US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in an interview with Fox News that Washington is moving US military units closer to Russian borders. According to him, such a policy is necessary to "contain" Moscow.

“We will redeploy a lot of military personnel further east - closer to the borders of Russia in order to contain it. Most of the allies that I have approached, who have contacted me and with whom my subordinates have spoken, believe that this is the right step, that it will ensure that all the designated tasks are completed, ”Esper said.

The head of the Pentagon did not name the countries where the American units will be deployed, but earlier Esper talked about the possible transfer of additional forces to Poland and the Baltic states.

The US Secretary of Defense announced an increase in US military forces near Russian borders in response to a question about reducing the number of United States troops in Germany.

We will remind, Washington plans to reduce the contingent in Germany from 36 thousand to 24 thousand people. As a result, about 5.6 thousand American soldiers will be redeployed to other NATO countries, and 6.4 thousand troops will return to their homeland.

Under the pretext of the "Russian threat"

The Pentagon's plans to build up troops near Russian borders are also supported by Congress. So, at the end of June, the head of the committee on the armed forces of the lower house of the US Congress, Adam Smith, proposed allocating an additional $ 3.789 billion from the budget to "contain" Russia in Europe.

We are talking about funding the European Containment Initiative (EDI). The volume of appropriations for it has increased manifold in recent years: from $ 789 million in fiscal 2016 to $ 6.3 billion in 2019.

  • American soldiers on training in Lithuania
  • © Ints Kalnins / Reuters

Moscow has repeatedly drawn attention to NATO's growing military activity in Eastern Europe. As noted in the Russian Ministry of Defense, the actions of the United States are dictated by the desire, under the pretext of the myth of the "Russian threat", to create an infrastructure for the transfer and concentration of troops.

In addition, the Russian military is recording an increase in the intensity of NATO exercises, as well as flights of US reconnaissance and combat aircraft, including strategic bombers. For example, at the end of May 2020, American B-1Bs flew over the territory of Ukraine for the first time, and also approached the border of the Kaliningrad region at a distance of up to 10 km.

Colonel-General Sergei Rudskoy, Chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, said at a June briefing that Moscow regularly discusses with its American colleagues and the NATO leadership the issues of reducing the intensity of military activities near Russian borders, however, Western partners actually ignore the proposals that come from officers and diplomats RF.

In an interview with RT, Yuri Rogulyov, director of the Franklin Roosevelt Foundation for the Study of the United States at Moscow State University, did not rule out that in an effort to "contain" Moscow, Washington could violate a number of key provisions of the Russia-NATO Founding Act, adopted in 1997. In particular, we are talking about the obligations of the alliance to refrain from additional deployment of significant combat forces.

Western "guarantees"

According to experts, Esper's statement about the concentration of troops near Russia demonstrates that the American leadership was not going to keep the promise that the North Atlantic Alliance would not admit former socialist countries, given after the end of the Cold War.

In particular, this assurance was made by James Baker, who at that time served as head of the US State Department. At a meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, the American secretary of state said that NATO "will not move an inch east." Earlier, similar promises to Gorbachev were voiced by the 41st US President George W. Bush.

In January 1990, Hans-Dietrich Genscher (German Foreign Minister at that time) in his speech on the future architecture of European security, noted that the formation of a unified German state and changes in political regimes in Eastern Europe should not lead to a deterioration in the security of the USSR.

Then the diplomat stressed the need to exclude the possibility of NATO's advance to the borders of the Soviet Union. This statement was recorded in a confidential message from the US Embassy in Bonn.

  • Helmut Kohl, Mikhail Gorbachev and Hans-Dietrich Genscher at the negotiations on the unification of Germany
  • globallookpress.com
  • © DPA

On May 17, 1990, in his speech in Brussels, Manfred Wörner, who was then NATO Secretary General, also stated that the military bloc was not going to deploy troops outside Germany, which is a guarantee of the USSR's security. As the main task of the alliance for the next decade, he proclaimed the creation of a new structure of European security, in which Moscow was to become a participant.

In addition, as evidenced by archival documents, the refusal to expand NATO to the east was recorded in numerous memorandums following negotiations between Soviet and Western statesmen, including Bush Sr., French President Francois Mitterrand, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

"Grab the Soviet legacy"

However, over time, the United States and NATO began to deny that Western officials had made any promises to Moscow. So, in April 2014, the alliance announced that they could not confirm the statements about the refusal of the representatives of the United States and Germany from their intentions to expand the alliance to the east. In October 2018, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview with the BBC that Western leaders did not give any guarantees to the Soviet authorities, including oral ones.

“First, it’s not true. There were no such promises. It could not be that big countries promised something on behalf of the little ones. NATO is expanding through democratic decisions by states that want to join the alliance, ”Stoltenberg said.

In turn, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly reminded about guarantees from the West. In 2017, in an interview with American director Oliver Stone, the head of state said that both the United States and NATO had guaranteed Moscow security, assuring that they did not intend to expand the alliance.

“When the question of the unification of Germany and the subsequent withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe was being decided, then both the officials in the United States and the NATO Secretary General said that the Soviet Union could be sure of one thing - that the eastern border of NATO would not be pushed further than the eastern the border of the German Democratic Republic, ”Putin said.

At the same time, the President expressed regret that such promises were not fixed precisely “on paper”. In his opinion, this was Mikhail Gorbachev's “direct mistake”.

As experts noted, the expansion of NATO to the east was facilitated by the destruction of the bipolar system of international relations, which was built on the balance of power between Moscow and Washington. Nevertheless, in the new geopolitical reality, the US leadership did not have any need to make a decision on the alliance's approach to the borders of the Russian Federation due to the absence of any threats to national security.

According to Yuri Rogulyov, in the 1990s, there were opponents of the alliance's expansion among the elite of the United States, but in the end the forces that were in favor of "grabbing the Soviet legacy that lay badly" won out.  

According to the expert, NATO's advance to the east was accompanied by the spread of the US military-political influence not only on the former countries of the socialist camp, but also on the entire post-Soviet space. This process has become a threat to Russia and has led to serious negative consequences for international security.

  • American servicemen at a military base in Poland
  • © Peter Andrews / Reuters

In an interview with RT, Nikolai Mezhevich, chief researcher at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, recalled the famous warning of the former US ambassador to the USSR, George Kennan, that NATO's advancement to the borders of the Russian Federation would be a fatal mistake of American diplomacy, as it would inflame anti-Western sentiments in Russia. According to the expert, the American diplomat was right. 

“The only acceptable option for our country is the creation of a demilitarized zone in Eastern Europe. But given the events that have taken place and the current plans of the Americans, this is hardly possible, ”Mezhevich said.

As Vadim Kozyulin, a professor at the Academy of Military Sciences, said in a commentary on RT, the violation of promises about the non-expansion of NATO led to the fact that modern Russia quite justifiably distrusts Western elites. Nevertheless, the military activities of the Russian Federation still pose no threat to the alliance. 

“Talk about the“ Russian threat ”is empty rhetoric aimed at denigrating the Russian Federation and increasing military spending. Yes, Moscow is modernizing its army with an eye on NATO, but this is a response to objective challenges. Since the 1990s, NATO has been systematically moving towards the borders of Russia, which ultimately only destabilized security in Europe, ”Kozyulin stressed.