"Breedlove's Bellicosity..." Der Spiegel

"On that same day, General Philip Breedlove, the top NATO commander in Europe, stepped before the press in Washington. Putin, the 59-year-old said, had once again "upped the ante" in eastern Ukraine -- with "well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery" having been sent to the Donbass. "What is clear," Breedlove said, "is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day."

German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn't understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn't the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency, did not share the view of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

The pattern has become a familiar one. For months, Breedlove has been commenting on Russian activities in eastern Ukraine, speaking of troop advances on the border, the amassing of munitions and alleged columns of Russian tanks. Over and over again, Breedlove's numbers have been significantly higher than those in the possession of America's NATO allies in Europe. As such, he is playing directly into the hands of the hardliners in the US Congress and in NATO.

The German government is alarmed. "  Der Spiegel

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"The Guns of Breedlove;" will that be the title of a Tuchmanesque history of "Nuland's War?"  

Does Breedlove know that as SACEUR he works for the whole NATO alliance and not just the Nuland/Kagan/AEI side of the American polity?  He is also the US theater commander in Europe, but, IMO the time has passed when the US can assume that the NATO countries will allow themselves to be dragged around by American muscle; dragged in the direction of war with a thermonuclear power.

The BND says that Breedlove is exagerating Russian activity and strength in eastern Ukraine.  The BND is a first rate intelligence agency.  I hope Obama can take time off from his "legacy" to listen to them.  pl  

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/germany-concerned-about-aggressive-nato-stance-on-ukraine-a-1022193.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_M._Breedlove

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesnachrichtendienst 

Comments

[BabelFish]

General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless *distinguishable*, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.

President Merkin Muffley: You're talking about mass murder, General, not war!

General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.

[ex-PFC Chuck]

Maybe we're going to finally see some push-back from the Europeans in response to the US trying to drag them in to a game of "Let's You and Him Fight" while risking taking the rest of the world down the tubes as well.

[The Twisted Genius]

There's clearly a major rift in our Ukraine policy. I saw this yesterday on Reuters and thought Washington finally decided to cut its losses on the Nuland gamble.

"Later on Friday, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Europe, confirmed the delay in a statement and said: "The U.S. government would like to see the Minsk agreement fulfilled. The training mission is currently on hold but Army Europe is prepared to carry out the mission if and when our government decides to move forward," the statement said."

Breedlove is all in with Nuland on this and is no doubt besides himself with rage at this delay. He probably dreams of Abrams tanks along the Dnieper. What's this clown's background?

[The Twisted Genius]

Re: Breedlove. Ah, a fighter pilot. No wonder.

[FB Ali]

The main problem is Obama. He is so weak and/or detached that his administration is running wild, with members publicly pushing their own agendas. A friend has even suggested that it may be a sign of "early onset Alzheimer's".

Unless Merkel can rally the Europeans to put a stop to these dangerous Kagan/Nuland moves, we are all going to face a dire situation.

[b]

But, but , but ... what about Breedlove's precious bodily fluids?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY?t=30s
---

The neocons would love a nice little conventional war in Europe. One that would probably destroy a lot of production capabilities there. Russia would be thrown back 50 years, Germany some 30 years. If only China could be somehow dragged into the mess. Maybe we can nudge Japan into stirring up some trouble there.

The U.S. could then pick up, like after WWII, with a much larger share of world GDP. It would solve the huge problem, overproduction, the run away capitalism and the U.S. central bank created.

I know. Tin foil hat stuff.
---

As a German I wonder what to took my government so long to understand that the U.S. is intentionally creating a mess in Ukraine only to go after one of our best business partners, i.e. Russia. Nuland said "Fuck the EU" and that was all one needed to know. But Berlin somehow had the illusion that the U.S. always knows best. It took them a year to finally get reality. Amateurs.

[turcopolier]

b

"precious, bodily fluids?" That was BG Jack D Ripper. pl

[ex-PFC Chuck]

As I recall, General Turgidson has some anxiety about getting it up for his mistress.
Dr. Strangelove was one of the greatest movies of all time.

[Dubhaltach]

And a committed fundamentalist. Don't take my word for it a very tiny amount of googling will show you what I mean.

(Once you hear "American Airforce" and it's an officer of command rank it's worth investigating whether they're fundamentalists and if they are fundamentalists, whether they're dispensationalists. Far more often than you might like the answer to both questions is "yes").

[Dubhaltach]

Respectfully, Brigadier Ali, no, Obama's weakness doesn't help, but cast your mind back to what you know about the Cuban Missile Crisis. I do not think that Kennedy was a weak president do you?

The problem was then and is now systemic.

Normally I would take political "science" with even more kilogrammes of salt than I do economic "science" but I remember our instructors telling us to read this and the impact it made.

