From: slider@anashram.com   
      
   The United States and its NATO allies have military encroached upon Russia   
   since the fall of the Soviet Union. The arrival of the imperialist   
   alliance on Russia’s doorstep prompted Russia’s incursion into Ukraine.   
   With the ultimate goal of subjugating Russia, NATO is war-gaming every   
   approach to Russian territory. In the largest military exercise led by   
   NATO ally Norway in a generation, last week NATO finished a live-fire   
   rehearsal for war on Russia’s northern flank, the High Arctic exercise   
   dubbed Cold Response 2022.   
      
   The significance of such large-scale NATO exercises is underscored by the   
   escalating conflict in Ukraine. As Russia desperately seeks to counter the   
   spread of NATO influence over its neighbor with its reactionary invasion   
   of that country, putting NATO military exercises into practice becomes an   
   immediate possibility. Cold Response took place as the world powers tangle   
   on the brink of World War III.   
      
   Cold Response is a biannual display of martial might that has grown with   
   the immediacy of NATO war plans. “We invite this exercise mainly within a   
   NATO framework, and the size of it all depends on the interest from our   
   allies and partners,” Norwegian military spokesman Preben Aursand told   
   High North News, before the maneuver. With the US and NATO considering   
   direct conflict with Russia over Ukraine, the “interest” in preparing the   
   northern theater is running especially high, and Cold Response has scaled   
   up accordingly, more than doubling in size since 2020.   
      
   The objective of the large-scale military maneuver is to prepare to engage   
   militarily with Russia on the sea, land and air in the Arctic environment.   
   Approximately 30,000 troops from 27 countries—including 3,000 US Marines   
   and 1,000 German “Bundeswehr” soldiers —along with 220 aircraft and 50   
   vessels converged on the north of Norway.   
      
   The first phase of Cold Response was a maritime “access and denial”   
   operation, which amounts in practical terms to a blockade of Russian   
   military and commercial vessels from accessing the Atlantic Ocean from the   
   northern cold-water port of Arkhangelsk, as well as to assuring that NATO   
   warships can reach the Barents Sea off Russia’s northern coast, where US   
   and UK ships resumed patrols in 2020 after an absence since the 1980s.   
      
   The tremendous presentation of NATO sea power in these waters so critical   
   to Russia included aircraft carrier strike groups from the UK and Italy,   
   lead by the HMS Prince of Wales. A third carrier strike group lead by the   
   USS Harry S. Truman was scheduled to participate, having just completed   
   exercise Neptune Strike 2022, but extended its deployment in the   
   Mediterranean to “reassure allies” as the war in Ukraine escalates.   
      
   Intensive air operations, including the deployment of carrier-based air   
   power, in the second phase of Cold Response served to prepare for   
   amphibious invasion simulations in the third phase. Thousands of NATO   
   troops have been congregating in Norway since last fall to practice   
   assaults on costal population centers.   
      
   Invariably presented as a defensive exercise to “restore national   
   integrity,” these operations need only be shifted a little eastward along   
   the northern Norwegian coast to become a real attack on the Russian north.   
   Russia’s Northern Fleet, armed with nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles,   
   makes berth in Murmansk, less than 150km from the Norwegian border.   
      
   Significantly, officials and commentators were increasingly dispensing   
   with the pretense of the supposedly “defensive” nature of these military   
   exercises. “I think this exercise is a good counterpart, a good companion   
   to the ongoing reinforcement of the (alliance’s) eastern flank that has   
   been taking place since Russia’s invasion began,” said Charles Kupchan, a   
   senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.   
      
   Cold Response 2022 also marked the culmination of Operation Brilliant   
   Jump, the exercise and a certification of the Very High Readiness Joint   
   Task Force, NATO’s vanguard, all-theater rapid reaction force. Brilliant   
   Jump, involving 2,500 troops, 10 warships and 750 sailors, began in Norway   
   last February. Once certified, these elite units are deployable within   
   five days to any NATO theater, including the High North.   
      
   While Moscow declined an invitation to formally observe the exercise,   
   Russian warships patrolled at a distance.   
      
   As large as Cold Response is, it threatens primarily the northern approach   
   to Russia. In imperialism’s encirclement of its geopolitical rival,   
   however, NATO conducts a host of massive military exercises along Russia’s   
   western and southern flanks. The massive Steadfast Defender 2020 exercise   
   war-gamed the approach to Russia from northern Europe while Steadfast   
   Defender 2021 practiced the approach from the south, preparing for combat   
   in the Balkans and Black Sea Region. War games on the Black Sea itself   
   were staged in Operation Sea Breeze. Trident Juncture, like Cold Response,   
   war-gamed the far north in 2018. The list goes on.   
      
   The eastward expansion of NATO beginning after the fall of the Soviet   
   Union has steadily crossed Eastern Europe, absorbing the post WWII “buffer   
   states” and reaching Russia’s boarder in the Baltic in 2004. In 2014, a   
   Western-orchestrated right-wing coup in theretofore Russia-aligned Ukraine   
   installed a pro-western government deep in Russia’s side. That Russia   
   retained control of Crimea, which hosts Russia’s Black Sea Fleet at   
   Sevastopol, was considered a military imperative as NATO spread its sphere   
   of influence over Russia’s strategically important neighbor. Russia   
   responded to NATO’s continued arming and training of anti-Russian elements   
   within Ukraine—the Ukrainian army, led by a pro-Western government, as   
   well as neo-Nazi paramilitary groups like the Azov Battalion—by launching   
   its military attack at the end of February.   
      
   Western cries of “Russian aggression” in an “unprovoked invasion” serve   
   only as political cover while NATO pushes eastward with the ultimate aim   
   of removing Russia as an obstacle to a global “rules-based order,” that   
   is, US political and economic domination. Whether by instigating a regime   
   change, inciting internal divisions or by direct military confrontation,   
   imperialism, driven by nation-based capitalism’s demand for control of   
   global markets and resources, considers it “in its interest” to subjugate   
   by whatever means its Russian, and for that matter Chinese, rival. Without   
   defending the reactionary Putin regime of oligarchs and kleptocrats, it is   
   NATO, not Russia, who is the aggressor.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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