Putin Simulates Attack On NATO

by JASmius



Um, guys, methinks Czar Vlad is setting his sights a wee bit higher than just Ukraine, and a smidge faster than he was before (via Newsmax Insider):

A disclosure that Russia launched a simulated attack on NATO member Denmark is raising concerns that President Vladimir Putin could be preparing an invasion of Europe, according to a new report.

The simulated attack took place on Bornholm, a Danish island in the Baltic Sea, the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (DDIS) has revealed, stating that Russia sent military jets equipped with live missiles to Bornholm in June.

DDIS did not release further details but said the simulated attack was the largest Russian military exercise over the Baltic Sea since 1991.

1991....1991....didn't some currently defunct transcontinental communist empire or other that nearly conquered the U.S. and the entire planet over thirty years ago collapse in 1991?  Don't say it, I'm sure it'll come to me.....

Also....June.  Five months ago.  Barely three months after Putin started overtly undermining Ukraine.  That provides some informative, and disquieting, context for his busy-bee activities in the Russian "near-abroad," doesn't it?

You have no idea:

Russia has been testing NATO defenses in recent weeks, the news website Inquisitr reported. In a period of 24 hours, Russia dispatched 19 combat aircraft to test the defenses of neighboring countries and also test-launched a ballistic missile in the Barents Sea, an arm of the Arctic Ocean.

So this is an ongoing process.  Not unlike how Russian Bear-H nuclear bombers and MiG-31 Foxhound fighters have been testing American territorial air defenses over the same period of time.  If you didn't know better, you could almost suspect that the scope of Vlad's ambitions were almost....global:

With relations strained between Russia and NATO over Russia's involvement in Ukraine, retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant-General David Deptula told the Daily Beast: "It is not farfetched that at some point within the next two years Putin makes a more aggressive move in Eastern Europe and uses a nuclear threat to deter a NATO response."

Washington Post columnist George Will recently theorized that Putin could be aiming to destroy NATO by invading one of the Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia, which like Ukraine have Russian-speaking minorities.

"Putin invades one of these NATO members," he wrote. "NATO invokes article 5 — an attack on any member is an attack on all — or NATO disappears and the Soviet Union, NATO's original raison d'etre, is avenged." [emphases added]

Well, who has been predicting that scenario for months now?   Don't say it, it'll come to me....

But don't take General Deptula's or George Will's word for it; heed the words of this highly esteemed foreign policy expert:

Y'see, the reason why strength and firm resolve keep the peace, and weakness and fecklessness and confusion hasten war, is all in the perceptions of would-be aggressors of what regional and global ambitions of theirs are possible and attainable.  If a strong and confident America, led by a POTUS who declares, "Where, then, is the road to peace?  It's a simple answer after all.  You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, 'There is a price we will not pay, there is a point beyond which they must not advance,'" stands stoutly and squarely in the way of those ambitions, those would-be aggressors will be substantially less likely to risk armed conflict with the United States to try and reach them.  If, however, a weak, divided, prostrated America, led by a POTUS who believes that would-be aggressors give a frog's fat leg about "international isolation," that "historic" speeches are a superior substitute for tank armies, air armadas, an ocean of carrier battle groups, and more ICBMs than the number of candles on my last birthday cake (MUCH more), and who believes in America's enemies more than America's allies and America itself, doesn't just retreat, but flees from its perch of global leadership as it crumbles, leaving a trail of cultural fragments, pink slips, and red ink to be easily followed right back to its defenseless redoubt, those same would-be aggressors begin to see a whole world of possibilities, and no reason on Earth why they shouldn't pursue them with wild, reckless abandon.

Think of it like this: It took the U.S. 46 years to win the Cold War - less than a decade once we started fighting it to win - and it has taken Barack Obama just over five years to resurrect it.  And with the timid, face-saving, ass-covering, not-meaningful-but-just-for-public-consumption, little-marshmallow-feet steps he's taking to "counter" Russian aggression against Ukraine before an actual NATO member is next on Czar Vlad's menu - i.e. his risible NATO "rapid reaction force," which is nothing but four thousand hunks of cannon fodder for Putin's tanks to roll over while O sounds the next retreat - one couldn't blame the ex-KGB spook for entertaining visions of his raising the Russian flag over the White House before Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi can beat him to it.

If you ever wondered what Jimmy Carter's second term would have looked like, and thanked God you never had to find out, your gratitude to the Almighty looks to have been....premature.

Lieutenant-Colonel Kurt Schlichter laid out Czar Vlad's endgame six months ago.  I won't glom his words any more than I have already.  It won't do much for your "easy on a Sunday morning," but I'd strongly suggest clicking the link and giving yourselves either a refresher or no more need for alligator clamps to hold your eyelids open ever again.  Because whatever else you'll ultimately be able to say before the end comes, that we weren't warned won't be one of them.