"THE ART OF WAR"
The mega war game "Trident Juncture 2018"
by Manlio
Dinucci
US Marines disembarked from 'Tiltrotors' and
helicopters from the amphibious attack ship « Iwo Jima », and
« secured » Keflavik airport in Iceland, where Poseidon P-8A aircraft
had arrived from Sigonella to take part
in the hunt for enemy submarines. That was the start, on 17 October, of the
NATO exercise Trident Juncture 2018, whose principal phase will be taking place
from 25 October to 7 November in Central and Eastern Norway, in the areas
adjacent to the North Atlantic (as far as Iceland) and the Baltic Sea
(including the airspace of Sweden and Finland).
The armed forces of the 29 member states of
NATO will be taking part, plus those of
their two partners, Sweden and Finland. Total deployment – approximately
50,000 men, 65 major ships, 250 aircraft, 10,000 tanks and other military
vehicles. If they were lined up, one element behind the other, they would
create a column 92 kilometres long. The commander of the exercise, one of the
largest of the last few years, is Admiral James Foggo. Nominated by the
Pentagon, like his predecessors, he is the commander of the Allied Joint Force
Command (JFC) whose headquarters is in Lago Patria (Naples), the US Naval
Forces in Europe, and the US Naval Forces for Africa, whose headquarters is in
Naples Capodichino. The Admiral is commanding Trident Juncture 2018 from the
« Mount Whitney », the flagship of the Sixth Fleet, transferred from
Gaeta to the North Atlantic - a floating headquarters which is connected to the
Pentagon's global command and control network, including the Muos di Niscemi
station in Sicily.
This confirms the importance of these US and
NATO command centres and bases in Italy, not only for the Mediterranean, but
also for the whole « area of responsibility » of the Supreme Allied
Commander in Europe, who is always a US General, currently Curtis Scaparrotti,
nominated by the President of the United States. Since 2002, this geostrategic
area « has been extended in order to cover all NATO operations,
independent of their geographical situation ».
The official objective of Trident Juncture
2018 is to « ensure that NATO forces are ready to respond to any form of aggression wherever it
may occur ».
But it's enough to glance at the map to
realise that this major war exercise is focused in only one direction – towards
the East, against Russia. Admiral Foggo claims that the « Fourth Battle of
the Atlantic » has already begun, after the battles of the two World Wars
against German U-boats, and that of the Cold War against Soviet submarines: it
is now being waged against Russia, the new « aggressive maritime
power », whose « increasingly sophisticated submarines threaten NATO's capacity to
maintain maritime control of the North Atlantic, and consequently, the lines of
maritime communication between the United States and Europe ». Turning the
facts on their head, the Admiral claims that Russia « defies the presence
of the United States and NATO » not only in the Atlantic, but also in the
« Baltic and the Black Seas », in other words the seas which border
European Russia.
Thus we discover the other finality of
Trident Juncture 2018 - it's a massive psyop (psychological operation) aimed at
reinforcing the idea that Europe is under the threat of an increasingly
aggressive Russia. In Sweden, a NATO partner country, 4.8 million families were
handed a survival manual explaining how to prepare for war, by storing reserves
of food and other essential goods, learning how to behave when the signals of
alert are sounded to warn of the Russian attack. So NATO is preparing to
swallow up even Sweden, an old « neutral » state.
il manifesto, October 23rd, 2018
Translator: Pete Kimberley
NO WAR NO NATO
Manlio Dinucci
Geographer and geopolitical scientist. His latest books are: Laboratorio di geografia, Zanichelli 2014 ; Diario di viaggio, Zanichelli 2017 ; L’arte della guerra / Annali della strategia Usa/Nato 1990-2016, Zambon 2016, Guerra Nucleare. Il Giorno Prima 2017; Diario di guerra Asterios Editores 2018.
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