A US military plan to send more forces into Europe on a rotating basis to purportedly counter a potential Russian attack is equal to a “military occupation” of eastern European states, a geopolitical analyst in Europe says.
“What is happening is that the US is militarily occupying Latvia, Lithuania and Poland under the pretext of Russian aggression,” said Joaquin Flores, director of the Center for Syncretic Studies in Belgrade, Serbia.
“When we really look at Russian policy, we can see that there is no policy of absorbing or attacking or controlling these Baltic states and Poland at all,” Flores told Press TV on Monday.
“It’s a US military occupation of these states which it feels it’s losing control over and it’s using Russia, the phantom menace of Russian aggression, as a pretext to continued military occupation of other sovereign states,” he added.
During a forum in Simi Valley, California, over the weekend, senior US military officials proposed plans to expand the American presence in Europe in a bid to counter Russia in the event of a crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
The new measures would allow for the presence of multiple US Army brigades in Europe at any given time, increasing that number above current limits.
Addressing the Reagan National Defense Forum, General Philip Breedlove, the supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), said he wants more forces committed to Europe in a rotational manner.
General Mark Milley, the chief of staff of the US Army, said the Army is adapting its training to make sure that the US military is able to face threats posed by Russian forces.
The US has vowed to develop military training bases in six countries on or near Russian borders, including Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, as well as Poland, Bulgaria and Romania.
Flores said that Washington is pursuing its own geopolitical agenda in Europe with the planned military deployment but there is tremendous political pressure in some European countries to avoid such military buildups.
“This is primarily a psychological war being committed against the populations of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland,” he argued.