We can see several news sources picking up a story on Russia saying they will put three new divisions on their western border to counter a NATO move to put additional troops in Poland. We can't really believe the Russians care very much about those troops in Poland because they don't amount to much in an area that size, but we seem to be spinning in a Cold War rehash of troop movements to help shore up the notion that Russia will try to duplicate Crimea and Ukraine somewhere else. If we are really concerned about it, we should be putting troops in Latvia and not Poland.
The Poland front comes as the U.S. has waffled around and finally settled on a missile defense system in Poland. This was something the Russians really don't like, but unless they plan on launching missiles at Europe, I can't, for the life of me, see why they are so concerned about missile defense.
More to the point is Steven Erlanger's New York Times piece today which summarizes NATO's actions up to this time:
"At the 2014 NATO summit meeting in Wales, the alliance decided to rotate small numbers of troops through the Baltic region; now NATO is planning to deploy four combat battalions of roughly 1,000 troops each in Poland and the three Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Two of them are likely to be American, one German and one British. And Washington will add a third combat brigade in Europe."
The response has been a long time coming, but it isn't over either. The next step is a Russian threat to move nuclear weapons on delivery systems into Kaliningrad, a small little island of land between Poland and Lithuania claimed by Russia. It was the capital of Prussia in the 1500s, and after WWII went to Russia. Maybe they think the Poles or Germans want Kaliningrad back.
Anyway, it looks like the Cold War, which was very interesting to those of us fighting in it. More money will go to defense on both sides and the cycle of building weapons will start back up. Defense contractors on both sides loved those years.
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