Putin Warns Europe of "Counterstrike" Risk If U.S. Deploys Missiles

[Pavel + 384]

President Vladimir V. Putin warned that if the United States deploys new intermediate-range missiles in Europe after withdrawing from a nuclear treaty prohibiting these weapons, European nations will be at risk of “a possible counterstrike.” “The main question is, if the United States does withdraw from this treaty, what will it do with these newly emerging missiles?” Mr. Putin said. Any European nation that accepts the new missiles, he said, “will have to understand that they put their own territory under the threat of a possible counterstrike.” “I don’t understand whether Europe should be put in a situation of such a high level of danger,” he said. “In fact, I don’t see any reasons for that.” On Tuesday, speaking in Moscow, the United States national security adviser, John R. Bolton, said the risk in fact sprang from Russian noncompliance. He asserted that Moscow had already deployed banned missiles. The United States says the Russians have deployed ground-launched missiles known in the West as the SSC-8. They have a range banned by the treaty and are capable of hitting European targets, the Americans say.
The issue has proved divisive among members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Whatever threat the new Russian missiles may pose, many European leaders have objected to Mr. Trump’s plan to scrap the treaty.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/world/europe/putin-russia-us-nuclear-treaty.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

 

[Petar + 76]

So, Europe's in possible danger? Collateral damage I guess...

[pinto + 293]

No one wants a war. However, one must be prepared for one. Same reasons militaries are maintained- no difference.

[damirUSBiH + 327]

He threatened a counter strike to US allies. Russia can't take on the United States, but they can take on US allies like Poland or Estonia.....When they meet in Paris next month "missiles threat" topic must be clarify...

[ThunderBlade + 231]

Basic fact of International Relations is that unilaterally escalating a situation will cause an asymmetric response....

[franco + 96]

Welcome to the Cold War...

[Epic + 390]

Remember, long-range missiles are easily countered by today's methods.  They are engaged and shot down with fighters with 100% chance of stopping the missile threat.  Mid-range missiles are much much more dangerous, because you do not have time to scramble jets to stop the missiles.  Missile-to-missile defense is fairly decent, but they are only 90-95% effective, which means if you fire enough mid-range missiles, those missiles will destroy cities. 

Russia also now has those super sonic long range missiles that cannot be intercepted by conventional means, which means to counter those super sonic missiles, the US must deploy mid-range missiles until we develop our space force to stop Russia's super sonic ones (their missiles only go supersonic when coming down from orbit, so the space force is needed to stop the missiles before they go super-sonic).  

On the other hand, my spider senses are tingling at Putin's words.  "Counterstrike risk to Europe"?  Since when is an enemy of my enemy suddenly also my enemy?  (think: 'trade war' with Merkel).  Of course Russia is trying to safe face, but could Putin also be subtly suggesting that Russia and the US are planning on joining forces against Merkel? 

I am trying to think of another time in history where the US and the Russians teamed up to fight against someone who looked exactly like Merkel...   

Edited October 25, 2018 by Epic
(well, I wanted to edit this statement to make it less obvious, but too late...its already been quoted ;)

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

5 minutes ago, Epic said:

On the other hand, my spider senses and tingling at Putin's words.  "Counterstrike risk to Europe"?  Since when is an enemy of my enemy suddenly also my enemy?  (think: 'trade war' with Merkel).  Could Putin be subtly suggesting that Russia and the US are planning on joining forces Merkel? 

And the other thing about her that I could never quite figure out is why does she look exactly like Hitler?  

What?  Think NATO. 

Anyway, the U.S. has made it clear, in fact we have discussed this to exhaustion on another thread, that the reason for the U.S. pulling out of the agreement is because Russia is already ignoring it, producing missiles that are banned and placing them strategically along Europe's northern border.  This has been reiterated in recent days by Bolton during his visit with Putin, what, 2 days ago?  Putin is trying to turn it back around with his "counter-strike" comments and try to drive a further wedge between the allies of NATO.  It might work, too.  Europe shows a clear history of not standing up for the states in Europe that actually border with Russia AND tsk-tsking the U.S. for defending NATO.  Go figure!

[TXPower + 643]

3 minutes ago, Dan Warnick said:

What?  Think NATO. 

Anyway, the U.S. has made it clear, in fact we have discussed this to exhaustion on another thread, that the reason for the U.S. pulling out of the agreement is because Russia is already ignoring it, producing missiles that are banned and placing them strategically along Europe's northern border.  This has been reiterated in recent days by Bolton during his visit with Putin, what, 2 days ago?  Putin is trying to turn it back around with his "counter-strike" comments and try to drive a further wedge between the allies of NATO.  It might work, too.  Europe shows a clear history of not standing up for the states in Europe that actually border with Russia AND tsk-tsking the U.S. for defending NATO.  Go figure!

^This.

