March 5, 2024 (EIRNS)—That headline is the message of the article published in Asia Times March 3 by former U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Stephen Bryen. A direct Russia-NATO war is his concern.
Various NATO countries distanced themselves from French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to send in troops, Bryen wrote, but, “if NATO is so much against sending troops to Ukraine, why doesn’t NATO demand that the soldiers already there be sent home?”
A series of recent reports from Europe have made clear that NATO officers and trained personnel from the U.S., U.K., France, Poland, and others are already in Ukraine “in large numbers,” and they are operating such weapons “as the Patriot and NASAM air defense system, the HIMARS multiple launch rocket system, the British-French Storm Shadow cruise missile (SCALP-EG in France), and many other complex weapons provided to Ukraine….
“NATO policy should be urgently reevaluated. If NATO is actually against sending troops to Ukraine, it no longer has plausible deniability over the troops already on the ground in Ukraine…. Putin’s reminder that Russia has nuclear weapons, his warning that NATO is preparing to attack Russia and his declaration that Russia is willing to use nuclear weapons indicate that the political acceptability of NATO threats to Russia has crossed a critical red line,” Bryen warned.
Bryen is now a senior fellow at Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy (along with such other raving neocons as former Dick Cheney advisor David Wurmser). This crowd has seized on China as the preferred geopolitical threat to mobilize against, and so are willing to cut U.S. losses on “defeating” Russia.
