WikiLeaks cable exposes NATO war plan against Russia

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WikiLeaks cable exposes NATO war plan against Russia
By Bill Van Auken
9 December 2010

US State Department cables released by WikiLeaks have unveiled secret NATO plans
for a US-led war against Russia over the Baltic states.

The cables, first reported by the Guardian newspaper Tuesday and posted on the
WikiLeaks site, underscore the growing geo-strategic tensions between the US and
Russia even as the Obama administration has emphasized a “reset” in relations
that was supposed to overcome the conflicts left over from the Bush administration.

The secret plans spell out preparations for a full-scale war with Russia that
would see the immediate deployment of nine divisions of US, British, German and
Polish troops in the event of any Russian incursion into the former Soviet
Baltic republics.

The plans also specify German and Polish ports that would be used to receive
naval assault units and US and British warships destined for battle with Russian
forces.

Despite these details, there is no indication in the cables of the potentially
catastrophic implications of such an armed clash between the world’s two largest
nuclear powers.

While some analysts in Moscow insisted that Russian intelligence was well aware
of the contingency plans, their public exposure by WikiLeaks prompted statements
of protest by Russian officials and demands for an explanation from NATO.

The contingency plans that would send US troops into combat against Russian
forces were developed in the wake of the Russian-Georgian clash of August 2008
that followed Georgia’s unsuccessful attempt to overrun the breakaway territory
of South Ossetia.

As the cables spell out, the governments of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, which
were brought into the NATO alliance in 2004, began to lobby US officials for the
development of a NATO strategy for the defense of their territories against a
Russian attack.

The US embassy in Latvia began by informing Washington about the concerns of the
government in Riga even as the fighting was going on in South Ossetia. An August
15, 2008 message cited discussions with Latvian leaders who expressed the
sentiment that “this could easily be them” and reported “Latvians are beginning
to worry if membership in (NATO) provides them the assurances of their security
that they had hoped for.’

The documents, marked secret and classified, trace the evolution of US policy
from these first demands by the Baltic states in the wake of the
Russian-Georgian conflict through to the actual elaboration of a contingency
plan for a military confrontation with Russia that was secretly adopted in
January 2010.

The cables indicate that US officials were anxious not to publicly antagonize
Moscow, even as they sought to put into place the war plans demanded by the
Baltic states. A report classified as secret from the US ambassador to NATO,
recounting a meeting with the three Baltic state ambassadors, asserts, “We are
not returning to the cold war.”

NATO and Russia had established formal relations in 1997 based on an agreement
that explicitly stated, “NATO and Russia do not consider each other as
adversaries.” The problem confronting US officials was how to draft a policy
that clearly cast Russia as an enemy without upending ties with Moscow.

In a cable drafted in October 2009, US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder spelled
out the problem. “Leaders in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are pressing hard
for NATO Article 5 (which compels all NATO states to come to the defense of any
other member state under attack) contingency planning for the Baltic states,” he
began, noting that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
had already stated their support for such plans.

The problem, Daalder pointed out, was that such plans “would require specifying
Russia as a potential threat,” something which Germany and other NATO member
states opposed. He wrote: “As we saw during the debates over the Russia-Georgia
war, many Allies will take great pains to avoid even the suggestion that the
Alliance and Russia are on a course toward a new Cold War.”

He suggested that Washington could get around the evident contradiction by
expanding an existing contingency plan for the defense of Poland to include the
Baltic states or by adopting “generic plans” for a NATO response to aggression
that would not name the states involved but would be applicable to the Baltic
countries.

Among the concerns expressed by Daalder was that in the absence of a contingency
plan, the Baltic states would not trust NATO for their defense and “will have to
consider developing a force structure focused on territorial defense rather than
on expeditionary capabilities.” The specific “expeditionary” role that the US
ambassador had in mind was the deployment of Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian
troops in the US-led war in Afghanistan.

The cable indicates that it was Germany that first raised the suggestion that
the contingency plan for Poland—codenamed “Eagle Guardian”—could be widened to
include the Baltic states. This was the path that Washington ultimately backed.
NATO approved the plan on January 22, 2010 but made no public announcement.

A January 26 cable signed by Hillary Clinton from the State Department to US
diplomats in NATO countries and to the American embassy in Moscow spelled out
the need to maintain strict secrecy in relation to the agreement.

“The United States believes strongly that such planning should not be discussed
publicly. These military plans are classified at the NATO SECRET level,” the
cable states. “Public discussion of contingency plans undermines their military
value, giving insight into NATO’s planning processes. This weakens the security
of all Allies.”

