Romeo Squared – Defense blog

Category: Military strategy and politics

  • Still waiting for easy access to each other’s territories

    While on the topic of NORDEFCO memorandums of understanding, has anyone seen any implementations of last year’s agreement to create easy access to each other’s territories for military capabilities?

  • Nordic countries agree to exchange radar data for air surveillance

    The Nordic countries have agreed to enhance air surveillance through the exchange of radar data between the members of NORDEFCO. The defense ministers of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Nordic Cooperation for Air Surveillance Information Exchange during their meeting in Helsinki yesterday. Several sources report this, but…

  • Finland is planning mega-exercise in 2020

    Finland is planning to hold an Aurora style exercise in 2020 with participation from Sweden, United States and others. Aurora was a Swedish exercise that was held in September and involved 19,000 troops. Finnish defense minister Jussi Niinisto explained that the exercise will gather conscripts, reservists, and soldiers to practice. “If there’s a crisis, it…

  • Missile defense is not as effective as Donald Trump believes

    Overconfidence in the missile defense can lead the United States to make dumb foreign policy decisions and neglect relationships with allies.

  • Lithuania increases defense spending to meet 2 percent goal

    Lithuania will increase defense spending to hit the NATO target of 2 percent of GDP in 2018, reports AFP according to digigataljournal.com. With that the total number of NATO countries to meet the goal is up to eight: United States Greece Britain Poland Romania Estonia Latvia Lithuania AFP quotes Lithuania’s defense minister Raimundas Karoblis for…

  • From Homo Sovieticus to Putin’s man

    Many Western politicians are still reluctant to acknowledge that there is a fundamental and incompatible difference in values between themselves and the current Russian leadership. At least in Denmark we often hear well-meaning politicians argue that Russia is not really a threat, and that we can continue advocating human rights and democracy while simultaneously pursuing…

  • Don’t leave peace to the pacifists

    Great op-ed by Bret Stephens in The New York Times: Walter Lippmann, nobody’s idea of a right-wing reactionary, put his finger on the problem in the tragic wake of another supposedly golden era of arms control. “The disarmament movement,” he wrote in 1943, proved “tragically successful in disarming the nations that believed in disarmament.” In…

  • Zapad was not a test for the West

    Igor Fedyk tries to derive some conclusions about the just finished Zapad 2017 exercise in this piece called Zapad 2017: A Test for the West for Jamestown.org. I think some of his points are somewhat sensationalistic, though, and Fedyk partly falls into the trap of confusing the nature of warfare with sinister intentions on behalf…

  • What are Russian leaders afraid of?

    Not entirely new but very thorough description of how the Russian leadership perceives the strategic role and threats against Russia by Dmitry Gorenburg for Russia in Global Affairs. Fundamentally Gorenburg describes an interesting combination of aggressive behavior grounded in a perception of a defensive struggle that from a Western perspective can be hard to understand.…

  • Europe should prepare to defend itself without America

    Europe desires a fundamentally disinterested protector, but the European countries better realize that America’s unwillingness to provide that security will continue to grow, writes Jeremy Shapiro in this insightful piece in [War On The Rocks] [WTHR link]: But presidential incompetence and the public’s lack of interest is a weak foundation on which to build a…

  • Pessimistic farewell by outgoing EU ambassador to Russia

    Outgoing EU ambassador to Russia, the Lithuanian diplomat Vygaudas Ušackas, has a pessimistic farewell message in The Guardian: When I arrived in Moscow as the EU’s ambassador to Russia four years ago, relations between the two blocs were strained but functional. Within months, though, Russia would annex Crimea and intervene militarily in eastern Ukraine, plunging…

  • Russia destroys its last chemical weapons

    Russia has destroyed the last chemical weapons from its arsenal. The occasion was announced by Putin personally, and the president was not slow to point out that Russia beat USA in reaching the milestone. That reports postimees.ee (in Estonian). In fact both Russia and USA have failed to meet the 2012 deadline for the destruction…