Hanlon, a prominent establishment foreign policy figure, concedes that Congress is entering uncharted and controversial territory.  He points out “that there is precedent for presidents withdrawing unilaterally from treaties without consulting Congress. A chief executive conceivably could push back on efforts to restrict that [authority] particularly if the treaty addresses the United States’ defense posture abroad.  A “future president might challenge such an effort and invoke the president’s authorities as commander in chief under Article 2 of the Constitution.”

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Jill Biden’s press secretary Michael LaRosa was ‘forced out’ of White House after he ‘tried to take gay dates’ to his room on secure floor of hotel where president was staying during NATO summit in Madrid

The First Lady’s press secretary Michael LaRosa tried to take a date he’d just met up to his room on a secure floor while overseas in a hotel where the president was staying, insiders exclusively tell DailyMail.com.

Sources say LaRosa, 40, did it twice during the same trip while accompanying Jill Biden to the NATO Summit in Madrid, Spain, in June 2022, and that this was part of a pattern of behavior that led to his forced resignation the following month. 

A Secret Service source confirmed the incident and claimed that it happened twice on the same trip.

‘He was caught by Secret Service not once, but twice bringing dates to a secure floor, obviously putting the First Lady’s safety at risk because you’re not supposed to bring people in who are not fully vetted,’ one senior White House staffer told DailyMail.com.

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Congress Approves Bill to Prevent Any President From Leaving NATO

Packed into the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act that’s been approved by both the House and Senate is an amendment designed to prevent any future president from withdrawing the US from NATO.

The legislation was a bipartisan effort led by Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) and would prohibit the president from leaving NATO without Senate approval or an Act of Congress.

According to The Hill, Kaine said the legislation “reaffirms US support for this crucial alliance that is foundational for our national security. It also sends a strong message to authoritarians around the world that the free world remains united.”

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NATO Aspirant Sweden Signs Deal To Let US Military Use All Its Bases

Sweden is not even in NATO yet—amid the continuing holdup and objections from Turkey and Hungary—but that didn’t stop the US and Sweden this week from brokering a deal to let American troops have wide use of Swedish military bases for the first time.

The newly inked Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) this week signals Stockholm finally and fully abandoning its its centuries-old policy of neutrality, given the Pentagon has confirmed that US forces can now “operate in Sweden, including the legal status of US military personnel, access to deployment areas (and) prepositioning of military materiel.”

Defense Lloyd Austin and Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson held a signing ceremony on Tuesday, and hailed that the deal will “create better conditions for Sweden to be able to receive support from the United States in the event of a war or crisis.”

At a moment Sweden is still waiting anxiously for its accession into NATO to be announced, the US State Department has said the DCA with Sweden will “apply seamlessly before and after Sweden’s accession to the NATO Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA).”

All of this is a result of the Russia-Ukraine war, which led both Finland (who is NATO’s newest member) and neighboring Sweden to drop their non-alignment policies. As the AP reviews:

Sweden’s strategically important Baltic Sea island of Gotland sits a little more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) from the Russian Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad.

The United States struck a similar deal with Sweden’s western neighbor, NATO member Norway, in 2021 and is currently negotiating such an agreement with NATO members Finland and Denmark, two other Nordic countries.

From the start of the war in Ukraine, the Swedish prime minister’s office has cited Russian aggression as making necessary a greater and broader readiness posture in case of a state of emergency, or even potential attack on the nation.

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NATO Chief: West Should Brace For More ‘Bad News’ From Ukraine

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in a fresh interview warned the Western alliance to brace for more “bad news” from Ukraine, according to Saturday remarks given to Germany’s national ARD television.

He was asked whether he thinks the situation will worsen for Ukrainian forces in the future, after the counteroffensive has been widely acknowledged as a failure. “We should also be prepared for bad news,” he responded. “Wars develop in phases. But we have to support Ukraine in both good and bad times.”

He said that in response to the current “critical situation” the West must boost ammunition production. “I will leave it to the Ukrainians and military commanders to make these difficult operational decisions,” Stoltenberg explained.

“One of the issues we should address is the fragmentation of the European defense industry,” he said. Countries have gone from being enthusiastic supporters and donors of Ukraine’s cause to more lately sounding the alarm over dwindling or tapped defense stockpiles, as ammo production also can’t keep up. 

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NATO Chief Openly Admits Russia Invaded Ukraine Because Of NATO Expansion

During a speech at the EU Parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Thursday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg clearly and repeatedly acknowledged that Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine because of fears of NATO expansionism.

His comments, initially flagged by journalist Thomas Fazi, read as follows:

The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.

The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.

So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.

Stoltenberg made these remarks as part of a general gloat about the fact that Putin invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO expansion and yet the invasion has resulted in Sweden and Finland applying to join the alliance, saying it “demonstrates that when President Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO, he’s getting the exact opposite.”

Stoltenberg’s remarks would probably have been classified as Russian propaganda by plutocrat-funded “disinformation experts” and imperial “fact checkers” if it had been said online by someone like you or me, but because it came from the head of NATO as part of a screed against the Russian president it’s been allowed to pass through without objection.

In reality Stoltenberg is just stating a well-established fact: contrary to the official western narrative, Putin invaded Ukraine not because he is evil and hates freedom but because no great power ever allows foreign military threats to amass on its borders  —  including the United States. That’s why so many western analysts and officials spent years warning that NATO’s actions were going to provoke a war, and yet when war broke out we were slammed with a tsunami of mass media propaganda repeating over and over and over again that this was an “unprovoked invasion”.

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US-Ukraine Brass Write off Counteroffensive After 57.000 Casualties, Focus on Force-Drafting New Conscripts for 2024

NATO military chief US Gen Christopher Cavoli and British Admiral Sir Tony Radakin traveled to the Polish-Ukrainian border ten days ago for a crisis meeting with the Ukrainian chief military commander Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, for what was privately billed as “a council of war”, The Guardian reported.

The meeting was “no ordinary discussion”, The Guardian writes. “Zaluzhnyi brought his entire command team with him on the roughly 300-mile journey from Kyiv. The aim of the five-hour meeting was to help reset Ukraine’s military strategy – top of the agenda was what to do about the halting progress of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, along with battle plans for the gruelling winter ahead plus longer-term strategy as the war inevitably grinds into 2024.”

British sources are “reluctant to say much about the outcome of the meeting at the border,” The Guardian security editor in Kyiv Dan Sabbagh writes. “But the indications from the west is that the strategy has changed as a result of the discussions. “I think you can see they are focusing on the Zaporizhzhia front,” said one insider, amid reports of fresh Ukrainian attacks aimed at the city of Tokmak, an initial step towards reaching the Sea of Azov, thereby cutting the land bridge to Crimea.”

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