Posted on 08/29/2014 5:56:17 PM PDT by Nachum
President Barack Obama's message to Russian President Vladimir Putin when traveling to Europe next week is to not "even think about messing around" with the Baltic states, the White House said Friday.
Obama is traveling to Europe next week for a meeting in Wales with other NATO leaders. He'll also make a stop in Estonia, where he will meet with the leaders of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in an attempt to reassure allies amid burgeoning Russian aggression in Ukraine.
"The two stops are essentially part of the same effort to send a message to the Russians that their behavior is unacceptable," Charles Kupchan, the White House's senior director for European affairs, said in a conference call with reporters Friday afternoon.
"You have in Estonia a large Russian population, and therefore part of the message that the President will be sending is, we stand with you. Article 5 constitutes an ironclad guarantee of your security. Russia, don’t even think about messing around in Estonia or in any of the Baltic areas in the same way that you have been messing around in Ukraine."
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
“It isn’t even amusing. I find it alarming.”
Agreed. But I think a lot of Freepers react with gallows humor. I know I do a lot of the time. They know the seriousness of what’s going on in this world.
A more informed group of knuckleheads you’ll never meet! :)
Nice patch huh....is that how we tell them apart, I’d hate to have to rely on seeing that at a hundred yards.
Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!
I think it was Cantor.
So Putin is going to get the Baltics too.
BINGO! Thanks!!
LOL!
He'll just do it.
And there's a reason for that. They're going to Mexicans and Central Americans.
Does Obama's new pronouncement mean that our troops will be assigned to that hotbead of chaos...the Baltic States?
LOL on the suit picture! Well done.
LOL “never heard of her” ROFLOL
We don’t have crap in Europe, and it’d take a couple of months to get a credible force there. Have the ships sailed yet?
NATO has plenty in Europe, what are you talking about?
“”The combined defense expenditures of all NATO nations in 2013 amounted to $1.02 trillion. This figure includes research and development expenditures related to purchase of major equipment and pensions.
By comparison, the total of military budgets for all countries in the world was $1.745 trillion in 2012, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Sweden.
In 2012, China’s expenditures amounted to $166 billion and Russia’s were $90 billion. Iran trailed with just under $7 billion, according to SIPRI.
By troop numbers, NATO also held a lopsided advantage over any other nation, with a total of 3,370,000 servicemembers in 2013, according to NATO’s statistics. This contrasts with Russia’s 766,000 troops and China’s estimated 2.3 million active-duty personnel, according to Sam Perlo-Freeman, director of SIPRI’s program on military expenditures.
“NATO still accounts for a clear majority of world military spending, over 60 percent, and a substantial number of other top spenders are American allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel,” Perlo-Freeman said. “In terms of military capabilities, the U.S. and NATO will remain absolutely unmatched for the foreseeable future.”
But Perlo-Freeman warned that although China’s military capabilities “are far, far shorter” than America’s, it doesn’t mean that Washington can impose its will in China’s “near-environment.”
As for Russia, Perlo-Freeman said it could compare with the West only in its nuclear capabilities.
“But its conventional forces have a lot of serious deficiencies in terms of command and control and mobility, (and) in terms of actually being able to fight modern warfare, they are far behind Western countries,” he said.””
The US has a armored battalion in Europe, that's it:
So you look at those NATO numbers, NATO geography, and strike capabilites, our pre-positioned hardware, our lift capabilities, and long range strike capabilities and decades of practicing moving troops to Europe and you see Putin’s 766, 000 man army as unbeatable.
Your hopes are not rational.
My point was that WE as the US really have nothing in Europe to threaten Putin with. The Russians couldn’t make it to Poland, and if they did they’d get their asses kicked.
By the way, TV and minibars in barracks is not exactly new, we had beer machines in the barracks during the Vietnam war, and as far as I know GI's have TVs in their barracks rooms, and I know they do in the dayrooms where the pool tables are.
I also know that German Special ops had bars in their barracks, as did the French Special ops and the Germans had TV's in that dayroom/bar.
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