Eagle Guardian: The War of 2010

Twenty–Two

The international situation with regards to previous events inside Russia and the current military stand-off with that nation’s armed forces didn’t have a significant impact upon the 2010 UK general election. There were some effects, but none which commentators, analysts and (often self-appointed) experts deemed to have played a role in the party campaigns nor the outcome of the nationwide vote. The election for a new Parliament and, as it turned out, a new government was decided on other factors. The economy post-crash was the deciding issue. There were other matters such as a stale government devoid of new ideas leading to a public desire for change, the previous year’s expenses scandal among MPs, an embarrassing campaign moment for the prime minister known as ‘Bigot-gate’, live televised debates between the party leaders and newspaper endorsements which had an impact. Yet it was the economy which set the tone of the election result and decided it. Overseas events such as Russia just couldn’t change how things were going to turn out.

The election on May 6th was ‘won’ by Cameron’s opposition Conservatives where the most seats were secured. However, no majority was gained with this victory making it only a partial win. Brown’s Labour came second in terms of seats with the Liberal Democrats under Clegg’s leadership taking third place. Parliamentary arithmetic kicked in when it came to who would lead the country afterwards with the Conservatives needing to work with the Lib-Dems if there was any way in which a government could be formed by them while Labour would need the Lib-Dems, plus a wide-ranging collection of smaller parties joining too, all for there to be any chance that they could stay in power. This was something anticipated pre-election in the media and within the civil service where the belief was that with the three parties doing how well they were in the opinion polls, there was a likelihood that they could have to work together to form a government. Preparations had been made and statements given too on what form that might take though first it was up to the voters. For almost six days, the country waited upon that formation of the new government. In the meantime, the old government stayed in-place. The Lib-Dems had talks with the Conservatives and Labour. However, it was more and more unlikely every day that the latter would pan out due to strong differences on a personal level between Brown and Clegg in addition to the issue of having to form a rainbow coalition of all of the smaller parties too should a Labour / Lib-Dem alliance be put into place to lead the nation. Cameron and Clegg had better relations than Brown and Clegg ever could. On May 11th, with the Conservatives and the Lib-Dems having their talks in the advanced stages whereas any deal between Labour and the Lib-Dems (and thus also the Scottish Nationalists with either the Plaid Cymru or the Social Democratic & Labour Party from Ulster too to make the maths work but giving a sure-to-be unstable government) dead in the water, Brown went to Buckingham Palace and resigned as prime minister. He advised his Queen to call upon Cameron to form the next government. There was no dead struck yet but Brown gave his parting shot regardless. This was the final impetus in forming a new government. It would be one where there was a coalition between the Conservatives and the Lib-Dems – not a confidence and supply deal – forming a stable government where there would be ministers from both parties in that government. Moreover, elements of each party’s manifesto would be followed. Clegg got to be deputy prime minister and this wasn’t a sinecure role either. As to Cameron, he got the keys to Downing Street.

In government, Cameron’s number one priority was the economy. Manifesto and campaign promises with regards to austerity would be followed. The deal with Clegg tied the Lib-Dems too this… which went against many of their manifesto and campaign promises. However, the coalition allowed for some tinkering in places and so too did outside events. One of those was the ring-fencing of certain parts of budgets for public departments within the overall national finances. The Conservatives stuck to their pre-election pledges on not cutting the money for health and international development but also included the defence budget in that, for the period of the next two years at least. Clegg signed off on this over the wishes of some in his party who considered this an unwise move. If there was money to spend, they had protested, it should have gone to education or pensioners, not to keep military spending what it was. Clegg won out there with his colleagues though. The protecting of the defence budget wasn’t something which Cameron had enacted as a personal wish but rather of his party. Both the new foreign and defence secretaries in the coalition government, Hague and Fox, wanted this in light of the tensions with Russia. Other ministers had been brought onside as well as key party figures. Osborne, Cameron’s chancellor, had been won over last after the prime minister got him to balance this out. Cameron made the announcement to the House of Commons once it was sworn in and seated: browbeaten into this, he took the lead rather than follow. This came on the back of his first week in the job where he had spent much time travelling through Europe and meeting with allies where they were made aware of Britain’s continued commitment to the NATO position regarding the defence of the Baltic States and Poland against Russian aggressive intent. Hague went off to Washington during that time with Fox doing the same as well before both of them also visited European capitals after Cameron had first done so. Fox also made photo-call appearances in all three Baltic States. Some newspaper columns back in London ran speculation on his ambitions for Cameron’s job with all of this though, while he was an ambitious man who had run for that role beforehand and naturally wanted the leadership in the future, the comments made back home in print didn’t have anything real to them. What his visits, plus those of Cameron and Hague, were about were matters of the NATO alliance.