Link to Conceptual models and the Cuban missile crisis:

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/sipa/U6800/readings-sm/allison_02.pdf

[Fred]

b,

In your scenario the neocons are presuming they will win said war. NATO can also lose such a conflict unless it escalates, in which case all sides lose.

[b]

You are falling fro propaganda. The "reluctant" Obama pushed by the hawks is a convenient picture build up by the Obama brigade. In each and every case, drone killings, Afghanistan surge, Libya, Syria, Ukraine the picture of the "reluctant" Obama was created and in each case Obama decided to go the hawks way. The buck stops at his desk. A 30 second call could get General Breedlove fired.

On economic stuff Obama is no progressive but a Wall Street man. On foreign policy stuff Obama is no dove but a rightwing hawk. The picture created by him and of him as progressive and dove is false. Its just a convenient legend build to make him look "left" while he is in reality, as proven after six years, a center right neoconned exceptionalist.

[David Habakkuk]

Colonel Lang,

As to 'precious bodily fluids', the fact that the phrase relates to General Ripper is actually crucial.

He and General Turgidson are completely different figures.

The question which the film's portrayal of Ripper figures raises – and it is a perfectly fair question – is 'what happens if you have a nutter in a key position, given that the actions of a subordinate figure could be decisive?'

By contrast, the arguments made by General Turgidson are not actually simply contemptible. They reflect problems that you get into, once you start trying to plan for a nuclear war. In part these are problems of devising a strategy that makes sense.

But they are also relate to the fact that what are real virtues – and Turgidson's pride in his crews is not bogus, but is vindicated by the film – can end up having catastrophic implications.

The role of Wing Commander Mandrake is also of interest – the best of the three performances Peter Sellers gave in the film, and perhaps his best role ever.

It embodies, for quite a few people of my generation, an image of a certain kind of military officer. They might not be the brightest of human beings, or the most imaginative, but they had the experience of the war behind them, and when push came to shove, could be expected to provide, as it were, 'adult supervision'.

Sometimes today I think I should draft a new version of 'Dr Strangelove', in which, rather than trying to hold Ripper back, Mandrake eggs him on.

[confusedponderer]

"The BND says that Breedlove is exagerating Russian activity and strength in eastern Ukraine. The BND is a first rate intelligence agency. "

With folks like Nuland and Breedlove in the game the possession of independent means of verification becomes imperative. If we didn't have satellite reconaissance of our own and would share with the French, we would have to take what these clowns tell us on faith.

[Bryn P]

Memo to General Breedlove

Ignore those wimps in Germany and France, Phil. Keep on saying it as you would like it to be. Just remember that you can depend fully on us, your "best pals", over on this side of the pond to join you in your proposed humanitarian actions in the Ukraine, just as we did in Libya. Let's stick a bayonet up P's arse this time !

Best regards, Dave.

[confusedponderer]

"Over and over again, Breedlove's numbers have been significantly higher than those in the possession of America's NATO allies in Europe."

There are very few ways to interpret what Breedlove says:

(a)
Breedlove LIES and we know it and he knows we know it but he doesn't care because he has his instructions.

(b)
Breedlove is delusional (then he is unfit for command)

(c)
In any event, he and his political patrons are clearly trying to push Europe into a fight with Russia, irrespective of the facts.

The message that this sends is very clear and it hurts the US as far as their standing in Europe is concerned. It means the US are irrational and/or trying to impose on us, by deciet, policies that we know are ghoing to hurt us.

The blatant soviet-style lying (as far as its utter detatchment form observable relity is concerned) that American foreign policy has engaged in of late has a way of creating an new, alternate reality in the kinds of public perception.

Russia's culpability, real or asserted, in public perception is necessary to justify and sell in NATO an upping the ante vis a vis Russia. I think that is what Breedlove is doing. He 'fixes the facts around the policy'.

This undermines trust in the US leadership. And given that Wesley Clark wanted NATO to attack Russians in Pristina, there is a record that suggests a certain dormant lunatic streak in American generalship as far as Russia is concerned.

If this goes on, NATO members will push for his removal.

[Joe100]

TTG –

Slightly off topic, but perhaps not really. You asked a week or so back about why the MH-17 incident had gone silent/dark. Perhaps you could do an SST post addressing the apparently thorough analysis of plausible armaments used to shoot down MH-17 based on the size and shape of relevant missile fragments (anti-aircraft and air-to-air) and cannon shells, and the various fragment/shell holes in relevant portions of the MH-17 wreckage. This work strongly suggests an aircraft shoot down and not a "BUK" anti-aircraft missile attack. If the formal accident analysis has come to similar conclusions it would seem plausible that there would be great pressure to keep a lid on such findings.

