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Eastern Europe Is Turning Into An Energy Battleground
Eastern Europe Is Turning Into An Energy Battleground
Bulgaria has agreed to allow NATO to use its Black Sea port for naval coordination efforts as tensions rise between the Western military alliance and Russia.
The agreement was reached following a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov at the White House on November 25.
NATO has bolstered its defenses in Eastern Europe, including the Black Sea region, which is becoming a new frontier for energy geopolitics, after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and seized Ukrainian Navy vessels last year.
NATO earlier this year carried out military exercises in the Black Sea that involved more than 20 ships and crews from Romania, Bulgaria, Canada, Greece, the Netherlands, and Turkey to the consternation of Moscow. Russia’s Black Sea fleet is based in Crimea.
“Viewing with concern the security situation in the Black Sea, the United States welcomes Bulgaria’s offer to provide a maritime coordination function at Varna in support of NATO’s Tailored Forward Presence initiative,” the United States and Bulgaria said in a joint statement.
U.S. and Bulgarian officials will hold high-level meetings to discuss further maritime military cooperation, the statement said.
NATO members Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey border the Black Sea along with Ukraine, Georgia, and Russia. Both Ukraine and Georgia have expressed a desire to join NATO.
Trump hosted Romanian President Klaus Iohannis last month as part of a series of engagements with leaders from Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Austria.
Prior to his arrival in Washington, Borisov told journalists that he would not allow a permanent NATO military base on the Black Sea, a move that would anger Russia.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Eastern Europe & World War III
Eastern Europe & World War III
Europe could become the site of a new global war in the East as tensions build there against refugees and the economic decline fosters old wounds. The EU is deeply divided over the refugee issue and thus it is fueling its own demise and has failed to be a stabilizing force. After five days of demonstrations, Romania’s month-old government backed down and withdrew a decree that had decriminalized some corruption offenses. They were still acting like typical politicians and looking to line their pockets. After one month, the people have been rising up saying “We can’t trust this new government.”
On the eastern border of the EU, only a few hundred miles from Berlin as well as Vienna, there is a growing danger that the world will stumble into a global war. The leading cause is primarily stemming from through the incompetence of the politicians in the EU as well as in the East. The EU is more concerned about punishing Britain and trying to hold on to overpaid political jobs that to address the real issues facing Europe, while these seemingly regional disputes in the East are being ignored.
The problem with NATO has been that most members have not paid into the support of NATO that they had agreed to. The USA has been shouldering the majority of the cost of NATO, which would be like the EU funding US military. Then NATO leaders agreed back in 2016 to deploy military forces to the Baltic states and Eastern Poland for the first time and increase air and sea patrols to reassure new allies who use to be part of the Soviet bloc that they would defend them following Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“We Are Prepared To Fight” – In Dramatic Shift NATO Changes East European Doctrine From “Assurance” To “Deterrence”
“We Are Prepared To Fight” – In Dramatic Shift NATO Changes East European Doctrine From “Assurance” To “Deterrence”
We are one step closer to another full-blown return of the cold war.
Yesterday, during a briefing in Latvia’s capital Riga, NATO Gen. Philip Breedlove said that NATO and the United States are switching their defense doctrine from assurance to deterrence in Eastern Europe in response to a “resurgent and aggressive Russia.”
The comments by Breedlove come a day after the Pentagon said it would begin continuous rotations of an additional armored brigade of about 4,200 troops in Eastern Europe beginning in early 2017.
“We are prepared to fight and win if we have to … our focus will expand from assurance to deterrence, including measures that vastly improve our overall readiness,” Breedlove said following talks with Baltic region NATO commanders.
“To the east and north we face a resurgent and aggressive Russia, and as we have continued to witness these last two years, Russia continues to seek to extend its influence on its periphery and beyond.”
As Defensenews reports, Eastern NATO members including the formerly Soviet-ruled Baltic states and Poland have been lobbying the alliance to increase its presence in the region. And now NATO is obliging, and in the process assuring that Russia will once again escalate in kind.
We also know the timing of the next major geopolitical tension between NATO and Russia: “In the spring of 2017 what we will bring to Europe, and then again put into the three Baltic nations, is an armored brigade fully enabled with command and control and all of the supporting equipment required,” Breedlove said.
Asked by AFP whether he expected other NATO members to match the upped US troop commitment, Breedlove said: “We would hope (so).”
