Donald Trump has announced that the U.S. will soon abandon the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. This means the U.S. will soon be able to produce, possess and allocate intermediate-range ground-launched nuclear missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. The American allegations that Russia has produced and tested those missiles are groundless and are not even important for the Americans would be slightly interested in keeping the treaty on some kind of negotiations with their Russian counterparts would be underway since long ago. The significance of these ranges are as close to 850 kilometers from Riga (in Latvia) to Moscow (main nuclear command post) or 2,600 kilometers from Warsaw to Yekaterinburg (alternate command post) in the Urals. The intention is clear; to possess the nuclear skills to obliterate 80% of the Russian nuclear forces in a first strike and obligue Russia to capitulate without retaliation. That is an invitation for the anti-Russian Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Romania (and why not, Ukraine too?) to allocate those missiles in their territory threatening most part of the Russian nuclear forces and main cities. The trajectory flight length of a missile from those countries to Moscow and other cities is only of a few minutes, not enough to identify if an alarm is caused by a malfunction on the Russian radars (as it happened a dozen times in the Soviet times) or if it is a real attack. In those terms, the Russian decision to respond or not should be taken almost instantaniously.
It’s still too soon to try to figure out what the consequences of such reckless breach will be, but the potential of this for being a game changer igniting a renovated tripartite arms race (where the EU still has its own say) are vasts. The U.S. move is a direct threat to the existance of Russia and China, and if in that equation the Americans are implicating the anti-Russian sort of Nazi Baltic regimes + Poland and Romania, the menace of war is real and concrete.
It’s quite likely that what Washington is aiming to do is to ignite a regional war in European soil, a sort of second Afghanistan pulling Russia into a military quagmire via the American vassal states in the Baltics + Poland, possibly through an Ukranian provocation against Russia. That will be a huge success for the American empire that may take back its European allies under its “protective” wing and collapsing the Russian economy at the same time.
All this will lead Russia and China (the other target of such deal breaching) to either withdraw and capitulate on their status of ‘revisionist states’ confronting the U.S., or on the contrary, to strengthen their partnership and unite against the U.S.
It is my understanding that the world is heading to war that can happen in any front: Ukraine, Poland + the Baltic states, Syria, Iran, North Korea (less likely). The U.S. is pushing for a spark to ignite the tinderbox and is preparing the military contracts and the bags for the deads (which of course won’t be American but Eastern European or Middle Easterns).
My opinion is that if Russia is provoked to a certain point or being openly attacked, her reaction will be fierce and aimed to afflict a major and immediate damage to the aggressor and then retreat waiting for the West’s response. Vladimir Putin learnt the lesson long time ago when Afghanistan and he won’t let Russia be trapped in a military quagmire of long duration, he didn’t bite the trap in Georgia in 2008 nor in the Ukraine in 2014, and on regards Syria, the Russian forces there have been cautious enough to keep them far from being massive and basically aimed to support from the air the Syrian Army through their reduced air force in their Mediterranean air and naval bases in Latakia. The U.S. provocations (on every camp) against Russia can be counted by hundreds (no kitting) in the last five years and Putin has proven being more than patient taking care of not reacting violently. However, the provocations haven’t stopped but increased in number, frequency and seriousness, and if they don’t stop, the drop will eventually spill the glass and the shooting may start. Each day that passes Russia is being humiliated and they have been very mature on not to react through force. People can argue that they are tough mentioning what happened in Ukraine and Crimea in 2014 and is boring trying to explain again these people that Russia will never let go its historical flagship military base in Sevastopol for a Nazi style regime backed by the West that was the original plan of NATO of promoting the coup against a legal government in Ukraine. Putin has been playing his cards carefully without falling to the American provocations as he knows that a military conflict, even if it is rapidly suffocated, will cause more sanctions and being more isolated from the European puppets, and, in that terms, he is trying to make some time trying to diversify Russian ties with Asia instead of Europe. The Americans have also played their cards; they know that they do need a war and the consequent destruction of a region (Eastern Europe) so they can supply the weaponry and once the conflict is over come up the way they did after WW2 with reconstruction loans for the devastated areas. If that is to happen Eastern European countries will be utterly destroyed and this could save the American broken economy to subsist and reinforce for another American century.
The ludicrous thing is that the Eastern European countries, those with the most sick anti-Russian stance, will play the role of scapegoats in such conflict. Because make no mistake, the Americans will provide the weaponry, the body bags and the loans while the Eastern Europeans will put the deads and the destruction of their domestic infrastructure and cities. Those that may say that such a conflict would automatically triggered NATO’s Article 5 (an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies), I can say to them that the U.S. won’t sacrifice New York for Riga, Tallinn or Warsaw. Not in a hundred years! A great example of that was Syria in 2015 when Turkey shot down a Russian Air Force fighter jet when the plane allegedly entered Turkish territorial air space for a few seconds. On the immediate aftermath of the shooting down, it was Turkey’s president Tayyip Erdogan who ran out into NATO’s headquarters in Brussels pleading support BEFORE any NATO “ally” called for backing-up Turkey. Erdogan proved that day that NATO has first and second class memeberships and that Turkey was a latter sort of “ally”. The same will happen to any Eastern European country that would play the shots against Russia. The other NATO members will indeed logistically support a conflict of such matter but will never sacrifice London, Paris or Berlin to Riga, Bucharest or Kiev.
It’s crystal clear that the American deep state is obliging Trump to provoke Russia to the edge, and if he is talking on abandoning the nuclear deal with Russia to fill Europe with state-of-the-art nuclear missiles targeting Russia, in moments when the U.S. is in trade wedges with half of the world and have an astronomic financial debt, then it seems obvious that a war against Russia is on the table as a mean to persist the world leader.
The equation is quite complex and full of risks and is perhaps contemplating a “peaceful” capitulation of Russia so the U.S. can concentrate in the submission of China but having those two countries together in a strategic relationship helping each other (China has been throwing financial lifelines to Russia each time that the West punishes Russia with a new set of economic sanctions while Russia has been supplying China with an unlimited amount of oil, natural gas and weaponry to react to the Western hostility over China) makes the American almighty wet dream dangerous and delusional and is not certain whatsoever that neither Russia and China are contemplating to surrender nor to renounce to their sovereignity.
So far, Russia and China have been playing by the rules resisting every single punch without reacting violently, but that they haven’t done so in the past doesn’t mean that they will keep doing it forever. They can react violently without shooting a single bullet. What if one day Russia decides to facilitate certain American foes with nuclear capacities say in Syria, Iran or North Korea? What if Russia partially shuts down its natural gas deliveries to Germany? What if Russia decides to slap Kiev? Or what if Russia and China, being cornered by the Americans, finally decide to sign up a formal military alliance with an Article 5 inclusive and even go further and set up a Warsaw Pact gathering some of the American foes around the globe (Russia, China, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba)?
The American warmongering stance are there: four weeks ago the American Secretary of Interior threatened Russia with a naval blockade to prevent Russia from selling its energy while five days after the U.S. Ambassador to NATO said the U.S. was prepared to consider a military strike to the allegedly development of the Russian medium-range systems. Both threatens came up on the same week, if that is not a direct threat for military confrontation against Russia, then I don't know what it would be.
The U.S. has become so delusional that they don’t see all of this. The U.S. is politically, diplomatically and financially crumbled down and is hard to believe that Trump’s idea of a revitalised nuclear era could count with the necessary trillionaire budget to accomplish it in moments when the U.S. can’t even provide its citizens with a decent Medicare program or to renovate the caducous American domestic infrastructure.