This work was posted a couple of days ago on Cassad’s english web site –

http://cassad-eng.livejournal.com/133434.html

I imagine there may be enough SST members with weapons/ballistics and possibly fighter aircraft experience members of SST to assess the credibility of this work. I did not see that the operational ceiling of the possibly involved Ukraine fighter – which was an issue in early discussion of a possible fighter shoot-down, but I would be surprised if Cassad had missed this factor.

I also continue to wonder if the relatively near-by passage of Putin’s aircraft was a possible factor in whatever happened.

[Babak Makkinejad]

In 2012, the English revolted against the war to be waged on behalf of Jihadist in Syria.

In early 2015, Germans and French revolted against a war in Ukraine and flew to Moscow and made a deal with the Russians against the wishes of the Primus on Potomac.

We need another set of leaders to fly to Tehran and make a deal over Palestine with Iranians.

That ought to keep things quite for a generation or two.

[Babak Makkinejad]

I agree - he is Bush Lite.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Who is going to fight this land war?

The only candidates seem to be US and Turkey with enough men under arms to do so.

Which leads me to believe that NATO cannot wage a land war against Russia and I cannot see Fly Boys decisively defeating the Russian Federation in Ukraine.

A NATO war means, in practical terms, that Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Hungarians, Romanians, Germans, French, Danes, Greeks, Poles, and English be willing to fight and die on the Steppe.

I do not find that likely.

[VietnamVet]

TTG

On the 50th anniversary in May of my old Brigade’s deployment to South Vietnam, I sure hope that your news that their mission to train Ukraine National Guard units has been postponed is true. If this goes forward this would in effect put Western Ukraine under NATO protection with troops on the ground. As David Halberstam wrote about Vietnam:

The truth of the war never entered the upper-level American calculations; that this was a revolutionary war, and that the other side held title to the revolution because of the colonial war which had just ended. This most simple fact entered into the estimates of the American intelligence community and made them quite accurate. But it never entered into the calculations of the principals, for a variety of reasons; among other things to see the other side in terms of nationalism or as revolutionaries might mean a re-evaluation of whether the United States was even fighting on the right side. In contrast, the question of Communism and anti-Communism as opposed to revolution and anti-revolution was far more convenient for American policy makers.

Today American leaders likewise don’t get that ethnic Russians are fighting to protect their homes and families from fascist invaders as they’ve done for generations before. This simple fact guarantees failure. In addition, a shooting war with the Russian Federation will inevitably end with a nuclear holocaust. This is insanity.

[oofda]

Colonel,
The Der Spiegal article noted that Nulands parents came from Bessarabia- which the magazine mistakenly described as in Russia. Bessarabia is in SE Ukraine, which may explain things.

[FB Ali]

I doubt very much that Breedlove is doing this on his own. In my earlier comment I had suggested that Nuland (ie, the administration) was laying down the policy (that he follows).

The replies to my comment strongly suggested that Obama was fully behind the policy. I am quite willing to accept that. It certainly does away with the difficulty of trying to understand how his appointees are running their own show(s).

If this be the case, then I presume that Carter and Dempsey expressed their "personal" opinions before Congress (on arming Ukraine) because they were told by the White House to do so.

[ToivoS]

It is hard to understand why Obama and Kerry have pursued this aggressive policy. For sure, as was predictable one year ago it has turned their widely touted 'pivot to asia' into irrelevancy. It has directly forced China and Russia into a stronger alliance. Those are some big prices to pay for our provocations against Russia.

So why did we do it? I will guess. Putin's 2010 speech proposing a common economic union from Vladivostok to Lisbon must have been seen as a very serious threat by some powerful forces in the US. Fear of losing or at least lessening US hegemony over Europe was probably a major factor in deciding to 'pivot back to Europe'. Our influence there must have seemed much more important than Asia or even the ME. Ukraine provided an opportunity to drive a wedge between Russia and Europe or so US power brokers thought. As a secondary reason, at least one that brought the US military on board with the new policy, is that a new cold war with Russia provided an opportunity to reinvigorate NATO, that has always been a favorite play thing the army and airforce. After the collapse of the Soviet Union it was very difficult to justify NATO's existence.

In any case this would suggest that Obama is not the hapless pawn but rather it is deliberate policy -- he is playing the great chess game as his advisor Brzezinski taught him.

[ex-PFC Chuck]

About the infiltration of the Air Force, especially the USAFA, by radical Christianists just ask Michael Weinstein, the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Himself a USAFA alumnus and for a time a member of the academy's Board of Overseers (or whatever they call them, since they don't have the authority a typical Board of Regents has), Weinstein was radicalized when he got no where when protesting the harassment his two sons and others experienced because they were not of the right "true faith."
http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/