“What we have seen is that when we led by coming here with company-sized formations after (Russia’s actions in) Crimea and Donbas, other nations have shown up now with company-sized formations.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“We Are In A New Cold War”: Russia PM Delivers Stark Warning To NATO
“We Are In A New Cold War”: Russia PM Delivers Stark Warning To NATO
He also indicated that such a conflict would likely drag on for “decades.”
“Do they really think they would win such a war very quickly? That’s impossible, especially in the Arabic world,” Medvedev said. “There everyone is fighting against everyone… everything is far more complicated. It could take years or decades.”
On Saturday, Medvedev was back at it with the hyperbole (or at least we hope it’s hyperbole) in Munich where more than 60 foreign and defense ministers are gathered for the 52nd Munich Security Conference. In his speech, the PM challenged NATO’s military maneuvers in the Baltics as well as the alliance’s general approach towards relations with The Kremlin.
“The political line of NATO toward Russia remains unfriendly and closed,” he said in a speech to the conference. “It can be said more sharply: We have slid into a time of a new cold war.”
“NATO on Wednesday approved new reinforcements for eastern Europe, including stepped-up troop rotations on its eastern flanks and more naval patrols in the Baltic Sea,” Bloomberg notes. “In response, the Kremlin dismissed the alliance’s argument that the move was merely defensive.”
“Russia’s rhetoric, posture and exercises of its nuclear forces are aimed at intimidating its neighbors, undermining trust and stability in Europe,” NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg told the conference earlier. “We strive for a more constructive and more cooperative relationship with Russia.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“I Know Of No One Who Predicted This”: Russian Oil Production Hits Record As Saudi Gambit Fails
“I Know Of No One Who Predicted This”: Russian Oil Production Hits Record As Saudi Gambit Fails
Russia also took the top spot in May, marking the first time in history that Moscow beat out Riyadh when it comes to crude exports to Beijing. “Moscow is wrestling with crippling Western economic sanctions and building closer ties with Beijing is key to mitigating the pain,” we said in October, on the way to explaining that closer ties between Russia and China as it relates to energy are part and parcel of a burgeoning relationship between the two countries who have voted together on the Security Council on matters of geopolitical significance. Here’s a look at the longer-term trend:
You may also recall that Gazprom Neft (which is the number three oil producer in Russia) began settling all sales to China in yuan starting in January. This, we said, is yet another sign of the petrodollar’s imminent demise.
On Monday, we learn that for the third time in 2015, Russia has once again bested the Saudis for the top spot on China’s crude suppliers list. “Russia overtook Saudi Arabia for the third time this year in November as China’s largest crude oil supplier,” Reuters writes, adding that “China brought in about 949,925 barrels per day (bpd) of Russian crude in November, compared with 886,950 bpd from Saudi Arabia.”
This is an annoyance for Riyadh. China was the world’s second-largest oil consumer in 2014 and closer ties between Moscow and Beijing not only represent a threat in terms of crude revenue, but also in terms of geopolitics as the last thing the Saudis need is for Xi to begin poking around militarily in the Arabian Peninsula on behalf of Moscow and Tehran.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Saudis Poke The Russian Bear, Start Oil War In Eastern Europe
Saudis Poke The Russian Bear, Start Oil War In Eastern Europe
Any weakening of Russian support for Mr. Assad could be one of the first signs that the recent tumult in the oil market is having an impact on global statecraft. Saudi officials have said publicly that the price of oil reflects only global supply and demand, and they have insisted that Saudi Arabia will not let geopolitics drive its economic agenda. But they believe that there could be ancillary diplomatic benefits to the country’s current strategy of allowing oil prices to stay low — including a chance to negotiate an exit for Mr. Assad.
That’s a quote from a New York Times article that ran in February of this year.
At the time, we pointed to the piece as evidence that yet another conspiracy “theory” has become conspiracy “fact” as it effectively served to validate (to the extent The New York Times is validation) the thesis that at the end of the day, this is all about energy.
If the Saudis could use oil prices to force Moscow into ceding support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria, then the West and its regional allies could get on with facilitating his ouster by way of arming and training rebels. Once Assad was gone, a puppet government could be installed (after some farce of an election that would invariably pit two Western-backed candidates against each other) then Riyadh, Doha, and Ankara could work with the new government in Damascus to craft energy deals that would not only be extremely lucrative for all involved, but would also help to break Gazprom’s iron grip on energy supplies to Europe.
