Earlier this week, in our IR lecture we spoke about the buildup of American forces along the Eastern European border. Our allies in the region, the Baltic states and Poland, are worried about eastern aggression from their neighbor, Russia. Recently Defense Secretary Ash Carter presented the plan to shift our current European defense spending to 3.4$ billion, quadruple of our current 789$ million to confront "evolving challenges" in Europe. Putin press secretary Dmitry Peskov replied to this with “Of course, any plans to bring NATO’s military infrastructure closer to the Russian Federation lead to reciprocal steps needed to restore the necessary parity,” which understandably means any escalation on NATO's part will result in symmetrical response from them. In addition to increased spending, America has also brought B61 nuclear bombs to one the joint airbases in Germany. The Kremlin's response to this was that they already have sufficient nuclear weapons but could consider either moving them to strategically important regions like Kaliningrad or Crimean regions; or possibly bringing the newest Iskander-M tactical nuclear weapons to Kaliningrad if the threat to state security calls for it.
I think that this escalation is going to be another one of the big foreign policy issues in the upcoming months, and it will be pretty, pretty, pretty interesting to see how a new president will tackle these issues. Hopefully with another space race.
https://www.rt.com/politics/271258-russia-peskov-america-doctrine/
https://www.rt.com/politics/331263-russia-promises-compensatory-measures-as/
https://www.rt.com/politics/316291-kremlin-promises-counter-steps-in/
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