Germany Just Called Out NATO and the US for “Warmongering” and Saber-rattling” with Russia

Last week marked the official launch of NATO’s Anakonda-16 war games, calling for the largest assembly of foreign forces in Poland since World War II.

The exercise consisted of 30,000 troops supported by several arsenals of vehicles, aircraft and ships will be deployed in one of the biggest exercises on NATO’s eastern flank since the end of the Cold War.

While NATO is touting this move as training, the Russians are calling it the “summer of provocation,” and a move to reignite the Cold War intended to force Moscow to starve its domestic economy to ramp up its military to meet a growing external threat.

Russia is not alone in their assertion either. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told Bild am Sonntag newspaper this week that these ostensible ‘war games’ are little more than warmongering.

“What we shouldn’t do now is inflame the situation further through saber-rattling and warmongering,” Mr Steinmeier said in an interview to be published in Germany’s Bild am Sontag newspaper.

“Whoever believes that a symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is mistaken,” Steinmeier said ahead of the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw beginning July 8. “We are well-advised to not create pretexts to renew an old confrontation,” he emphasized.

Rather than risk inflaming the already-volatile situation further “through saber-rattling and warmongering,” there needs to be more dialogue and cooperation with Moscow, Steinmeier said.

It would be “fatal to now narrow the focus to the military, and seek a remedy solely through a policy of deterrence,” German FM said, calling to give way to diplomacy instead of military posturing.

The alliance should also consider the possibility to “renew discussions about the benefits of disarmament and arms control for security in Europe,” he said.

In spite of NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu saying the alliance’s actions are “defensive, proportionate, and in line with our international commitments,” Russia has done absolutely nothing to provoke such a response.

The real intent behind this saber rattling is expanding military spending and bolstering the U.S. war machine. Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski recently offered pertinent insight as to why Russia continues to be so vilified by the Pentagon and American media alike:

“The Pentagon needs and wants Russia to be the next big enemy that they are arming against it, budgeting against it, that they are targeting. Certainly, we have talked for a long time about China and China plays an important role as the enemy of choice for the U.S. military. But Russia is ideal in part, because we don’t import a lot of things from Russia, in part because we don’t have the debt relationship with Russia that we do with China. So, Russia makes for a very convenient enemy for the Pentagon in terms of its mission, its budgeting, and its intelligence organization.”

“The Pentagon needs that kind of enemy,” Kwiatkowski continued. “And [U.S. Secretary of Defense] Ashton Carter, if you listen to what he says continually — even from the beginning of time he was put in office — his job is fundraising, just like the university president’s job is not education but rather fundraising. Ashton Carter’s job is also fundraising, and he fundraises through this process of identifying, pushing, and delivering up an enemy that will justify their budgets.”

Prior to the German FM speaking out about this overt saber rattling, the only ones defending the Russians — were the Russians. Now that a U.S. ally is applying sensible logic to the scenario, the antagonistic intentions of the military-industrial complex are laid bare.

Unfortunately, the U.S., in its flagrant and irresponsible creation of the world’s largest military, cares not about starting actual world wars in their attempts to enrich their corporate masters.

When the chickens come home to roost, however, the result of such belligerent foreign policy will be death and destruction — on a massive scale.