The future of Europe

NATO wants Europe’s civilian infrastructure ready for war

FILE PHOTO Poland's army tanks attend the final day of NATO Saber Strike exercises in Orzysz, Poland © Ints Kalnins / Reuters

RT,

8 November, 2017

NATO needs roads, bridges and other civilian infrastructure in Europe to meet its growing military requirements which needs coordination with national governments and the private sector, the alliance’s chief said ahead of a defense ministers meeting in Brussels.

Defense ministers from the 29 NATO states arrived in Brussels to begin discussions on the “revision” of the NATO Command Structure which envisions a new Command to protect sea lines between North America and Europe, and another Command to “improve the movement of troops and equipment within Europe.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg believes that a revision of its command structure is necessary to tackle the alleged threat from Russia. Thus, for the purpose of “deterrence and collective defense,”NATO wants European roads to be ready to handle the quick redeployment of tanks, artillery and other heavy equipment.

“This is not only about commands. We also need to ensure that roads and bridges are strong enough to take our largest vehicles, and that rail networks are equipped for the rapid deployment of tanks and heavy equipment,” Stoltenberg said Tuesday at the pre-ministerial press conference. “NATO has military requirements for civilian infrastructure, and we need to update these to ensure that current military needs are taken into account.”

NATO hopes that national governments and the private sector will cooperate to improve the needed infrastructure, emphasizing that the European Union has an “important role to play.”

While one new Command will take care of troop and equipment movement across Europe, the proposed Atlantic Command, Stoltenberg believes, would strengthen the military bloc’s “ability to protect the sea lines which are so critical for a transatlantic alliance.”

“We have to be able to move forces, troops, across the Atlantic from North America to Europe. And it will include a command which is focused on and responsible for the movement of troops within Europe, which is of course also of a great importance,” Stoltenberg said.

NATO currently has seven Commands with a total of some 7,000 personnel. At the height of the Cold War, NATO had 33 different Commands overseeing 22,000 personnel. Stoltenberg argued that the new command structure is needed to adapt to NATO’s reality in the present security climate.

“And we have been very focused on out-of-area expeditionary military operations, now we have to continue to be focused on expeditionary operations but at the same time increase the focus on collective defense in Europe, and that's the reason why we are adopting the command structure,” Stoltenberg explained.

NATO also hopes that the new Command structure will be able integrate into the cyber domain. “In every military operation, in any foreseeable possible military mission or operation of NATO, there will be a cyber component, so cyber is more and more integrated into everything we do and therefore we will also as part of the review and the adaptation of the command structure we will also discuss how we can strengthen... the cyber element of the NATO command structure,” the NATO Secretary General said.

Russia has yet to comment on the proposed additions to NATO’s command structure. Moscow, though, has repeatedly voiced concerns over NATO's buildup on Russia’s borders that has accelerated in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis. Late last month, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said Moscow must undertake measures to tackle emerging threats on its western borders.

“We’re implementing a set of measures to neutralize the emerging challenges and threats,” Shoigu said. He added the Western Military District will receive more than 1,800 pieces of various new and modernized hardware by the end of this year.

Sweden Mulls Purchase of US Patriot Air Defense System

The Swedish government plans to start talks with the United States on buying the US missile defense system Patriot in the coming years, local media reported on Tuesday.

Leaked German military doc predicts EU collapse & rise of pro-Russian ‘Eastern bloc’ by 2040

RT,

7 November, 2017

The German military has outlined six “worst-case” scenarios for the future of Europe by 2040. The leaked secret document predicts that more states will leave a disordered, chaotic and conflict-prone EU – to join a Russian-led “Eastern bloc.”

A secret Defense Ministry paper leaked to Spiegel magazine has shed light on Berlin’s main concerns about the breakup of the European community, a scenario apparently feared in most Western capitals. Entitled ‘Strategic Perspective 2040’ (Strategische Vorausschau 2040), the 102-page policy paper imagines six scenarios that strategists in Berlin deem plausible.

