US No Longer Views Russia as a Serious Opponent

With a growing shortage of budget resources, the Pentagon’s newly appointed “crisis manager” Leon Panetta has begun to optimize and coordinate the U.S. global expansionist machine in accordance with the harsh realities of the financial crisis. Given that the target of the Washington neoconservatives’ geopolitical aspirations is increasingly shifting to the east, the White House has decided to sacrifice U.S. military presence in Europe.

Since World War II, the Old World has not been able to escape from the tight embrace of the American “liberators,” whose boots are still trampling the ground of European democracies. With the ongoing crisis and the emergence of new militaristic projects (creation of EUROPRO and preparation for the military operation against Iran), however, this is becoming an increasingly expensive amusement.

It has come to light that in the near future two of the four combat brigades stationed in Europe will be withdrawn. This was personally announced by U.S. Secretary of Defense Panetta, who gave a speech last week in front of soldiers at Fort Bliss in Texas. It has not been specified from which bases exactly the “Yankees in uniform” will be forced to go home. According to some media sources however, this will probably affect bases in Germany (though the base praised by the band Rammstein in its “industrial metal” style will most likely not be touched). At the same time, military installations vacated by the U.S. in Hesse and Baden-Wurttemberg federal states should be transferred to the Bundeswehr. As a result, the number of U.S. troops remaining in Europe will total approximately 30,000.

The withdrawn funds and manpower are likely to be redeployed to meet the challenges of the massive “democratization” of the Middle East. In principle, such a move is a dubious compliment to Russia. It is evidence that Washington, despite the diligent spread of mythical phobias about the Russian threat (with the help of pro-American elites in Europe), no longer considers Russia as a serious threat to the European theater of military operations. The White House plans to neutralize the remaining strategic potential of our country by actively building a missile defense system in Europe. Thus, in the long run, the decrease of U.S. military forces only means a switch of U.S. expansionist policy in this part of the world from conventional weapons to high-tech military means, in order to ensure its hegemony.

The vice president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems, Konstantin Sivkov, commented in an interview with km.ru on the forthcoming reformatting of the U.S. military presence in the world:

“In military language it is called a ‘strategic redeployment of troops,’ which is carried out in connection with a change of the area of their probable use. The fact is that the U.S. finally took the route of using force to establish political and military control in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The reason is simple: Two military defeats in a row, in Iraq and Afghanistan, have shown that the number of forces responsible for keeping American control over these regions was clearly insufficient. This means, the military forces need to be regrouped.

In addition, the U.S. has been rapidly losing its influence in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. As Pakistan experiences China’s influence, it is rapidly emerging from underneath American control. In the Middle East, American influence is being replaced by Saudi influence. Here, the Islamists, who are associated with the Saudis to a greater extent than the Americans, are coming to power. Consequently, this causes serious damage to the security of Israel and is accordingly distressing to the Israeli lobby in the U.S. establishment. In order to ensure the restoration of its influence and control over these regions, and to create an effective opposition to the spread of Chinese influence, the U.S. carried out a strategic realignment of its troops. This realignment also suggests that the military threat in the Middle East and Southeast Asia is growing.

The U.S. can afford to withdraw troops from part of Europe, as they do not regard Russia as a serious military opponent. Moreover, the Soviet Union threatened the West only as a country that was engaged in the construction of socialism. At a time when we are engaged in a capitalist project and are struggling to integrate into the international community by giving up geopolitical interests and allies, it makes sense for the U.S. to focus on other tasks; namely to ensure the expansion of its influence in other regions of the globe.

Having said that, I would note the following: Many experts say that we should look to the U.S., which reduces the traditional deployment of land troops and puts emphasis on modern forms of warfare. For example, we often hear about Operation Desert Storm in Iraq. In fact, in order to accomplish their mission in this country the U.S. was forced to concentrate a large amount of its forces there. For example, the superiority in aircraft equipment was more than six fold. With the ships it was a whopping hundred-fold advantage. And then there was a double armor advantage. Iraq was on a par with the U.S only in field artillery. Or take Operation Shock and Awe: The disparity in weapons was even more pronounced there.

In fact, the U.S. achieved some success in Iraq and Afghanistan solely because of the enormous superiority of its forces. They suppressed the air defense system and then systematically bombed the Iraqi population and its forces. When NATO members were faced with an opponent of a comparable level (I am referring to the operation in Libya), they were resolving the problem for several months. However, take the August war between Russia and Georgia. The number of our troops in the conflict zone was about the same as on the Georgian side. Nevertheless, we defeated them very quickly, unlike the Americans who would have needed vastly superior strength. The alleged Pentagon downsizing of military ground forces from the current 560,000 to 490,000, is just a tiny percentage and will be insignificant to the combat effectiveness of the United States.”