02-08-2016
Nibiru
«La Guerre Nucléaire avec la Russie est Imminente» dit Général de l’OTAN – Pastor Paul Begley – _ 02_08_2016.
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Pastor Paul Begley
Ancien Général de l’ OTAN Sir Richard Shirreff dit « La Guerre avec la Russie est Imminente »
«La Guerre Nucléaire avec la Russie est Imminente» dit Général de l’OTAN
« Nuclear War With Russia Is Imminent » Says NATO General
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L’ancien chef de l’OTAN Sir Richard Shirreff.
Read more at http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/05/19/14/33/former-nato-boss-warns-of-nuclear-war-with-russia#HfRx7flJ8tDjdhL5.99
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WAR WITH RUSSIA LOOMS, SAYS FORMER NATO GENERAL IN NEW BOOK
In his new book, « 2017 War with Russia, » General Sir Richard Shirreff argues that a belligerent Russia is the West’s most pressing threat.
The first female president of the United States faces her first major international conflict: Seeking to consolidate the Slavic nations of Eastern Europe, Russia has seized the three Baltic states—Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia—all members of NATO. That requires a response beyond just a caustic tweet or sharply worded press release. For the first time since the Cuban missile crisis, there is serious talk of nuclear war.
This is the basis of 2017 War with Russia, the unsettling new book by General Sir Richard Shirreff, who retired in 2014 as NATO’s deputy supreme commander of Europe, as well as its highest-ranking British officer. Although 2017 is technically a novel, this “future history” is really just a war game on the printed page, its preoccupations much closer to those of von Clausewitz and Churchill than those of Woolf or Wordsworth. Shirreff’s book is subtitled “An urgent warning from senior military command,” and he makes plain in his introduction that the novel’s primary intention is to convey the urgency of containing Russian President Vladimir Putin. He likens today’s Mother Russia to Germany in the late 1930s, when it seized the Sudetenland in brazen contravention of established borders. War-weary Europe let the matter slide, hoping that talk of a Thousand Year Reich was just bluster.
“I’m worried, very worried, that we’re sleepwalking into something absolutely catastrophic,” Shirreff tells me, speaking on a Friday evening from his home in Hampshire, in the bucolic country outside of London. A graduate of Oxford who served in the British army, with deployments in the Middle East and the Balkans, he is not a natural writer, so the judgment of the Financial Times—that this is a “literary disaster”—is not as stinging as it might otherwise be, since that same review praised Shirreff’s grim geopolitical vision as one of “profound importance.”2017 is an unabashedly didactic work, a real-life warning with the bold-faced names changed.
The novel opens with the Russians staging an attack on a school in Donetsk, the breakaway region of the Ukraine controlled by pro-Kremlin separatists since 2014. Close to 100 children are killed, and Ukrainian forces are blamed, thus giving the Russians the perfect pretext for further aggression. Russia used a similar ploy—the bombing of several apartment buildings in Moscow in 1999—to begin the first Chechen War. But let’s not give Putin too much credit: He likely learned the tactic from Hitler, who was probably behind the Reichstag fire of 1933, which allowed the Nazis to eliminate political opponents before moving on to more grandiose aims.
A member of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic forces stands guard near buildings destroyed during battles with Ukrainian armed forces, at Donetsk airport, Ukraine, June 1.ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO/REUTERS
The Ukrainian operation is only the start. Putin—his identity is very lightly disguised by Shirreff, as is that of Hillary Clinton, though he says she wasn’t necessarily his model for the American president—has his eyes on the Baltics, which Russia has long regarded as its birthright. The Kremlin is bolstered by a conviction that Western Europe and the United States will do anything to avoid the use of force. “The West may have great economic capability, but they think only of social welfare,” one Kremlin adviser says in 2017. “They have forgotten to stand up for themselves.”
When I spoke to Shirreff, he lamented the ease with which Russia invaded both Georgia (2008) and the Ukraine (2014). “That was a slick, very professionally executed operation,” he says of the conquest of Crimea, one that Putin may well try to replicate in the Baltics, given how little genuine resistance he encountered from the West two years ago. “Russia despises weakness and respects strength,” Shirreff tells me. It’s no accident that, every few months, the nation goes agog over images of Putin, stolid and shirtless, wrestling a bear or cuddling with a Siberian tiger.
Until a few weeks ago, most American readers of 2017 would not have thought twice about the preface by James Stavridis, the now-retired American admiral who served as the NATO Supreme Commander of Europe. But in July, media outlets reported that Stavridis was being seriously considered by Clinton as her vice presidential candidate. If he is to serve as an advisory role in her presidency, his view of Russia would be useful. And as presented here, that view is utterly unambiguous: “Of all the challenges America faces on the geopolitical scene in the second decade of the 21st century, the most dangerous is the resurgence of Russia under President Putin.” When Mitt Romney said as much during his 2012 presidential bid, he was mocked for stoking anachronistic Cold War fears. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” President Obama said glibly of Romney’s warning.