They range from an East-West conflict in which some EU states side with Russia, to a “multipolar Europe,” where some states adopt a Russian political or economic model in defiance of EU agreements.

One such scenario, titled ‘The EU in Disintegration and Germany in Reactive Position,’ sees a world suffering from “decades of instability.” It also describes the departure of other states from the EU as well as Britain, and an end to the bloc’s expansion, stating: “The EU enlargement has largely been abandoned, [while] more states have left the European community that lost its global competitiveness.”

“An increasingly disordered, sometimes chaotic and conflict-prone world has dramatically changed the security environment of Germany and Europe,” the military strategists write. Another scenario, dubbed ‘West against East,’ envisages the demise of European integration due to the transition by some EU countries to an “Eastern bloc,” an apparent allusion to the group of Moscow-allied states during Soviet times.

A scenario called ‘Multipolar competition’ predicts extremism on the rise in Europe as some EU members appear to move closer to Russia’s “state capitalism model.” All scenarios, drawn by the German military’s Planning Department, are viewed as conceivable by 2040.

Europe’s integrity has been pushed to its limits since 2016, when the UK opted to leave the EU during a nationwide referendum. Britain, one of Europe’s financial hubs, is set to depart the bloc in 2019. The simmering Brexit talks are currently focused on the cost of the departure as well as the status of UK citizens living elsewhere in the EU and vice versa. Far-right parties in France, the Netherlands and Austria have in the past called for ‘Frexit,’ ‘Nexit’ and ‘Oexit’ votes respectively.

READ MORE: RT’s brief guide to why some are predicting UK govt is about to collapse

Germany, the EU’s economic powerhouse, has a long tradition of in-depth strategic planning for every eventuality in the continent. It all began with the decorated Prussian field marshal Helmuth von Moltke in the 1850s, and was applied in at least three major conflicts, namely in 1871 during the war against France, as well as during World War I and World War II.

A Totalitarian Europe Now on Our Doorstep

By Julian Rose

Activist Post,

6 November, 2017

Quietly, without most people noticing, the European Commission is moving ahead with a strategy that will arguably make the EU into the first fully operational model of a centralised ‘one state’ supranational authority:  ‘A New World Order’;  the longstanding neoconservative ambition which lies at the heart of global secret society agendas and US geopolitical hegemony.

The key ingredient of this strategy is the establishment of an ‘EU Treasury’ which, according to Donald Tusk, President of the EU Council, will come into effect in June 2018, under the official title: European Monetary Fund. This will result in the single point control of all EU member state  finances.

The plan will involve a further leveraging of the power of the major banks, to consolidate their controlling influence over EU affairs.  By combining an ‘EU Treasury’ and a consolidation of banking power, a major step will be taken in the ‘amalgamation of everything’ heist; to be brought under the single umbrella of a Totalitarian Super State. We are talking about individual country’s monetary policies; the military; police forces and intelligence services all being run from a central control unit in Brussels. These will be followed by more of the same – covering almost all areas of administrative control, that were once the domain of individual countries.

The institution at the forefront of this power grab is the Bank for International Settlements, based in  Basel, Switzerland, which has global outreach and acts as a funnel for the acquisition and distribution of vast sums of globally fluid international money.

The Bank of International Settlements was established by approximately eight thousand hedge fund managers with a common ambition to rule the world. The majority are Luciferians working with what, in another essay, I have called ‘anti-life’ energies. They inform the World Bank and the IMF how much money supply will be available from year to year and what the spending parameters will be.

Next in line come the central banks: the European Central Bank, The Federal Bank of the USA, the Bank of England, etc. And below these come the first tiers of involvement of national governments and, by extension, the further banking institutions of each country. Thus government and national treasuries are relegated to being fourth down from the top of the power pyramid which controls most of our lives from day to day. Government, in too many cases, is just a vector for the advancement of corporate ambition.

