Europe: A Shifting Battleground, Part 1 | STRATFOR - 0 views
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Russia fundamentally opposes the system not because it threatens Moscow’s nuclear deterrent, but because it represents an entrenchment of U.S. forces near its buffer states — Ukraine and Belarus in particular.
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The Central European corridor, comprising the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria — the so-called Intermarium Corridor — is emerging as the area of contention between Russia and U.S.-supported states in the region.
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The first step was the end of the Cold War, when Soviet Russia withdrew from its positions established by the Warsaw Pact in Central Europe, and former Communist European states — including the Baltic states, eventually — entered the NATO alliance.
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The second step was Russia’s resurgence into its former Soviet sphere of influence, a process that gained momentum in 2005 and culminated with the formal reversal of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine at the beginning of 2010 as well as the integration of Belarus further into Russian structures.
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The first step formally released Central Europe from Soviet control; the second step showed that Moscow’s withdrawal was temporary.
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The end of the Cold War also moved the U.S. focus eastward to the Central European NATO member states.
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Germany and to a lesser extent other Western European powers, such as France and Italy, have a fundamentally different view of Moscow’s resurgence. Unlike the Intermarium Corridor countries, on which foreign powers are now making geopolitical moves as they were in Germany during the Cold War, Berlin is not troubled by Moscow’s resurgence.
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“Intermarium” is a term borrowed from inter-war Polish leader Gen. Jozef Pilsudski, who understood that Germany and the Soviet Union would not be permanently weak.
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His solution was to propose an alliance stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, encompassing countries west of the Carpathians.
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this term is useful as a way to group together countries abutting Russia’s sphere of influence that are wary of Berlin’s relationship with Moscow. This essentially includes the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
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Although the BMD plan was later reconfigured, that initial trade-off between Washington and Moscow showed the Intermarium that the United States would not hesitate to put its more immediate concerns in the Middle East ahead of long-term strategic reassurances to Central Europe.
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The first is to maintain U.S. engagement as much as possible. The second is to create regional political and/or military alliances independent of NATO that can serve as alternatives to the preferred strategy of U.S. engagement in the region.
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While Washington is extricating its forces from Iraq, it is still heavily engaged in Afghanistan. Given these circumstances, the Intermarium countries are also turning to two regional alliances to build relationships with one another and with other actors similarly concerned with Russia’s resurgence and Germany’s acquiescence: the Visegrad Group (V4)
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The V4 decided in May to form a Visegrad Battlegroup under Polish command by 2016. The actual capacities of this battlegroup are yet to be determined, but the decision shows very clearly that the V4 is evolving from a primarily political grouping to one that places security at the forefront of its mission.
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"Defense ministers from NATO members states will meet with Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov on June 9 to discuss the ballistic missile defense (BMD) network that will be set up in Europe. BMD is just one way Central Europe is responding to geopolitical shifts in Europe that have created a strengthening German-Russian relationship as Russia resurges into its former Soviet sphere of influence."