But the 1980s actually saw the rise of nuclear disarmament, as well as a broader thawing of Russo-American relations. This moment, the one we live in, feels closer to the 1960s, with American missile defense shields rising in the former Soviet bloc countries of Romania and Poland, as well as military exercises that seem like preparations for the real deal. Annoyed by such exercises in Eastern Europe conducted by NATO, a Kremlin senior official put the matter as bluntly as one of Shirreff’s characters: “If NATO initiates an encroachment—against a nuclear power like ourselves—it will be punished.” This kind of bluster could easily have come from the Kremlin of Khrushchev, as both sides prepared for mutual assured destruction.
I spoke to Shirreff just days after hackers universally believed to be associated with the Kremlin broke into the servers of the Democratic National Committee, a breach the director of national intelligence called “a version of war” (though he also tried to temper suggestions that Russia was at fault). Donald Trump openly encouraged further such incursions, as long they helped his quest for the White House.
When I first spoke with Shirreff, he declined to comment on Trump’s overtures to the Kremlin, but by the next morning, he’d changed his mind and sent me an email that said, in part: “What could suit Putin better than to embarrass the Democrats and so propel into the White House a candidate who has undermined NATO’s doctrine of collective defence by raising questions over America’s willingness to support an ally if attacked?” He was referring to Trump’s suggestion that the United States would not come to the aid of NATO allies who hadn’t made the requisite defense expenditures.
Russian warships sail past exploding anti-missile ordnance during a rehearsal for the Navy Day parade in the far eastern port of Vladivostok, Russia, July 30.YURI MALTSEV/REUTERS
It is far more likely, according to most projections, that the next president will be Clinton, a longtime foe of Putin who has shown a willingness to use American force abroad. Shirreff believes that nuclear war with Russia is a possibility: Kaliningrad, a region of Russia that borders the Baltic States, now serves as a growing repository for both conventional and nuclear weapons, including Iskander missile systems that have nuclear capability and a range of 300 miles. These could be fired at the West—and will be, if Putin finds Russia’s borders with Europe threatened. Of course, if he invades the Baltics, such a counterattack would be required by the “collective defense” doctrine of the North Atlantic Treaty, known as Article 5. “If NATO goes to war with Russia,” Shirreff says, “that means nuclear war.”
His solution is paradoxical: a show of strength and unity by NATO that would discourage any offensive moves on Russia’s part, so that NATO’s strength would never be tested. In other words, frighten Russia into acceptable, rational-actor behavior. Shirreff adds that Trump is “absolutely right” about many European nations failing to meet their financial obligations to NATO, even if the failed casino magnate couched his criticism in undue threats about abandoning treaty commitments. “Europe needs to step up to the mark,” Shirreff says.
He also says the West needs to commit once more to a dialogue with Russia. That’s made harder by the fact that Russia is always sensitive to lectures from the West, resentful about perceived condescension from Europe and the U.S. Still, stony silence is unlikely to bring a resolution. “Communication” is what Shirreff hopes for, not war. “But it’s gotta be backed up by strength.”
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‘War With Russia’ From the Pen of Ex-NATO Deputy Commander Is the Stupidest Book to Hit the Shelves in Years
To take the book seriously you’d have to believe Moscow is idiotic, reckless and psychopathic
As NATO wraps up its summit meeting in Warsaw, it will no doubt be patting itself on the back for displaying ‘unity’ and ‘resolve’ in the face of ‘Russian aggression’, in particular by agreeing to station a semi-permanent garrison of four battalions in Poland and the Baltic States. If we are to believe NATO’s former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Sir Richard Shirreff, such displays of strength are exactly what are needed to ‘deter’ Russia and prevent war. That is the message of a novel he has just published, entitled2017. War with Russia. An Urgent Warning from Senior Military Command.
Shirreff’s book tells the story of a war between Russia and NATO in 2017. It comes with a foreword by former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Admiral James Stavridis, who states that, ‘Of all the challenges America faces … the most dangerous is the resurgence of Russia under President Putin.’ In his own preface, Shirreff states that ‘Russia is now our strategic adversary’, due to Putin’s ‘self proclaimed intention in March 2014 of reuniting ethnic Russian speakers under the banner of Mother Russia’. ‘The president’s vow to reunite “Russian speakers” … was little different from Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938’, says Shirreff, who denounces the West’s ‘failure to understand the realities of dealing with bullies.’ His book advertises itself as a warning of what could happen if Western countries fail to increase their defence spending.
