Shades of Dr. Strangelove: NATO Chief General Breedlove warns Moscow: No more 'stealth invasions' of 'little green men'

Eli Lake
The Daily Beast
Mon, 15 Sep 2014 00:00 UTC

© AP

We'll get those Russkies if it's the last thing we'll do!!

Russia is now threatening NATO allies in the Baltics. If Moscow tries another invasion of commandos and spies, the alliance is prepared to act, NATO's top general said.

On Monday, NATO Commander Gen. Philip Breedlove had a not-so-subtle message for Russia: it will consider stealth and unofficial invasions to be a trigger for war.

Europe knows these stealth invasions all too well. Russia first sent teams of special operations forces wearing uniforms without insignia in February into Crimea and then later into eastern Ukraine to work with Russian minorities inside the country to begin an insurrection. Ukraine's military has been fighting these "little green men" ever since. But until recently, Russia has not even acknowledged sending anyone into the country.

Comment: To what exactly is the author of this article referring? Does he mean the Russian drivers and personnel involved in the humanitarian aid convoy of over 280 trucks who delivered food, supplies, and first aid to the Kiev-besieged citizens of the Donbass? Or are these just resentment-laden statements about just how effectively the "insurrection" of minorities in Southeastern Ukraine have repelled the slaughter of many more thousands of innocents by the Nazi regime in Kiev?

Breedlove, speaking at the Atlantic Council on Monday, said if the Kremlin tried that in one of the NATO allies that border Russia - like the former Soviet republics in the Batlics, for example - it would risk triggering Article Five of NATO's charter which is the section that calls on the alliance to come to the defense of a member state being attacked.

It's hardly a hypothetical issue. Over the weekend, a Russian foreign ministry official said violations of the rights of Russian speakers in the Baltic states would have "far reaching, unfortunate" consequences, according to a report in Buzzfeed. The message was seen as a threat from Moscow to meddle further in the internal affairs of the three states that were once part of the Soviet Union.

"We have to look at those forces in our border nations where there are substantial Russian populations and how do we better prepare this initial onslaught of this hybrid war," he Breedlove said. "How do we better prepare our allies to characterize, understand and survive the initial onslaught of the little green men scenario?"

© Kentus

Breedlove added that the issue was discussed this month at Wales at the head of state summit. "We had great acceptance among the NATO allies though that if you attribute this 'little green men' issue to an aggressor nation, it is an Article Five action and then all of the assets of NATO come to bear."

How those assets will come to bear is still being worked out. Breedlove said his expectations were surpassed at this month's NATO summit when the alliance agreed to create a rapid reaction force. But the details of that force are still being discussed.

Breedlove said he wanted NATO to also create a new command headquarters that would only focus on responding to threats to NATO members and how to respond quickly.

Comment: The only "threats" to NATO members is that Russia and allied countries don't just roll over in response to the lies and political, social, and economic warfare that the U.S. is waging in its last-gasp attempts to maintain its status as a world power. "Why don't you just submit to U.S. superiority and democracy, Russia!?! Roll over already!! We hate you, we hate you, we hate you!!! Bwaaahhh!!"

He also said he hoped the deployments of NATO forces in countries on Russia's borders would be able to prepare the groundwork for the rapid insertion of combat troops in a worst case scenario. Those details will be discussed later this month in Vilnius, Lithuania at a meeting of NATO's military committee, Breedlove said.

Breedlove himself said that he was "beginning to see" a similar kind of stealth or hybrid invasion in Moldova, which is not a member of NATO, as well. "We have seen the script play out in Crimea, we have seen the script play out in eastern Ukraine and we are beginning to see the script play out in Moldova," he added.

Comment: Here, General Strangelove General Breedlove is just echoing the U.S.'s rage at the Crimeans and Russia who didn't follow the U.S.'s script for Ukraine: "What!? Those Crimeans weren't supposed to democratically vote for a referendum to secede from Ukrane because of those few Nazi hardliners we put in place in Kiev! How dare they! And the way those Russkies took advantage of the situation - that's not in the script!! What else will Russia do that's off-script?!?"

Russia watchers have been warning since the spring that Moldova could be Putin's next target. With already 2,500 peacekeepers stationed in the breakaway Moldovan province of Transnistria, Russia has a natural base of operations from which to begin destabilize the country's pro-Western government.

Comment: What the author really means here is that Russia is a threat to the U.S.'s probable plans to destabilize Moldova. Remember: white is black, good is evil, and war is peace in the psychopathic logic of U.S. hegemonic reasoning.

Hannah Thoburn, a Eurasia analyst at the Foreign Policy Initiative, said Breedlove's warning about hybrid invasions and little green men was significant. "He is saying the West needs to think along the gray lines that Russia likes to fight within. We need to move our benchmark for what is an invasion from waiting for a full column of tanks to cross a border to this new hybrid warfare," she said.

Comment: We need to think about the absurdity and hypocrisy of this statement for just a moment. First, there is absolutely nothing 'new' or innovative about the type of war that General Breedlove and analyst Thoburn are accusing Russia of perpetrating here. In fact, the U.S. has a long and well documented track record of of doing precisely these type of activities for many years, not to mention all the covert steps the U.S. has taken to initiate this conflict to begin with. So again, this is where we are witnessing the psychopathic mindset accusing its victims of doing precisely what it itself has been, and is, guilty of.

Secondly, there is a very paranoid and disturbed flavor to the vehemence with which individuals like General Breedlove are speaking in their drive to war. For anyone who's ever seen Stanley Kubrick's anti-war film masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), one may recall the scenes with General Jack D. Ripper, in which he gives his hilarious but utterly frightening rationalizations for setting the U.S.'s conflict with Russia into motion.