NATO Prepares To Escalate: ATACMS

Jan. 29, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—Get ready for the next round of escalation against Russia. The promised Leopard and Abrams battle tanks are months away from being delivered, but the stage is already being set for the offering of F-16s and long range missiles to the Kiev regime. On top of that, the prospect of direct NATO/Russia confrontation is on the table.

Chair of the NATO Military Committee Adm. Rob Bauer (Netherlands) reportedly told Portugal’s RTP TV channel that the Alliance is prepared for a direct confrontation with Russia.

“Rob Bauer insists that NATO is prepared for a direct confrontation with Russia and admits that rearmament is the Alliance’s top priority. He also acknowledges that the organization has lost its monopoly on military initiative,” RTP reports, according to a report from Ukrainska Pravda. According to TASS, Bauer stressed that NATO should be better prepared because currently Russia has the military initiative. “The fact that your enemy has better weapons is not the problem of the enemy. That is your problem,”

said Bauer.

NATO may be sticking to the fiction of Article 5, but it is already deeply involved in Ukraine and will be getting deeper. Mykhailo Podolyak, advisor the Head of the Office of President Zelenskyy, claimed in a TV interview that discussions are already ongoing about the U.S. provision of ATACMS, the Army Tactical Missile System missile which has a range of some 300 km, about three times that of the guided rockets that have been provided for the regime’s use in is HIMARS launchers.

“To drastically reduce the Russian army’s key weapon—the artillery they use today on the front lines—we need missiles that will destroy their depots,” he said, reported the Washington Times. “Therefore, firstly, negotiations are already underway. Secondly, negotiations are proceeding at an accelerated pace.”

ATACMS is one of those weapons that the Biden Administration has so far hesitated to provide due to fears that Russia may escalate in response, but the Times cites “experts” telling us that those fears are unfounded, so we should go ahead and escalate. “It’s the reason we were so meager and slow in providing arms to Ukraine before the invasion,” said Brad Bowman, Senior Director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the neo-con Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He called it the Biden administration’s “provocation premise” and said it was an example of their “strategic narcissism.”

“We assume that everything in the world is a reaction to us. There are autocrats and authoritarians who just want to invade and plan to do it unless they hit something hard,” he claimed.

The Times also notes that there is bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress for sending ATACMS to Ukraine. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, slammed the White House for dragging its feet on providing the Army missile to Kiev. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who along with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse recently accompanied the lunatic Sen. Lindsey Graham on a visit to Kiev, said the Pentagon has “consistently underestimated” Ukrainian military forces. But, he claimed they have always outperformed any expectations. “Our military leaders say it will take too long to train them on the Abrams tank or to fly the F-16. Just give them a chance,” Senator Blumenthal said. “Give them whatever it takes to win and reconquer the territory that Putin has seized.”