NATO, defeated by Covid-19

Brussels, Belgium (apro) – The US military has decided to completely withdraw from the ongoing “Defender Europe 20” military exercise, which the Pentagon and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) call the largest European exercise in the past 25 years. Continent. On March 13, Washington suspended the delivery of troops and war equipment to Europe after an American soldier assigned to the headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany, tested positive for the coronavirus. Two days ago, it was also reported that a US military civilian working at the German garrison in Bavaria was also infected. In particular, the four exercises that make up the military operation (Dynamic Front, Joint Operational Assessment, Sabre Strike and Rapid Response) were canceled, and only the modified version of the “Allied Spirit” exercise was retained until Monday, March 16, in which the US armored brigade combat unit will conduct artillery exercises and “joint training exercises” with allied forces. The US European Command (Eucom) announced that it reduced the “scale and scope” of the exercises due to the spread of Covid-19, but did not cancel them. Nor did he do so when it became known that General Jaroslaw Mika, the commander of the Polish Armed Forces, had contracted the coronavirus and had attended the military conference on strategic communications in Wiesbaden on March 6, Defending Europe 20. The event was also attended by Lieutenant General Christopher Cavoli, the commander-in-chief of the European Command, and other senior staff officers, along with the Army’s senior commanders, so the alarm was triggered without a certain change of plans. Everything seems to indicate that even NATO’s strategic analysts could not have predicted the scale of the Covid-19 crisis, given its secretary Norwegian General Jens Stoltenberg declared that the organization had developed a “continuity of activities plan” even though many coronavirus cases were recorded in the command structure. The cancellation of the large-scale exercise is not surprising now. The ongoing serious health crisis Growth As time goes by, it has forced the Pentagon to cancel the final stage of the “Juniper Cobra 20” exercise, which was to be carried out jointly with Israeli militias on March 5. https://www.process.com.mx/622340/virus-chino On March 11, the Norwegian army also ended ahead of schedule the “Cold Response 20” military exercise, which planned to mobilize 15,000 men from the United States and 10 European countries on its territory in the next few days. It happened that at least one Norwegian soldier was infected with Covid-19, and in addition to the decision of Finland and the United States not to send troops, more than 800 soldiers had to be quarantined in a military camp in the north of the country. The “European Guardian 20” program plans to send 37,000 soldiers from 18 countries to intervene, and these troops will be deployed in the conflict zones in Germany, Poland and the Baltic countries. The exercises are mainly carried out from April to June. The United States will have to move 20,000 troops (which will add to the 9,000 personnel it already has in Europe), in addition to transporting a large amount of military equipment, including 85 Abrams tanks, 45 armored personnel carriers, heavy weapons and mortars, which will arrive at four ports and 10 European airports. The first American soldiers landed in Bremerhaven, Germany on February 21, and according to the European Command, about 6,000 American soldiers arrived from the United States, the vast majority of whom are stationed in Germany, and will begin to return this week. “This military exercise is important because it mobilizes more than 30,000 personnel on the eastern border of Europe, in Poland, Georgia and the Baltic countries, not far from Russia, near Kaliningrad (a Russian exclave bordering Lithuania and Poland, a territory of the former Warsaw Treaty and today NATO), and a considerable number of American soldiers are involved,” French journalist Nicolas Gros-Verheyde, founder of the Bruxelles2 portal specializing in EU defense and security issues, told this columnist. It also has “a very important symbolic significance for transatlantic ties, primarily for the Baltic states and Poland,” he noted. While the official goal of Defender Europe 20 is “to demonstrate the ability of the U.S. military to quickly deploy large support forces to NATO and respond to any crisis,” Stoltenberg repeatedly stressed that these are defensive exercises and that “they have no direct purpose” against any country in particular. The government of Vladimir Putin — whose annexation of Crimea in 2014 caused concern among its neighbors — sees the Western exercises as hostile actions against the country, and as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently said, they prove that “NATO has no intention of easing tensions with Russia.” “This operation is aimed at only one country: Russia,” agreed Gross-Verheide, adding: “The message is: ‘If necessary, we are ready to respond to your military exercises or actions. ’” The second recipients are the countries closest to Russia, to which NATO says: “If you have problems with the Russians, we are ready to help you.” “The coronavirus has achieved the unthinkable: a kind of “withdrawal” of American troops. “In terms of defense, the question arises: is an epidemic of a disease that is not as deadly as others enough to lead to the cancellation of military exercises of this magnitude? In the future, the defense operations of the transatlantic alliance will be different; from a strategic defense point of view, there will be a before and after coronavirus. This health crisis has undoubtedly triggered an intense review of strategic data analysis and defense concepts.” https://www.process.com.mx/622359/italia-un-pais-de-zombis-con-tapabocas Epidemiological information remains secondary, says the journalist. What is happening “reminds us of the era of the First World War, when there were important epidemics, the Napoleonic Wars or the wars that took place in the 18th century, he notes. “In that era, epidemics could defeat entire armies.”