The establishment of a European Union Treasury will mean that a pan European tax gathering institution is given control over all member states – superseding the already diluted role played by national treasuries to administer the economies of sovereign nation states.

Based in Brussels, it will have the power to gather a whole extra strata of tax receipts from member state citizens, one of the objectives of which will be the funding of a programme of complete military unification – a ‘One EU Army’. A highly significant part of this process will involve the establishment of an ‘Eastern European Army’, to be known as ‘Eastern European Forces’.

This army will cooperate with NATO in shifting the bloc’s geopolitical centre of military power and strategy into the most easterly geographical borders of the EU. 

This key role is to be taken by Poland, which has just raised its military defence budget to 2.5% of GDP and stepped up the number of its military personnel accordingly.

NATO has rubber stamped the easterly move by setting-up a ‘Centre of Excellence’ in Krakow; the opening ceremony of which involved inviting Poland’s leading defence chiefs to sign-up to a ‘New Memorandum of Understanding’ which will involve Poland acting as the military counter intelligence  agency for all matters relating to activities in Russia – and by extension – China. Romania has also been invited to play a role in this international spying exercise.

We need to pause here in order to fully grasp the implications of these maneuverings. What is being pushed through, with very few being aware, is a major redistribution of military and geopolitical power within Europe – and beyond.

In effect, the US, Britain, France and Germany (NATO) will pull back from doing the ongoing dirty work of ‘poking the Russian bear’ – in an attempt to provoke it (Russia) into an act of serious aggression – passing this job on to Poland, whose citizens have been fully primed for this task by an endless stream of government anti-Russian propaganda.

This is strategic. The longstanding objective has been to implicate Russia in a serious act of aggression which would, in turn, provide the alibi for Western command forces to be put on what would be seen as a ‘legitimate’ permanent war-footing’ with the Russian Federation. The objective being to break-up and destroy the Russian Federation’s unity and coherence and to expand Western hegemonic power and control ever further east: a key step in the further imposition of A New World Order.

Polish citizens have, both wittingly and unwittingly, allowed themselves to become pawns in this new ‘cold war’, by singularly failing to critique the US/NATO-inspired propaganda exercise obsessively pursued by a bought-out Polish government. An exercise which vilifies Russia as being ‘a major threat to world stability’, when in reality there is a singular lack of credible evidence to lend any weight to this argument.

Whereas US led invasions – and decimation – of more than 30 countries since the Second World War clearly establishes it – and its allies – as the number one threat to world stability.

We are witnessing a high stakes smokescreen. In plain words, Russia has acted as a major brake on Western ambitions to establish a despotic centralised regime, beyond the current borders of the EU. A regime supported by the vast neoliberal banking conglomerates and the military industrial project which carries-out their dirty work on the ground and in the air.

Poland now faces a further crisis of post World War Two occupation. Once again by the West. The first Western incursion was set in motion by the selling-off of key industries to outside corporate interests – and what I call the Coca Colarisation’ of the country by US interests. However, that slides into the background when compared to the current crisis facing the country.

Poles stand on the very brink of being forced to give up their sovereignty. In doing so they will become pawns to the forces of a global New World Order. A regime whose new HQ will be located in Europe, and make strategic use of Poland – and Romania – as its ‘war theatre’. While the US, UK, Germany and France pull back to avoid being caught up in the front lines of this, their very own belligerent, geopolitically motivated incitement to war.

There is a critical need to raise our voices against this desperate act of international terrorism. One which, if it should go ahead, will greatly raise the stakes of provoking a major military confrontation.

It is vital to realise that all this is happening without any consultation or communication with citizens – who are being coldly manipulated to act as cannon fodder to the warmongering ambitions of a small minority of tyrannical power brokers.

Note: I am grateful to UK Column (www.uk column.org) for the background material which informs the main body of this article.

Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, a writer, international activist and social entrepreneur. He is President of The International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside.

Julian is the author of two acclaimed titles: In Defence of Life and Changing Course for Life. You can find out more on his website www.julianrose.info