How Now, Brown Bear?

NATO at "the height of the Cold War" had roughly 400,000 combat troops defending Western Europe. There are now about 67,000 in those same positions. What need was there of maintaining such large standing armies, drawing from various countries' economies once the Soviet Union was history? Peace and light would prevail. Russians were anxious to become involved in the same kind of free enterprise capitalism that had made ordinary Americans wealthy.

And the former Soviet satellites were so relieved to be able to disengage themselves from the noble experiment of sacrificing their autonomy to Russia's ambition to represent as a beloved warlord over a combined economy and ideology that held there to be no difference between a neurosurgeon and a road sweeper, and all would be equally recompensed in a world of equality and comradeship, that hey learned not to grovel obsequiously and regained their sense of national purpose.

The American military is the largest and best equipped in the world. It has no equals. But it does have a smaller presence in Europe than it had in 1989, by, some claim, 85%. Yet both Russia and the United States subscribe to the idea of advanced technology in military equipment equating with the reduced need for manpower to drive their war machines. And they're undoubtedly quite correct. Damage can be perpetrated quite well with fewer personnel and smarter equipment.

The Warsaw Pact is defunct, but NATO keeps chugging along. With an increased membership, but a decreased participation. The thing about NATO is that there is a guarantee of one for all and all for one. Should one NATO member-country be threatened, invaded, or involved in conflict (not of its making in particular), then it becomes incumbent upon all NATO member-countries to honour their obligations to defend that one that is experiencing conflict.

Just as well it hasn't had to be put to the test lately. On the other hand, Libya was no match for the combined strength of a handful of NATO countries; the U.S. to begin with, then France, Britain, Canada and Holland ... and a little bit of Italy. There is the debacle of Iraq and that of Afghanistan, of course. NATO did prove its endurance, twelve years' worth, and it remains to be seen what will result, in the final analysis of any kind of intervention in the Middle East.

Take the Middle East again; Syria was a member of the Arab League until it was recently booted out. The Arab League has a combined military considerably more effective and with more advanced arms at its collective disposal, than Syria/Hezbollah. And it would certainly exert itself should it feel inclined to re-launch a war with Israel, to work together to ultimate defeat, but not to rescue the Syrian Sunnis, their very own sectarian brethren.

And Syria's major sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran, has the Arab League biting its collective fingernails with anguished frustration over possibilities that loom on the horizon. Anguished because their traditional protector has packed its warships and troops and moved eastward, leaving them on their own, while negotiating with Iran in a show-trial signifying nothing. The very nation that the Arab League abhors and launched a series of wars upon they now depend upon to stop Iran.

But, back to Europe, right? Just as well Ukraine has been torn between alliance with the European Union and joining NATO, though its fellow once-Soviet-satellites have been overjoyed to. And now, Ukraine, kissing-cousin to Russia historically and culturally, has 40,000 Russian troops and all those military mechanized devices on its border, nervously awaiting the Kremlin's next ominous step. And NATO shakes its finger at Vladimir Putin, while placing a few hundred troops of its own in Poland.

Russian troop levels too have declined since 1990, from 1.5-million to 321,000 a lot of them raw recruits. Tank divisions were slashed from 46 to five, motorized rifle divisions from 142 to 19. But they've a whole hell of a lot more of all it takes to invade and conquer than do Ukraine, Bulgaria, Poland, Estonia, et al. One must suppose that all depends on just how defiantly cantankerous Vladimir Putin feels, to determine next moves.

He's experienced a lot of head-swelling successes, though, hasn't he? From Georgia to Sochi, Iran to Syria, he's twisted Barack Obama in knots around his cunning little finger. So, whatever is on his longer term agenda is anyone's guess. But he's mad as hell at NATO's and America's interference in eastern Europe, and clearly he isn't going to take it any more.