War with Russia begins with Russian special forces abducting some American soldiers in Kharkov, where the Americans have been training Ukrainian forces. They then take the Americans back to Russia, where they are displayed on TV and accused of having crossed Russia’s border. Russian fighters then shoot down an American plane over Ukraine, again falsely claiming that it had crossed the frontier. The purpose is to provide an excuse to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A false-flag operation in which the Russian Army fires artillery on a school in rebel-controlled Donbass, killing 80 children, and blames it on the Ukrainians, provides the final pretext for the invasion. Within a few days, Russian forces have swept the Ukrainian Army aside and established a land-bridge to Crimea.
Shirreff never refers to the Russian president by name, but some of the Russians in the book call him ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich’, so he is obviously meant to be Putin. One might wonder why Putin would launch an unprovoked war. According to Shirreff’s scenario, the answer is that his poll ratings are falling and he thinks that a short, successful war will restore his popularity. Shirreff also believes that Putin has long been yearning to reunite Eastern Ukraine and the Baltic States with Russia, and all that has been stopping him is fear of the consequences. Believing that NATO lacks the will to react, in Shirreff’s book Putin decides to seize the opportunity. Before his war in Ukraine is even over, he starts a second war, invading the Baltic States.
As a pretext for this invasion, Russian special forces carry out another false flag operation, using a sniper to kill some Russian speaking Latvians marching in a demonstration in Riga. Soon afterwards, Russian forces assault Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia in order to ‘protect Russian speakers’. In the process they attack an airbase manned by American servicemen, and bomb British and German ships docked in Latvia. Annoyed by the British, the Russian president then orders his troops to take action against the United Kingdom. As a result, a Russian submarine sinks the aircraft carrierQueen Elizabeth, killing 900 people. All-out war between Russia and NATO erupts.
If we are take this scenario seriously, Russia’s leaders are idiotic, reckless and, quite frankly, psychopathic. Shirreff’s Putin is a cold-hearted villain, devoid of all humanity. After conquering the Baltics, for instance, he tells his staff:
Russian speakers must, of course, stay and are to be the basis of their new security forces. Any – and that includes Russian speakers – not prepared to swear the oath of allegiance to me as President are to be deported to the gulags.
The Russian president, says one of Shirreff’s characters, is ‘a ruthless predatory bastard’. ‘It’s long been obvious that he’s a self-obsessed nutter’, says another. Russians as a whole aren’t much better. ‘All knew that when the Russians exacted revenge, they did so with total ferocity’, we read. The commander of the Russian forces in Kaliningrad is described as having been famous for the ‘scorched earth approach he had taken to root out the Mujahidin in the Panjshir valley, regardless of the casualties to the civilian population … [he used] equally brutal tactics in the Chechen wars … which left thousands of men, women, and children dead. … [He] was now doing much the same in the Baltics.’ In general, as one of the Latvians in the book says,
You’ll never have a better friend than a Russian. And I have a number. They’ll give you their last kopek if you need it. They’ll laugh with you, cry with you, and drink with you to the end of time. But as a nation … as a neighbour … they’re horrible.
In short, Russia is just looking for the chance to invade its neighbours. Any sign of weakness on NATO’s behalf is potentially fatal. Shirreff’s characters give regular, and rather repetitive, lectures about the harm done by defence cuts and about how the war he describes is a direct result. The lesson of the book is clear: everything he describes could really happen unless we buck up and start spending more on defence right now.
Shirreff’s novel claims to present a genuine near-term possibility. In truth, it is a fantasy, as there is no evidence that Putin really is a reckless psychopath, and beggars belief that he would launch a full-scale invasion of the Baltic states out of the blue in the manner Shirreff describes. In any case, Shirreff’s belief that weakness invites invasion and that only powerful displays of strength can prevent it is based on a highly selective view of history in which we are always confronting Adolph Hitler in 1938. In 1914, war did not begin because the Austrians lacked resolve in the face of Serbian provocation, or because the Russians failed to show strength after Austria declared war on Serbia, or because Germany chose the path of weakness following Russia’s decision to mobilize its army. Quite the contrary – it was the obsessive belief that only strength could preserve peace that led to war.
Despite all this, Shirreff’s book does serve a useful purpose. As an analysis of the probable future or as a description of how the Russians think and behave, it is woefully wide of the mark. But as a depiction of the warped worldview of some of the Western world’s most senior military officers it is quite enlightening. It justifies its subtitle ‘An urgent warning’; just not quite in the way that its author imagines.
MOUAMMAR KADHAFI - LIBYA 