The document adds: “A public discussion of contingency planning would also
likely lead to an unnecessary increase in NATO-Russia tensions, something we
should try to avoid as we work to improve practical cooperation in areas of
common NATO-Russia interest.”

The cable concludes with recommendations for dealing with any media inquiries on
the contingency plans. Such non-answers as “NATO does not discuss specific
plans” and “NATO is constantly reviewing and revising its plans” are suggested.
The diplomats are instructed to stress that NATO planning “is not ’aimed’ at any
other country,” which in this case it most definitely was—at Russia.

Russia’s ambassador to NATO said Tuesday that Moscow would demand that the
Western alliance abrogate the Baltic contingency plan, saying that the plan
stood in direct contradiction to assurances given at the recent NATO summit in
Lisbon.

“We must get some assurances that such plans will be dropped, and that Russia is
not an enemy for NATO,” said the Russian envoy, Dmitry Rogozin. “I expect my
colleagues from the NATO-Russia Council to confirm that Lisbon has made all the
difference.”

Rogozin dismissed NATO’s claims that the contingency plan was not aimed at any
one country. “Against whom else could such a defense be intended?” he asked.
“Against Sweden, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, against polar bears, or against
the Russian bear?”

Meanwhile, the Guardian quoted an unnamed official at the Russian foreign
ministry as saying that the documents had provoked “a lot of questions and
bewilderment.”

“Russia has repeatedly raised the question about the need to ensure that there
is no military planning aimed against one another,” the source said.

The revelations have surfaced under conditions of mounting tensions between
Washington and Moscow over the US Senate’s failure to ratify a new START treaty
on nuclear arms reduction and differences over Washington’s drive to set up an
anti-missile network in Europe.

Cooperation between Moscow and Washington notwithstanding, the US war in
Afghanistan and the strategic drive by US imperialism to assert its hegemony in
Central Asia are an inevitable source of conflict.

Underscoring these growing tensions, the Russian navy reported Wednesday that US
and Japanese forces suspended war games in the Sea of Japan after two Russian
Ilyushin-38 anti-submarine aircraft flew over the area.

“The area is our zone of responsibility,” said Roman Markov, a spokesman for the
Russian navy. “The airplanes carried out a planned flight in an area of the
Russian Pacific Fleet’s regular activity. Our pilots did not violate any rules
of international air space.”

The military exercise involves some 34,000 Japanese and more than 10,000 US
military personnel along with scores of warships and hundreds of aircraft. They
were suspended out of concern that the Russian aircraft could gather secret data
on US and Japanese capabilities.

Relations between Moscow and Tokyo have soured in recent weeks over the dispute
between the two governments over the control of a string of islands stretching
south of Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula. Known in Russia as the Southern Kuriles
and in Japan as the Northern Territories, they were seized by Soviet forces in
World War II.

Last month, Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev made a brief surprise trip to one
of the islands, provoking angry protests from Japan. Last weekend, in an
apparent response, Japan’s Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara flew past of the
islands on a Japanese coast guard plane. An unnamed Russian official responded
to the fly-by: “No one, Japan included, is banned from admiring the beauties of
Russian nature.”

Other dispatches released by WikiLeaks point to the tensions within the NATO
alliance over relations with Russia. In particular, a February 2010 cable from
the US embassy in Paris records a clash between US Secretary of State Robert
Gates and France’s Foreign Minister Herve Morin over French plans for arms sales
to Moscow.

Gates, the cable reports, “raised US concerns over sales of a Mistral-class
helicopter carrier to Russia as sending a mixed signal to both Russia and our
Central and Eastern European allies.” The Pentagon chief went on to recall that
while French President Nicolas Sarkozy had negotiated the ceasefire agreement
that ended the fighting between Russia and Georgia in 2008, Moscow had not lived
up to the agreement.

Morin replied, according to the cable, by asking “rhetorically how we can tell
Russia we desire a partnership but then not trust them.”

The cable also quotes Morin expressing the view that “a European Missile Defense
system is both unwise and unnecessary,” adding that Gates “refuted Morin’s
contention.”

An appended note indicating back-channel discussions between US and French
officials states: “Following the meetings, Morin’s critical comments on Missile
Defense were disavowed by senior officials at the MoD and the MFA, who said that
his views were his own and that the U.S. should essentially ‘erase’ what he had
just said.”

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/nato-d09.shtml

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