U.S. military vehicles parading near Russia's border in Narva, Estonia on Feb. 24. (Estonian Defense Forces)
Mark Perry, Politico: Inside the Pentagon’s Fight Over Russia
How the victors of one of America’s most celebrated battles are facing off on the future of the Army.
For those villagers eagerly snapping pictures on the side of a road in the Czech Republic in late September, the appearance of the line of U.S. “Stryker” armored fighting vehicles must have seemed more like a parade than a large-scale military operation. The movement of some 500-plus soldiers of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment from Vilsack in Bavaria to a Hungarian military base was intended to strengthen U.S. ties with the Czech, Slovak and Hungarian militaries and put Russia’s Vladimir Putin on notice. Dubbed “Dragoon Crossing,” the tour traced a winding 846- kilometer tour that featured airdrops and simulated bridge seizures to show America’s Eastern European allies that the U.S. military could respond quickly to any threat. “We are demonstrating operational freedom of maneuver across Eastern Europe,” Col. John V. Meyer III told a reporter for the Army’s website, “and that is having the strategic effect of enabling our alliance, assuring our allies, and deterring the Russians.”
But not everyone is convinced. “This Stryker parade won’t fool anyone in Moscow,” says retired Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor. “The Russians don’t do many things well, but they have been subverting, destabilizing, invading and conquering their neighbors since Peter the Great. And what’s our response: a small unit of light armored trucks.”
WNU Editor: When I was growing up the U.S. had 300,000+ soldiers in Western Europe. Today .... the number is a fraction of what it once was. The Pentagon can debate all they want on how to respond to Russia in eastern Europe .... but bottom line .... in today's world they just do not have the manpower or resources to make a serious difference.
WNU Editor,
ReplyDeleteThey don't need to "do" much. Other than as an economic transit point, Russia has little interest in re-acquiring the Baltics,
Expect Polish saber rattling to change over the next year,
http://fortruss.blogspot.ca/2015/07/the-upcoming-polish-film-about-volyn.html?m=1
As for NATO:
"But Macgregor is still fighting that battle. In early September he circulated a PowerPoint presentation showing that in a head-to-head confrontation pitting the equivalent of a U.S. armored division against a likely Russian adversary, the U.S. division would be defeated. “Defeated isn’t the right word,” Macgregor told me last week. “The right word is annihilated.” The 21-slide presentation features four battle scenarios, all of them against a Russian adversary in the Baltics – what one currently serving war planner on the Joint Chiefs staff calls “the most likely warfighting scenario we will face outside of the Middle East.”