Those are the “ancillary diplomatic benefits” mentioned in The Times piece.
Only it didn’t work out that way.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Buiter: Only “Helicopter Money” Can Save The World From The Next Recession
Buiter: Only “Helicopter Money” Can Save The World From The Next Recession
It is to be expected that economists – even economists working for the same team – have different views about the likelihood of different future outcomes. Economics isn’t rocket science, and even rockets frequently land in the wrong place or explode in mid-air.
That rather hilarious characterization of the pseudoscience that is economics comes from the desk of Citi’s Chief Economist Willem Buiter and it’s apparently evidence that even if you don’t think too much of his views on “pet rocks” (gold is a 6,000 year-old bubble) or on the efficacy and/or utility of physical banknotes (ban cash), you’d be hard pressed to disagree with him when it comes to critiquing his profession. Of course we don’t want to give Buiter too much credit here because the quote shown above could simply be an attempt to stamp a caveat emptor on his latest prediction in case, like his predictions on when Greece would ultimately leave the euro, it turns out to be wrong.
As tipped by comments made at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York late last month, Buiter is out with a damning look at the global economy which he says will be drug kicking and screaming into a recession by the turmoil in China and the unfolding chaos in EM. Here’s the call:
In the Global Economics team, however, we believe that a moderate global recession scenario has become the most likely global macroeconomic scenario for the next two years or so. To clarify further, the most likely scenario, in our view, for the next few years is that global real GDP growth at market exchange rates will decline steadily from here on and reach or fall below 2%.
More specifically, Buiter says the odds of some kind of recession (either mild or terrifying) are 55%. Not 54%, or 56% mind you, but exactly 55%, because as indicated by the introductory excerpt above, economic outcomes are very amenable to precise forecasting:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
US Recession Imminent – World Trade Slumps By Most Since Financial Crisis
US Recession Imminent – World Trade Slumps By Most Since Financial Crisis
As goes the world, so goes America (according to 30 years of historical data), and so when world trade volumes drop over 2% (the biggest drop since 2009) in the last six months to the weakest since June 2014, the “US recession imminent” canary in the coalmine is drawing her last breath…
As Wolf Street’s Wolf Richter adds, this isn’t stagnation or sluggish growth. This is the steepest and longest decline in world trade since the Financial Crisis. Unless a miracle happened in June, and miracles are becoming exceedingly scarce in this sector, world trade will have experienced its first back-to-back quarterly contraction since 2009.
Both of the measures above track import and export volumes. As volumes have been skidding, new shipping capacity has been bursting on the scene in what has become a brutal fight for market share[read… Container Carriers Wage Price War to Form Global Shipping Oligopoly].
Hence pricing per unit, in US dollars, has plunged 14% since May 2014, and nearly 20% since the peak in March 2011. For the months of March, April, and May, the unit price index has hit levels not seen since mid-2009.
World trade isn’t down for just one month, or just one region. It wasn’t bad weather or an election somewhere or whatever. The swoon has now lasted five months. In addition, the CPB decorated its report with sharp downward revisions of the prior months. And it isn’t limited to just one region. The report explains:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Putin Says Attempts To Tip Nuclear Balance Don’t Scare Russia, Moscow Will Uncover “Schemes”
Putin Says Attempts To Tip Nuclear Balance Don’t Scare Russia, Moscow Will Uncover “Schemes”
Russia is once again ratcheting up the rhetoric, this time to a fever pitch. Just a day after Putin’s Security Council posted a remarkably accurate and amusingly concise assessment of US foreign policy aims on its website, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry as well as President Putin himself are out with strong condemnations of both the NATO presence in Eastern Europe as well as US plans to arm Kiev.
The comments come on the heels of a House vote which showed overwhelming support for the provision of lethal aid to Kiev and just a day after the first batch of American humvees received a warm welcome from President Petro Poroshenko. As a reminder, here’s what both sides had to say about Congress’s willingness to maybe start an all out proxy war in the Baltics:
The prepackaged spin is already ready: “sending weapons to the Kiev government would not mean involvement in a new war for America”, claimed the abovementioned Eliot Engel who sponsored the document. “The people of Ukraine are not looking for American troops,” Engel said. “They are just looking for the weapons.”So the only question is how Russia will responds to this escalation: according to RT,“Washington’s decision to supply Ukraine with ammunition and weapons would “explode the whole situation” in eastern Ukraine and Russia would be forced to respond “appropriately,” Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said at the end of February.
