US Army, German Bundeswehr Dispatch Thousands of Troops to Eastern Europe

• US Army, German Bundeswehr Dispatch Thousands of Troops to Eastern Europe 
  by Johannes Stern, 31 December 2016, https://www.wsws.org/
  A massive deployment of US and NATO troops to Poland and the Baltic states is underway. According to a December 30 statement by the German Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) Press and Information Centre, “As part of the NATO operation ‘Atlantic Resolve,’ three US transport ships are expected in Bremerhaven in the first week of January.”
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  The statement noted that in early November, “Soldiers of the 3rd Brigade of the 4th US Infantry Division began loading the ships with vehicles and containers.” Overall, “more than 2,500 pieces of cargo (trucks, combat vehicles, trailers, containers) [were] initially shipped to Germany and then transported to Poland and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe.” The materiel is to “arrive in the period January 6-8 by maritime transport in Bremerhaven, and will then be transported to Poland by rail and military convoys by approximately January 20.”
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  Earlier this month, the newspaper Kieler Nachrichten called the arms build-up “the greatest redeployment operation of the US Army to Germany since 1990.” More than 2,000 tanks, howitzers, jeeps and trucks are being deployed for NATO exercises in Eastern Europe that will continue for nine months.
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  According to statements by the US Army Europe, 4,000 additional troops and 2,000 tanks will “contribute to and strengthen the alliance’s deterrence and defense.” Colonel Todd Bertulis, deputy head of logistics of the Stuttgart-based US Command in Europe (EUCOM), said the operation will ensure that “the necessary combat power is brought to the right place in Europe at the right time.”
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  Lieutenant General Frederick “Ben” Hodges, commander of US forces in Europe, said, “Three years after the last American tanks left the continent, we need to get them back.” He made the statement during a visit to the Logistics School of the Bundeswehr in Garlstedt, Lower Saxony. He told journalists that the measures were a “response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea.”
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  Russia was preparing for war, the general claimed. All Russian ministries would, he declared, “prepare accordingly—mobilize, if you will.” He continued, “This does not mean that there necessarily has to be a war, none of this is inevitable, but Moscow is preparing for the possibility.”
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  This presentation turns reality on its head. The deployment of US combat troops is part of NATO preparations for war against Russia, the culmination of a continual eastward expansion of NATO since the dissolution of the Soviet Union 25 years ago.
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  In Ukraine, it is not Russia that is the aggressor, but the US and NATO. Washington and Berlin, in close collaboration with fascist forces, organised a coup against the pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, in early 2014, installing a rabidly anti-Russian, nationalist regime in Kiev. That move sparked a separatist rebellion by Russian-speaking regions in the country’s east, which Moscow has supported and the Kiev government, backed by Western arms and money, has sought, unsuccessfully, to violently suppress.
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  The events in Ukraine were seized on by the US, the European Union and NATO to impose economic and diplomatic sanctions and dramatically expand NATO military forces along Russia’s western border.
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  In advance of the January 20 inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, who has called for a ratcheting down of tensions with Russia in order to focus US aggression more directly on China, opposed forces within the US military-intelligence and political establishment are seeking to escalate the confrontation with Moscow.
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