General Darryl Williams, commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, said that the largest NATO exercises in Europe are actually directed against Russia, The New York Times reports. Williams said the manoeuvres would force Russian President Vladimir Putin to change his calculations and “think twice” before extending his ambitions beyond Ukraine.
This spring, some 90,000 NATO troops are in Europe preparing for a great-power war that they hope will never start: a clash between Russia and the West with potentially catastrophic consequences.
As The New York Times notes, the manoeuvres are meant to show what “the first steps of a modern great-power conflict” might look like. According to the publication, if NATO and Russia were to go to war, U.S. and allied troops would first rush into the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – on NATO’s eastern flank – to try to prevent Russian troops from entering.
In addition, NATO’s spring exercises are the largest since the Cold War and are intended to be part of a “grand show of force” by the North Atlantic alliance that is designed to send a clear message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that his ambitions should not extend beyond Ukraine.
“These exercises are changing the calculations of our adversaries – that’s their real strength,” General Darryl Williams, commander of U.S. Army Forces Europe, told the publication. He said Putin is “watching this and saying, ‘Hmm, I guess I need to think twice.
Williams also noted that this year, for the first time, the exercise names a specific, rather than fictional, adversary. “This year we are actually conducting an exercise against the Russians. We are fighting our potential adversary,” the US general specified.