While it’s not immediately clear what constitutes an “appropriate” response, and while the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Alexander Lukashevich contends that an outright military confrontation between the West and Russia “isn’t something anyone wants,” that’s where the ambiguity and niceties end. Here’s more via Bloomberg:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Washington Retaliates: Shifts Anti-Missile Battery Into Poland, Begins Rapid-Response Drills
Washington Retaliates: Shifts Anti-Missile Battery Into Poland, Begins Rapid-Response Drills
In yet another sign that Washington is keen on preserving the sanctity of sovereign nations’ right to choose peaceful democracy over violent tyranny, the US is set to use Poland as a staging ground in an effort to prove (because some folks weren’t sure) that despite the UK’s inexplicable reluctance to engage in an arms race with Russia and China, the US can still blow things up at the drop of a dime. Here’s The State Dept with more:
This week the U.S. Army deployed to Poland about 30 vehicles and 100 troops from the 5th Battalion/7th Air Defense Regiment, based in Germany. The U.S. soldiers will train for several days with Polish troops from the 37th Missile Squadron of Air Defense, the 38th Support Squadron, and the 3rd Brigade of Air Defense Command.The American forces will set up their Patriot air and missile defense assets in Poland to demonstrate the U.S. Army’s capacity to deploy Patriot systems rapidly within NATO territory. Training elements will include defending high value assets, ground forces, and population areas from ballistic missiles and air strikes.
Yes, “rapid deployment” of missiles systems. This makes a lot of sense because as we explained yesterday, Vladimir Putin (fresh from an as yet unexplained media hiatus), is busy conducting “snap combat readiness drills” in territories which the Kremlin hasSantander-Consumer-style repossessed. But that’s certainly not the only reason for the White House’s move to ratchet up its Eastern European war readiness. As we noted on Monday, Moscow recently made it clear that it isn’t afraid to instigate a nuclear holocaust if it means defending Russia’s natural right to annex a peninsula:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
30,000 troops, 6 rapid units: NATO increases military power in Eastern Europe
30,000 troops, 6 rapid units: NATO increases military power in Eastern Europe
The NATO Response Force in Europe might increase to 30,000 troops, more than double the current 13,000, said the alliance’s secretary general after a defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels. Most of the troops are set to be stationed near Russia’s borders.
NATO’s rapid deployment forces will consist of a 5,000-strong brigade, sea and air-based elements and special task troops, said NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenber after meeting with the alliance’s 28 defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday.
Before the meeting he noted that he expected the ministers to “agree on several important elements of a package that increases our collective defense.”
The UK has already announced plans to deploy 1,000 troops and four multirole Typhoon fighter jets to join the Response Force in Eastern Europe.
The spearhead of that force will be 5,000 servicemen, distributed among six compact command centers in Eastern Europe, with about only 50 officers in each.
“It is a response to what we have seen from Russia over a period of time and it is in full accordance with our international obligations,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
US Army Sends 100 Tanks To Eastern Europe To “Deter Russian Aggression” | Zero Hedge
US Army Sends 100 Tanks To Eastern Europe To “Deter Russian Aggression” | Zero Hedge.
The ink on Barack Obama’s Chuck Hagel termination letter hasn’t dried yet but already the US president’s new, and seemingly far more hawkish advisors, are having their warmongering presence felt. Case in point: the Eastern European theater of (Cold) war, where Military.com reports that the new Army commander in Europe plans to bolster the U.S. armored presence in Poland and the Baltic states and keep rotations of U.S. troops there through next year and possibly beyond tocounter Russia. Lt. Gen. Frederick “Ben” Hodges, who replaced Lt. Gen. Donald M. Campbell earlier this month as commander of U.S. Army Europe, said the Army was looking to add about 100 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the forces in Eastern Europe.
These U.S. Army M1A2 Abrams tanks are part of the European Activity Set,
a combined-arms battalion-sized set of vehicles and equipment pre-positioned
at Germany’s Grafenwoehr Training Area. Markus Ruachenberger/U.S. Army
“We are looking at courses of action for how we could pre-position equipment that we would definitely want to put inside a facility where it would be better maintained, that rotational units could then come and draw on it and use it to train, or for contingency purposes,” Hodges said in a briefing from Vilnius, Lithuania.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