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

Counter strike risk?  How can people be confused about this?  Do they realize that Putin is saying that Europe could be at risk of counter strike, meaning a U.S./NATO first strike?  Let me get this straight:  Russia breaks the terms of the treaty, produces banned weapons/missiles, puts them on the border with Europe, aimed at Europe.  Then the U.S. announces that it will defend against that threat.  And Putin says Europe now has a risk of a counter strike.  People can't figure this out?  Really?

Counter Strike or Strike:  Putin knows his audience.  He knows all he has to do is get the word Strike into the "Nuclear" conversation, and the audience will take it the rest of the way.  Use the words Counter Strike and the audience will blame the other guy.  Putin is a master!  Seriously.

Edited October 25, 2018 by Dan Warnick

[Jack Buckle + 1]

Putin shut up

   history shows one big country or small country. Can't take on the world with the threats of war

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

9 minutes ago, Jack Buckle said:

Putin shut up

   history shows one big country or small country. Can't take on the world with the threats of war

Can't even take on the world with a real war.

[Incurable Romanticist + 1]

Not taking the world that worries me--just the first strike. What has me stumped is that neither Trump nor Putin can possibly be as stupid as this sabre rattling sounds.

[Tomasz + 1,608]

On 10/25/2018 at 5:57 PM, Dan Warnick said:

Counter strike risk?  How can people be confused about this?  Do they realize that Putin is saying that Europe could be at risk of counter strike, meaning a U.S./NATO first strike?  Let me get this straight:  Russia breaks the terms of the treaty, produces banned weapons/missiles, puts them on the border with Europe, aimed at Europe.  Then the U.S. announces that it will defend against that threat.  And Putin says Europe now has a risk of a counter strike.  People can't figure this out?  Really?

Counter Strike or Strike:  Putin knows his audience.  He knows all he has to do is get the word Strike into the "Nuclear" conversation, and the audience will take it the rest of the way.  Use the words Counter Strike and the audience will blame the other guy.  Putin is a master!  Seriously.

Do you remember that western leaders promised Gorbachov  not to expand NATO to the east?

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/newly-declassified-documents-gorbachev-told-nato-wouldnt-23629

 

Quote

 

Newly Declassified Documents: Gorbachev Told NATO Wouldn't Move Past East German Border

So what happenned? 

by Dave Majumdar

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was given a host of assurances that the NATO alliance would not expand past what was then the East German border in 1990 according to new declassified documents.

Russian leaders often complain that the NATO extended an invitation to Hungary, Poland and what was then Czechoslovakia to joint the alliance in 1997 at the Madrid Summit in contravention of assurances offered to the Soviet Union before its 1991 collapse. The alliance has dismissed the notion that such assurances were offered, however, scholars have continued to debate the issue for years. Now, however, newly declassified documents show that Gorbachev did in fact receive assurances that NATO would not expand past East Germany.

 

“The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991,” George Washington University National Security Archives researchers Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton wrote. “That discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.”

Indeed, Russian Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin have complained bitterly about the expansion of NATO towards their borders despite what they had believed were assurances to the contrary. “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today?” Putin said at the Munich Conference on Security Policy in 2007.“No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?”

As the newly declassified documents show, the Russians might have had a point. While it was previously understood that Secretary of State James Baker’s assurance to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “not one inch eastward” during a February 9, 1990,meeting was only in the context of German reunification, the new documents show that this was not the case.

Gorbachev only accepted German reunification—over which the Soviet Union had a legal right to veto under treaty—because he received assurances that NATO would not expand after he withdrew his forces from Eastern Europe from James Baker, President George H.W. Bush, West German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the CIA Director Robert Gates, French President Francois Mitterrand, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, British foreign minister Douglas Hurd, British Prime Minister John Major, and NATO secretary-general Manfred Woerner.

Indeed, as late as March 1991, the British were reassuring Gorbachev that they could not foresee circumstances under which NATO might expand into Eastern and Central Europe. As former British Ambassador to the Soviet Union recounted in March 5, 1991, Rodric Braithwaite, both British foreign minister Douglas Hurd and British Prime Minister John Major told the Soviet that NATO would not expand eastwards.

 

“I believe that your thoughts about the role of NATO in the current situation are the result of misunderstanding,” Major had told Gorbachev. We are not talking about strengthening of NATO. We are talking about the coordination of efforts that is already happening in Europe between NATO and the West European Union, which, as it is envisioned, would allow all members of the European Community to contribute to enhance [our] security.”

Of course, later, in 1994, Bill Clinton decided to expand NATO eastward despite the various assurances that the previous administration had offered Gorbachev—and despite legendary diplomat George F. Kennan’s repeated warnings.

 

 

 This broken agreement is true cause for new Cold War.

Putin is  natural historical consequence of that how  West treated Russia in the 90s. Consequence not reason. 

Read for example George Keenan guru of western sovietologists and author of containment policy of Truman. He predicted than in 1998 even before Ukraine revolution.

