A major military exercise kicked off in Latvia, with 10 NATO member countries participating. The war games involve 4,700 troops and 800 military vehicles. Russia sees NATO's military build-up as a sign of aggression.
The Saber Strike ground forces exercise is being conducted for the fourth time this year and coincides with Baltic Host 2014 and Baltops 2014 naval drills.
Troops from the US, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Norway and the UK are taking part.
The two-week exercise is hosted by the three Baltic States, although some parts will be conducted in Germany.
For Latvia, where the opening ceremony was held, it's the biggest NATO military drill since its accession to the alliance in 2004, the country's defense ministry said Monday in a statement. The ceremony was crowned with a US strategic bomber B-52 flyover.
In total, Saber Strike will involve about 2,600 troops coming mainly from Denmark (1,100), Lithuania (900), about 200 soldiers from the US, 100 from Britain, 50 from Poland and several dozen each from Estonia and Finland. The exercise will include about 800 military vehicle units.
The UK’s HMS Montrose, a Type 23 frigate, will take part in the two-week long security exercise, the BBC reports.
The exercise comes amid high tension between NATO and Russia over the Ukrainian political crisis. The alliance ramped up its presence in Russia's neighborhood, claiming that it is a response toward Moscow's aggressive stance.
Russia says NATO's actions are provocative and is taking measures to balance the shift in military power.
“We can't take this military buildup by the alliance next to Russia's borders as anything but a demonstration of hostile intention. The deployment of extra NATO troops in Central and Eastern Europe, even on a rotational basis” is a violation of Russia's agreements with the alliance, Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov said Monday.
“Of course we won't stand idly and watch the militarization of the countries in our neighborhood and will take all necessary political and military measures to ensure our security,” the diplomat told Interfax.
On Thursday, eight US Minnesota National Guard F-16 fighter jets arrived in Amari airbase, that are going to make battle flights over the Adazi polygon. Also KC-135 refueling tankers are located in Amari, as well as transport planes and naval aircraft P-8. Among Estonian Air Force units participating in the exercise, in addition to the support team, L-39 jets and air fire commanders participate.
The US has dispatched two nuclear-capable stealth bombers to its European Command (USEUCOM) area of operations for purported training purposes. On Sunday, two B-2 Spirit aircraft flew to the USEUCOM area of operations to train and integrate with US and allied military forces in the region in the course of a short-term deployment. The B-2 Spirit is a multi-role stealth bomber which can deliver nuclear munitions and is capable of penetrating sophisticated defense systems and threatening heavily-defended targets. "This deployment of strategic bombers provides an invaluable opportunity to strengthen and improve interoperability with our allies and partners," said Admiral Cecil Haney, the commander of US Strategic Command. The USEUCOM is one of the nine Unified Combatant Commands of the US army, which covers an area of 54,000,000 square km and 51 countries, including Europe, Russia, Iceland, Greenland, and Israel. "The training and integration of strategic forces demonstrates to our nation's leaders and our allies that we have the right mix of aircraft and expertise to respond to a variety of potential threats and situations,” Haney added. According to a January report by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), the US is planning to spend over USD 1 trillion on its nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years. The CNS report adds that after 2020, Washington plans to allocate as much as three percent of its annual military budget to its nuclear arsenal. The funding is comparable to spending levels used for modernizing US nuclear arsenal under former president, Ronald Reagan, during the 1980s arms race with the former Soviet Union. In December 2013, Congressional Budget Office predicted that the US would spend USD 355 billion over the next decade on its nuclear weapons complex. The US has the largest stockpile of active nuclear warheads in the world and is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons against another nation. Based on recent numbers from Federation of Atomic Scientists (FAS), the US currently holds a stockpile of 4,650 nuclear warheads, 2,130 of which are operational. In addition, Washington has 2,700 retired nuclear warheads that are yet to be dismantled. http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/06/09/366242/us-sends-stealth-nbombers-to-...
interesting follow up on the end of the dollar as the reserve currency posted over at silver doctors today:
James Rickards has been quite vocal in his view that the price of gold is headed much higher. Yet, in the same breath he aggressively promotes the idea of using the IMF SDR to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
There’s two reasons for this. First, if you study Rickard’s background going all the way back to his role in the Iran hostage crisis, you’ll see that he’s been lifetime “front man” for the most powerful interest groups that control this country behind the scenes. First and foremost he’s a front-man for the Pentagon.
I’ve been told separately, independently from two different sources that the elite insiders in the Department of Defense know that the demise of the dollar is inevitable…. and that there’s nothing that can be done to prevent it.
Submitted by PM Fund Manager Dave Kranzler, Investment Research Dynamics:
Which brings us to the second reason that Rickards is trying to pimp the IMF SDR like a magic elixir snake-oil salesman. The U.S. dollar currently represents 61.2% of the IMF SDR: SDR Currency Basket.
If the U.S. Government can persuade the world to accept the IMF SDR as a replacement for the dollar, the U.S. Government will still have de facto control over the world’s reserve currency and therefore can continue to defer the systemic collapse of the U.S. into the future. Please note the absence of Chinese yuan or Russian rubles from the IMF SDR basket.
I have always believed that China and Russia would never accept an IMF SDR as the global reserve currency, even if the U.S. and EU were willing to put those two respective currencies in the basket. The biggest clue for me has been the rate at which both China and Russia are accumulating gold in their currency reserve accounts and working to eliminate the use of the dollar in their trade agreements.
But this article, reinforces my view – BRICS To Form Their Own “IMF:”
The BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — are reportedly close to finalizing their long-awaited development bank and currency reserve, each valued at $100 billion, in what has been billed as a historic challenge by the world’s emerging economies to a global financial architecture that has been dominated by the U.S. and Western Europe since its post–World War II inception.
The BRICS nations first announced their plans for the bank in March 2013 but struggled to reach an agreement over China’s desire to hold a greater stake in the institution. But a Brazilian government official told Reuters last week that the five members were ready to split funding and control equally, clearing the last major hurdle for a launch in 2016.
To economists in the developing world, who have long criticized the World Bank and IMF as anathema to the countries they purport to help, the New Development Bank holds tremendous promise. Critics say the West has taken advantage of its monopoly in international lending to wield outsize influence in the economic and political affairs of developing countries, dictating development models that further entrench these countries’ subservience to the West.
But unlike the U.S. and Europe, who are in lockstep on most things, the BRICS countries have little in common but a shared ambition to rebalance the global economic order.
I would suggest that anyone who wants to see the issues clearly should place a little less “faith” in the information being disseminated by people like Jim Rickards. I would also suggest that the unwillingness of Russia/China to cooperate with the U.S. on the matter of the U.S. dollar is the reason recent military aggression by the U.S. toward Russia and China…
http://www.silverdoctors.com/this-is-why-rickards-is-wrong/