By Russia Today
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Wednesday that increases in military spending and rising numbers of troop deployments in Eastern Europe since 2014 were carried out in anticipation of a conflict with Russia.
Speaking after a meeting of NATO members and partner states in Madrid, Stoltenberg accused Russia of “using force in the eastern Donbass since 2014,” despite the fact that Kiev’s forces have shelled cities in the region ever since the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics declared independence from Ukraine that year.
Nevertheless, Stoltenberg said that the US-led military bloc decided in 2014 to start beefing up its forces in Eastern Europe.
“The reality is also that we have been preparing for this since 2014,” he stated. “That is the reason that we have increased our presence in the eastern part of the alliance, why NATO allies have started to invest more in defense, and why we have increased [our] readiness.”
According to NATO figures, the alliance’s European members and Canada have increased their military expenditure by between 1.2% and 5.9% every year since 2014. However, only 10 out of 30 NATO states currently meet the bloc’s target of spending 2% of GDP on defense.
The increase in expenditure has been most noticeable in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, with Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania all meeting the target for the first time in 2022.
Earlier on Wednesday, NATO members agreed to adopt a new Strategic Concept. This policy blueprint sets out the alliance’s stance toward partners, non-members, and adversaries, with the 2022 iteration naming Russia as the “most significant and direct threat” to the bloc.
On the other hand, Moscow has labeled NATO’s expansion into former Soviet states since the end of the Cold War – which Western leaders explicitly promised in the early 1990s would not happen – as a threat against its own security. NATO’s official position on Ukraine, set out in the 2008 Bucharest Declaration, is that it and Georgia “will become members of NATO” at an unspecified future date. Russia has cited Ukraine’s pursuit of NATO membership as a key factor behind the current conflict.
Despite the alliance’s post-Cold War march into the former Eastern Bloc, Stoltenberg claimed on Wednesday that “NATO has strived for a better relationship with Russia for decades.”
Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the book, Kevin MacDonald’s Metaphysical Failure: A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Critique of Evolutionary Psychology, Sociobiology, and Identity Politics. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.
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Despite the alliance’s post-Cold War march into the former Eastern Bloc, Stoltenberg claimed on Wednesday that “NATO has strived for a better relationship with Russia for decades.”
That is why Putin calls the USA of “lies.” I recall Russia first days in Syria ! They ask to fight against terrorist in a combined effort, with the US and at least ” share information” . I can be sure they knew the answer in advance. Cost a lot of US taxpayer dollars to built the terrorist networks in Syria, to overthrow the Syrian Gov. Russia failed to stop the US from stealing their oil. Yes, the oil fields, the US are occupying, were leased to Russia by Syria.
The re-education in Germany by the US after the war made the Buntewehr (coloured LBQBT+ army, former Bundeswehr) to a useless army of cowards. Other European military entities are not much better. And the french foreign legion count only on 10k soldiers. This is nothing. Here we see directly the nature of the short-lived us policy, never thinking about longterm consequences. When Poland will start war with Russia, the Poles will see again that their Allies will do nothing. This time the Russians will be stopped by the Atlantic in Brest. Your US-government is totally stupid including the Nulands. The NATO-idiots should surrender immediatly.
“NATO admits it’s been preparing for conflict with Russia since 2014”
Descendants of refugees from the Russian Pale of Settlement like Ashkenazi neocons Victoria Nuland and her husband Robert Kagan have been preparing for conflict with Russia since 965 when Sviatoslav I destroyed the Khazar city of Sarkel and the Khazar capital of Atil in the Caspian expeditions of the Rus’. A visitor to Atil wrote soon after Sviatoslav’s campaign: “The Rus’ attacked, and no grape or raisin remained, not a leaf on a branch.”
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