Reuters reports that NATO “exercise” Steadfast Defender 2024, will begin on Monday, January 22nd, and will run “through” May, which means until June. The deployment will include 90,000 troops, 50 ships, including aircraft carriers, more than 80 combat aircraft, including fighter jets, and over 1,100 combat vehicles, including at least 133 tanks and over 500 infantry fighting vehicles. The fact that the “exercise’ begins next week, and the Western MSM is only now publicizing it, means that all the military assets are already in position. They’re not “coming”, they’re here.
This is the biggest NATO combined arms “exercise” since REFORGER 1988, back when the USSR and Warsaw pact were still in existence. In other words, this is the biggest NATO troop movement since the end of the Cold War, almost doubling the previous largest, which was 50,000 troops involved in Trident Juncture in 2018. 90,000 troops on the move for almost half a year, concentrating in the Baltic states on Russia’s borders, in Romania, on the Ukraine border, and in Germany, the military logistics hub of NATO, and where it all started “last time”. You know what I mean.
Politics and war can best be exemplified by the game of chess. In chess, there are three specific stages – the opening, the middle game, and the end game. The opening is when the two opponents move their pawns into a defensive line and develop the major pieces for maneuver. It is relatively bloodless, and if done correctly, more strategic than tactical. There is no defining moment when the game transitions from the opening game to the middle game, but the middle game is where the fighting really begins, and you know it when you get there.
If there is no surprise defeat, the middle game is usually short, and when it is over, the chessboard is vastly different than when it began. In the end game, the majority of pieces on both sides have been eliminated, only a few pieces remain – the kings, of course, and a few pieces close to them, defending them. From here, the game ends in checkmate, a definitive defeat of one side or the other, or a stalemate, where both sides agree that neither can win, thus ending the game, and agreeing to start over at some time in the future.
With Steadfast Defender, Europe (and probably the world) enter the middle game. Fasten your seatbelts, we are in for a rough ride. This middle game will almost certainly not be confined to Europe. and before it is over, will most probably include surprise moves in the form of the use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. No place on Earth will be safe, except, perhaps, for the luxury bunkers of the world’s billionaire elite. Maybe not even there…
The “Great Reset” has been interpreted by some as code for a depopulation plan to cull the human herd of the majority of its members. This idea has been dismissed by popular culture as just another “conspiracy theory”, but in reality, it remains the most plausible explanation for the many developments of the last few years.
Reuters
NATO is launching its largest exercise since the Cold War, rehearsing how U.S. troops could reinforce European allies in countries bordering Russia and on the alliance's eastern flank if a conflict were to flare up with a "near-peer" adversary.
Some 90,000 troops are due to join the Steadfast Defender 2024 drills that will run through May, the alliance's top commander Chris Cavoli said on Thursday.
More than 50 ships from aircraft carriers to destroyers will take part, as well as more than 80 fighter jets, helicopters and drones and at least 1,100 combat vehicles including 133 tanks and 533 infantry fighting vehicles, NATO said.
Cavoli said the drills would rehearse NATO's execution of its regional plans, the first defence plans the alliance has drawn up in decades, detailing how it would respond to a Russian attack.
NATO did not mention Russia by name in its announcement. But its top strategic document identifies Russia as the most significant and direct threat to NATO members' security.
"Steadfast Defender 2024 will demonstrate NATO's ability to rapidly deploy forces from North America and other parts of the alliance to reinforce the defence of Europe," NATO said.
The reinforcement will occur during a "simulated emerging conflict scenario with a near-peer adversary", Cavoli told reporters in Brussels after a two-day meeting of national chiefs of defence.
The troops taking part in the exercises, which will involve simulations of getting personnel to Europe as well exercises on the ground, will come from NATO countries and Sweden, which hopes to join the alliance soon.
Allies signed off on the regional plans at their 2023 Vilnius summit, ending a long era in which NATO had seen no need for large-scale defence plans as Western countries fought smaller wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and felt certain post-Soviet Russia no longer posed an existential threat.
During the second part of the Steadfast Defender exercise, a special focus will be on the deployment of NATO's quick reaction force to Poland on the alliance's eastern flank.
Other major locations of the drills will be the Baltic states which are seen as most at risk from a potential Russian attack, Germany - a hub for incoming reinforcements - and countries on the fringes of the alliance such as Norway and Romania.
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