June 16, 2019, Strategic Culture Foundation
http://www.strategic-culture.org (Russia)
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/06/16/its-back-cold-war-days-over-baltic/
Wayne
Madsen*
It was like a day from the 1970s.
Except the close encounter between a Russian SU-27 fighter-interceptor and a US
Air Force RC-135V intelligence-gathering plane and a Swedish Gulfstream IV spy
plane occurred on June 10. The incident, which occurred within Polish maritime
airspace near the airspace of the Russian Kaliningrad region, resulted in
diplomatic protests being lodged with the Russian Foreign and Defense
ministries by the US embassy in Moscow.
The air encounter took place on the
second day of the Baltops-2019 NATO naval and air exercise in the Baltic Sea,
in which the United States, Sweden (a non-NATO member), and sixteen other
nations, including non-NATO member Finland, were taking part. Not taking part
in the exercise were NATO members Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg, Canada, Czechia,
Slovakia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Iceland, Croatia, and Montenegro. The exercise
was scheduled for June 9-21.
The Baltops exercise was being held
under the command of the newly-reconstituted US Second Fleet, which is
headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia. The annual exercise concludes with the
participating ships and submarines sailing to Kiel in Germany to participate
in the annual Kielerwochen naval parade, which also serves an opportunity for sailors to drink copious amounts of beer during the week-long festivities.
in the annual Kielerwochen naval parade, which also serves an opportunity for sailors to drink copious amounts of beer during the week-long festivities.
There is little doubt that the
Western military alliance is attempting to turn the Baltic Sea into a “NATO
lake.” With Sweden and Finland now openly participating in NATO military
exercises and making no real secret of their participation in the operations
with the FIVE EYES signals intelligence alliance of core members Britain, the
US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, there is but one nation in the Baltic
that remains both outside the NATO construct and NATO’s sole target: Russia.
NATO and its “non-member” partners,
Sweden and Finland, have upped Baltic military tensions over the proposed
Russian Gazprom’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline that will provide Russian
gas directly to Germany. The pipeline passes just south of the Danish island of
Bornholm, which lies closer to Sweden that it does to Denmark. Four countries
involved in Nord Stream 2 have approved plans for the pipeline’s construction.
The only holdout is Denmark. Donald Trump has praised Denmark’s refusal to back
Nord Stream. However, Trump’s praise for the decision of Danish right-wing
prime minster Lars Lokke Rasmussen was both premature and short-lived. On June
5, a “red alliance,” consisting of incoming Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s
Social Democrats, along with the Social Liberals, Socialist People’s Party, the
Red–Green Alliance, the Faroese Social Democratic Party, and the Greenlandic
Siumut defeated Rasmussen’s rightist coalition in the general election.
As prime minister, Frederiksen is
widely believed to want Denmark to reassert its independent foreign policy
without taking orders from Washington, especially from an American
administration that opposes the social democratic, environmental, and civil
liberties platform of the Social Democrats and their coalition allies. The
Red-Green Alliance favors Denmark’s withdrawal from NATO.
Frederiksen will be forced to deal
with the Danish Intelligence Service (“Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste” or
FE), which has helped to turn Denmark into an intelligence ally of the US
National Security Agency and a stalwart member of the Nordic intelligence
alliance of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland that has existed since the
days of the Cold War.
After never really adjusting to the
realities of the post-Cold War era, the FE is still organized as a NATO Baltic
front line intelligence service geared up for the defense of the Baltic Straits
from military action from a non-existent German Democratic Republic and USSR,
as well as a non-existent Warsaw Pact member, Poland. The FE’s signals
intelligence (SIGINT) capabilities (for example, from its Sandagergård SIGINT
station at Aflandshage near Copenhagen) are targeted against commercial
satellite communications traffic. The FE’s SIGINT unit has little or no
capability to target Middle East communications. The FE’s small budget has
resulted on its over-reliance on hugely sanitized and overly-edited
intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency. What the Danish intelligence
analysts receive from the CIA is not that much more revelatory than what one
can normally read in The Economist magazine, Financial Times, or the New York
Times. For example, the FE continues to emphasize outmoded language skill sets
– Russian, German, and Polish – while paying scant attention to the more
critical Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Tamil, Turkish, and Kurdish languages spoken by
many immigrant and first- and second-generation Danish citizens.
There have been suggestions from
within the FE for it to build its own ship-based SIGINT platforms that would
independently collect intelligence from the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and
other hot spots involving Danish interests. However, the Danish government is
content with its very junior status to the Americans. The rising importance of
Sweden’s airborne SIGINT fleet of aircraft, including the Gulfstream IV spy
plane intercepted by the Russian SU-27 near Kaliningrad, is witnessed by the
fact that Sweden and the United States have totally integrated their airborne
SIGINT capabilities under the NATO umbrella. In many ways, Sweden’s National
Defense Radio Establishment or “Försvarets radioanstalt” (FRA), which
operates Sweden’s SIGINT aircraft, including the Gulfstream IV intercepted by
Russia with the US RC-135V, has become an even more important ally for the
United States than the SIGINT agencies of full NATO members.
Although Sweden and Finland are
dragging their political feet on joining NATO, their military policies have
made both countries de facto members of the military bloc. While the Baltic Sea
is not yet a “NATO lake,” the same cannot be said of the Gulf of Bothnia
between Sweden and Finland. Finland’s VKL (“Viestikoelaitos”) SIGINT agency is
a close partner of the NSA. The US Navy has also reportedly shared a passive
sonar “library” of Russian submarine acoustic signatures with their Finnish and
Swedish naval counterparts. In addition, naval intelligence cooperation between
the navies of the United States, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Estonia in
monitoring activities in the Gulf of Finland has never been greater. But why?
The Cold War has been over for some two decades and northern Europe, frankly,
has other worries, from climate change to the threat of re-emerging threats
from Nazi and fascist political movements.
If Denmark should drift away from
NATO intelligence activities in the Baltic, its place will gladly be taken by
Poland. Polish President Andrzej Duda, who has established a close relationship
with Trump, has agreed to foot the bill for the construction of US military
bases in Poland. However, the NSA has been in Poland for several years and
works with its Polish counterparts to extend a giant electronic intercept “ear”
over Kaliningrad. Since 2013, NSA personnel have worked with Polish SIGINT
analysts at a joint intercept in Olsztyn. The Olsztyn “outstation,” which is
codenamed AMBERWIND, conducts electronic and communications intercepts of
Russian military and other communications in Kaliningrad, the headquarters of
the Russian Baltic Fleet. Just as with the troop bases in Poland, the Poles
helped pay for the NSA SIGINT facility.
NATO and Trump are trying to have it
both ways. While Trump has done everything possible to stymie the construction
of Nord Stream 2, his national security policy makers have warned Russia not to
interfere with Baltic undersea fiber-optic communications cables or the
NordBalt power cable between Klaipeda, Lithuania and Nybro, Sweden. During the
Cold War, there were serious suggestions from Sweden, Finland, the USSR,
Poland, and even Denmark and Norway for the Baltic region to become a “zone of
peace.” It appears that during a time of peace, certain Western interests want
to turn the Baltic into a zone of war.
* Wayne Madsen: Investigative journalist,
author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists
(SPJ) and the National Press Club.
See also
May 21, 2018
October 11, 2018
August 16, 2018
April 29, 2016
June 15, 2019
May 22, 2019
June 12, 2019
May 26, 2019
May 17, 2019
May 4, 2019
May 21, 2018
October 11, 2018
August 16, 2018
April 29, 2016
June 15, 2019
May 22, 2019
June 12, 2019
May 26, 2019
May 17, 2019
May 4, 2019
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