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NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg met President Draghi on November 17 in Rome to address “the current security challenges” arising from “Russia’s military build-up in and around Ukraine”. Stoltenberg thanked Italy because it “contributes to our presence in the Baltic Region with the air policing and troops”. The Italian Air Force – specifies the Ministry of Defense – has deployed at Ämari airport in Estonia F-35A fighters from the 32nd Wing of Amendola and Eurofighter Typhoon fighters from the 4th Wing of Grosseto, 36th Wing of Gioia del Colle, 37th Wing of Trapani and 51st Wing of Istrana (Treviso). When Russian planes fly into the international airspace over the Baltic, usually heading for the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, the Italian fighters receive an immediate take-off order from the NATO command on alert and within minutes they intercept them. Official purpose of this operation is “to preserve allied airspace”. The real purpose is to make Russia appear as a threatening power preparing to attack Europe.
This is fuelling a growing climate of tension: the F-35A and Eurofighter Typhoon fighters deployed within minutes of Russian territory are dual-capable fighters with conventional and nuclear capabilities. What would happen if similar Russian fighter jets were deployed on the border with the United States?
The “air policing” on Russia’s borders is part of the frenzied U.S.-NATO military escalation in Europe against an invented enemy, Russia, in an increasingly dangerous grand strategic game. It was initiated in 2014 with the US/NATO-directed coup in Ukraine, supported by the EU, in order to provoke a new cold war in Europe to isolate Russia and strengthen US influence and presence in Europe. Russia has been accused of forcibly annexing Crimea, ignoring that it was the Crimean Russians who decided in a referendum to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia to avoid being attacked, like the Russians in Donbass, by Kiev neo-Nazi battalions. Those used in 2014 as a strike force in the Maidan Square putsch, triggered by Georgian snipers who fired on demonstrators and policemen, and in subsequent actions: villages put to fire and sword, activists burned alive in the Odessa Chamber of Labor, unarmed civilians massacred in Mariupol, bombed with white phosphorus in Donetsk and Lugansk.
Stoltenberg and Draghi also addressed the issue of the “crisis on the border of Belarus with Poland, Latvia and Lithuania”. NATO accuses Belarus of using, with Russia’s support, “vulnerable migrants as tools of hybrid tactics against other countries, putting their lives at risk.” Defending the migrants, expressing fear for their lives, are the same US and NATO leaders, including the Italian rulers, who in the last thirty years have led the first war against Iraq, the war against Yugoslavia, the war in Afghanistan, the second war against Iraq, the war against Libya, the war against Syria. Wars that have demolished entire states and broken up entire societies, causing millions of victims, forcing millions of people to forced emigration.
The day after the meeting with Draghi, Stoltenberg attended the 70th anniversary of the NATO Defense College, to which about 15,000 military and civilian personnel from 80 member and partner countries of the Alliance have graduated in Rome since 1951. After being educated in every aspect of “international security,” they went on to “hold the highest civilian and military positions,” that is, positions of responsibility in the governments and armed forces of NATO member and partner countries. In this university of war, where the most sophisticated strategies are taught, the most important sector is dedicated to Russia. It will now be joined by another. In his celebratory speech, the NATO Secretary General in fact stressed, “Russia and China are leading an authoritarian push-back against the rules-based international order.” Stoltenberg has however forgotten to specify that “the international order must be based on our rules”.
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Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
