NATO Provocations in the Arctic Drive Nuclear Confrontation Danger
Sept. 8—Recent NATO provocations against Russia in the North Sea and Norwegian Sea serve as a stark reminder that, even as U.S.-Russian relations are improving under the direction of President Donald Trump, there still exists supporters of NATO's war policy within the Washington policy establishment that are following path that would lead to dangerous confrontations and a possible nuclear war with Russia. This grouping, controlled and coordinated with NATO and British direct military provocations against Russia, even as Trump talks cooperation for mutual benefit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Aug. 24, as the nuclear aircraft carrier group the USS Gerald Ford and the Royal Norwegian Navy ran patrols off the coast of Norway, NATO forces were mobilized to hunt for a Russian submarine which was supposedly tracking the carrier. The U.K.’s Royal Air Force scrambled spy planes to join NATO in what some sources called a “highly unusual surge” of activity. American, Norwegian, and French planes also participated in the search, with NATO allies deploying at least 27 specialist submarine-hunting sorties that ran along the border of Russia’s air defense zone.
In an interview Sept. 5 with Glenn Diesen, Col. Douglas Macgregor commented on the pattern of such provocations: “We’ve also got a lot of vessels carrying Tomahawk missiles … moving towards Novaya Zemlya, which is very unusual. It’s up on the Arctic. Then you also had a B2A bomber fly a route to Norway and back to the United States in the middle of all of this. And somebody said, well, this is because of the upcoming ‘Zapad 2025’ exercise that the Russians schedule years in advance…. I don’t think that’s really true. I think what we’re seeing right now is an attempt to bully by practicing strikes on Russian facilities using bombers and missile carriers, practicing for the purpose of attacking Russian submarines.”
It is important to note in this context that the standing U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) does not rule out a first strike. This was emphasized by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his news conference on Dec. 9, 2022 in Bishkek, in which he said: “The United States has a theory and even practice. They have the concept of a preventive strike in their strategy and other policy documents. We do not. Our Strategy talks about a retaliatory strike…. But if a potential adversary believes it is possible to use the preventive strike theory, while we do not, this still makes us think about the threat that such ideas in the sphere of other countries’ defense pose to us.”
Trump has followed the practice of letting these dangerous policies "roll on," as Administrations change and he has not ordered a change to this aspect of the U.S. NPR, either in his first administration, or, so far, his second. Nor has he reversed most of the Biden-era military doctrines. Without a change in the West’s commitment to geopolitics and dangerous confrontation against both Russia and China, we may, despite improvements in the diplomatic realm, find ourselves locked into a confrontation that could quickly turn nuclear.