50,000 soldiers, 10,000 vehicles, 250 aircraft … NATO shows its muscles



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Demonstration of expected strength. 50,000 soldiers from 31 countries (the 29 NATO members, plus Finland and Sweden), will participate from this Thursday and for two weeks in full-scale military exercises in Norway. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) can defend itself against targeting neighboring Russia, difficult not to see a signal sent to the country of Vladimir Putin who organized his own maneuvers last September with … not less 300,000 soldiers!

Especially since NATO operations will take place a few hundred kilometers from the Russian-Norwegian border. "This is obviously an answer to Russia, otherwise these maneuvers would not have occurred where they take place and with this magnitude," said François Heisbourg, special advisor to the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS). Enough to stir up the anger of Russia, a spokesman for diplomacy denounced "irresponsible actions".

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<p>It must be said that the device deployed, codenamed "Trident Juncture 18", is of magnitude. The 50,000 soldiers will be accompanied by 10,000 vehicles, 250 aircraft or helicopters and 60 boats, including a US aircraft carrier. This makes it the most important NATO military exercise since the early 2000s. "It's not just a forced operation, it's also an operational goal to see if all these countries can work together , at the level of the tactical procedures and the commands, "continues Heisbourg.</p>
<h2 clbad=A new arms race?

However, the Soviet-bloc West opposition, which had prevailed at the creation of NATO in 1949, has changed in nature. Within the organization, the United States coexists with a Donald Trump with unilateral politics, France and Germany trying to re-unite Europe, and Turkey facing the neighboring conflicts in Syria and the Near East. -East.

"NATO has a double justification today: Russia has returned to the forefront and the Europeans want to ensure that they still have the military support of the Americans," says François Heisbourg. The Baltic or Eastern European countries are all the more afraid of the sounds of Soviet boots that no one had seen the military annexation of Crimea in 2014.

This new show of Western force also revives fears of a new arms race, especially as Trump threatened Monday to withdraw from a treaty on intermediate missiles signed with Russia in 1987. military maneuvers will begin, the representatives of NATO's 29 member nations will meet in Brussels to discuss this new Russian-American war.

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