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Debate Rages in NATO over Arming Ukraine
7 February 2015
EIRNS —While President Obama appears to be moving closer to a decision to send weapons to the Nazi regime in Kiev, the campaign against such a lunatic move is gaining steam. Even NATO commander Gen. Philip Breedlove, who has been repeating the line for months that Russia is solely to blame for the crisis in Ukraine, is worried about how Moscow might react to a flood of Western weapons into the war. "Everything we do, we have to look and evaluate as to will [it] advance the ball toward that political solution that we have to find here," Breedlove told The Associated Press in an interview, yesterday. "So all manner of aid has to be taken in light of what we anticipate would be the Russian reaction." AP reports that Breedlove would not talk about what advice he gave the administration or his NATO leadership, but he said the situation in eastern Ukraine is deteriorating and any action the U.S. takes, must help move the conflict toward a political solution. He cautioned that the situation in Ukraine had no military solution and any action by Western nations should be aimed at creating "conditions that support all parties to come to the table" to resolve the problem. "Arms will not change that," Breedlove told reporters. This despite the fact that Breedlove believes Russian troops are in southeast Ukraine in the "hundreds and hundreds," as he told National Public Radio yesterday. Breedlove’s sudden campaigning against arming the Kiev regime likely reflects an intervention of some sort by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose perspective for quite some time has been war-avoidance. Fear of the possible consequences of arming Ukraine seems to have deepened even further in NATO members. According to the same AP report, Canadian Defence Minister Rob Nicholson said that Canada would continue its current policy of nonlethal support. German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said that sending weapons would serve as a "fire accelerant" and added that "it could give the Kremlin the excuse to openly intervene in this conflict." Joining her were the Dutch and Danish defence ministers, both of whom said that their governments have no plans to send weapons to Ukraine, and even Britain’s Michal Fallon said that London would "see what more we can do in the way of training and equipment that is non-lethal that can help the Ukrainians better protect themselves against the onslaught that they are now exposed to." US Secretary of State John Kerry, on the other hand, seems to believe that it’s still an open question. "The president is reviewing all of his options; among those options is the possibility of providing defensive systems to Ukraine," he said in Kiev yesterday, with Victoria Nuland’s boy Prime Minister Carl Osgood |