If someone really thought he can include Ukraine to western sphere of infuence withouht new Cold War and hot civil war in Ukraine he is mad.

So the result will be- Ukraine in western sphere of infuence but russian-chinese antiwestern alliance. 

In my opinion game was not worth the candle. 

There was a very good article not this below= George Keenan just in 1995 in New York Times predicted new Cold War and russian very strong antiwestern sentiment after NATO expansion.

 

Quote

 

His voice is a bit frail now, but the mind, even at age 94, is as sharp as ever. So when I reached George Kennan by phone to get his reaction to the Senate's ratification of NATO expansion it was no surprise to find that the man who was the architect of America's successful containment of the Soviet Union and one of the great American statesmen of the 20th century was ready with an answer.

''I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,'' said Mr. Kennan from his Princeton home. ''I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs.''

''What bothers me is how superficial and ill informed the whole Senate debate was,'' added Mr. Kennan, who was present at the creation of NATO and whose anonymous 1947 article in the journal Foreign Affairs, signed ''X,'' defined America's cold-war containment policy for 40 years. ''I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don't people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.

''And Russia's democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we've just signed up to defend from Russia,'' said Mr. Kennan, who joined the State Department in 1926 and was U.S. Ambassador to Moscow in 1952. ''It shows so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are -- but this is just wrong.''

One only wonders what future historians will say. If we are lucky they will say that NATO expansion to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic simply didn't matter, because the vacuum it was supposed to fill had already been filled, only the Clinton team couldn't see it. They will say that the forces of globalization integrating Europe, coupled with the new arms control agreements, proved to be so powerful that Russia, despite NATO expansion, moved ahead with democratization and Westernization, and was gradually drawn into a loosely unified Europe. If we are unlucky they will say, as Mr. Kennan predicts, that NATO expansion set up a situation in which NATO now has to either expand all the way to Russia's border, triggering a new cold war, or stop expanding after these three new countries and create a new dividing line through Europe.

Continue reading the main story

 

 

 

But there is one thing future historians will surely remark upon, and that is the utter poverty of imagination that characterized U.S. foreign policy in the late 1990's. They will note that one of the seminal events of this century took place between 1989 and 1992 -- the collapse of the Soviet Empire, which had the capability, imperial intentions and ideology to truly threaten the entire free world. Thanks to Western resolve and the courage of Russian democrats, that Soviet Empire collapsed without a shot, spawning a democratic Russia, setting free the former Soviet republics and leading to unprecedented arms control agreements with the U.S.

 

And what was America's response? It was to expand the NATO cold-war alliance against Russia and bring it closer to Russia's borders.

Yes, tell your children, and your children's children, that you lived in the age of Bill Clinton and William Cohen, the age of Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger, the age of Trent Lott and Joe Lieberman, and you too were present at the creation of the post-cold-war order, when these foreign policy Titans put their heads together and produced . . . a mouse.

We are in the age of midgets. The only good news is that we got here in one piece because there was another age -- one of great statesmen who had both imagination and courage.

As he said goodbye to me on the phone, Mr. Kennan added just one more thing: ''This has been my life, and it pains me to see it so screwed up in the end.'

 

 

Edited October 29, 2018 by Tomasz

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

5 hours ago, Tomasz said:

Indeed, Russian Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin have complained bitterly about the expansion of NATO towards their borders despite what they had believed were assurances to the contrary. “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today?” Putin said at the Munich Conference on Security Policy in 2007.“No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?”

Welcome to the rule of law.  Talking about assurances and declarations is all well and good, but if none of it made it into the legal documents then it is worthless.  Further, if countries of their own free will wish to participate in democracy, have a history of invasion or worse from Russia and don't want a repeat of the atrocities associated with that, and find that joining a defense organization to ensure their own free will to do so, then that is their right as human beings and not as serfs of another.  Nothing in the legal documents to stop it?  Putin doesn't LIKE it?  So what.  Beat the shit out of the small defenseless kid on the playground and then pout when that kid joins the football team in order to make it through school without the bully picking on them and stealing their lunch money?  Sounds natural to me; not what the agreements were based upon, and that was intermediate/medium range NUCLEAR weapons AND the threat of the Soviets and later the Russians coming back and taking over struggling democracies.

I "liked" the comment above, not because I agree with any of the premises, but because it was a very good attempt at being factual, and for that my "like" remains.

[Manfred Kruger + 40]

Well it seems rational for the Russians to be apprehensive about the NATO expansion east to their border, especially if NATO deploys new missiles there. More worrisome is the fact that trade wars with China and US sanctions on Russia are driving them closer. Russian military might added to Chinese economic growth will prove to be a formidable challenge to American hegemony in the future.

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

13 hours ago, Manfred Kruger said:

especially if NATO deploys new missiles there.

Correction:  especially if NATO deploys new missiles there in response to Russia doing so first, in clear violation of the treaties.