It was post-election where Russia became a factor in British domestic politics instead of influencing that vote. The coalition government was only following the lead set by the preceding government yet there was much done in their own particular way now. Condemnation came from the Kremlin of this but more of an issue were domestic perceptions of the military stand-off. This became an issue in the early stages of the Labour leadership campaigns to replace Brown with a left-wing momentum to see a party leader elected later in the year to make it party policy to push for a lowering of tensions which were said to be on their way to bringing about war. There remained newspaper talk and off-the-record briefings by MPs about Fox’s attitude to confronting Russia where the defence secretary was called a warmonger. The pressure group known as the Stop The War Coalition – formed in Britain only days after 9/11 and which had opposed the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War and tensions with Iran in recent years where a war there had looked possible at one point – took up the mantle of opposing the military commitment to the Baltic States made by Britain plus also other activities of the RAN and the Royal Navy in light of international tensions. There were parliamentarians who spoke in support of the UK and NATO position on opposing the threat from Putin’s regime even more than was already being done with an even bigger military commitment made than currently was being. Increasingly, both in Parliament and in the media, the stand-off with Russia became more and more of an issue ahead of other political matters which should have had more prominence.

It grabbed headlines and led to political spats, outrageous speculation and sometimes fear-mongering. There were defence analysts who criticised the military position of the British Armed Forces in light of the threat posed to not just deployments aboard to defend allies but the country itself and their warnings would later turn out to be rather accurate in many respects. Cameron and Clegg both made public statements to the media and in the Commons stating that no one wanted war with Russia. It wasn’t desired in any way. Britain was defending its allies as per its NATO commitments and the armed forces were standing ready in the face of Russian aggressive action off Britain’s shores too. They informed the country that there was certainly no mood in the government for conflict!

I'll post the next update witin an hour or two, plus the soundtrack.

Soundtrack is here. It's just a list of what I thought was lyrically or sentimentally appropriate. www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2v-FVSbUFjUplFOt7Kb_aF4spJZC_A00

Ask - The Smiths
Troubled Times - Green Day
21 Guns - Green Day
Here Comes the War - New Model Army
Panic - The Smiths
London Calling - The Clash
99 Red Balloons - Nena
Everybody Wants to Rule the World - Tears for Fears
Zombie - The Cranberries
Bleed American - Jimmy Eat World
The Headmaster Ritual - The Smiths
Seconds - U2
Everyday is Like Sunday - Morrissey

Twenty–Four

Across the whole of the Baltic region, there remained an extremely tense situation as June 2010 arrived. Since the New Year when NATO had begun its military deployment to protect the Baltic States and Poland, while facing down Russian aggression, countries on the shores of the waters of the Baltic prepared for war. There were domestic and foreign military forces in the region who operated on the ground, in the air and at sea. Some stayed fixed in-place; others took part in expansive exercises. Governments were working towards making sure that war didn’t break out here yet there were more and more people becoming convinced that soon it surely would.

Through the Baltic Sea itself, this important seaway for civilian ships was increasingly where military deployments were being made. There were warships, submarines and combat aircraft all involved. These had a detrimental affect upon commercial shipping as well as civilian aircraft too with those armed forces’ deployments facing mock attacks made against the participants and everyone not involved in the way of them. Russia’s Baltic Fleet was out with its vessels and aircraft and they had been joined by NATO forces in these crowded waters. Sweden felt compelled to act as well with its own deployment due to the threat of territorial infringement along the shoreline of mainland Sweden plus its island holdings within the Baltic. The Swedes were present when Russian and NATO forces conducted their war-games to intimidate the other. NATO wasn’t just a victim here but an active participant. What Russia did, it did back to Russia. Many near-misses with ships and aircraft coming close to collision occurred as well as close-calls when it came to one side almost opening fire upon the other but stopping at the very last moment when the other backed off from seemingly imminent attacks. There were Russian naval movements between the eastern end of the Gulf of Finland where St. Petersburg was and down to Kaliningrad during the war games. Few warships made that journey and instead it was chartered civilian shipping. NATO watched these movements and studied from afar what the contents were of the freight moved: it was all military equipment & stores. They themselves were active off the Polish coastline but also in the water offshore from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The coastlines of all four NATO members, especially those of Estonia and Latvia, were rather exposed and would certainly be vulnerable to Russian attack in wartime. NATO forces operated here now in peacetime as they practiced defending them should they be subject to an attack. These were overt preparations for war though, as was the official NATO position and that of its member states individually too, all of this was defensive in context. Russia took a different view on these military exercises and considered that the only reason while NATO would be doing what they were was because they were planning for war and knew that a Russian counterattack would be made into these areas.

In the skies, military activity took place above the countries stretching inland to the east and south of the Baltic. NATO had sent one of their AWACS squadron from its base in Germany to Poland. Six of the E-3 Sentry aerial surveillance aircraft were now flying from Powidz Air Base, a facility in west-central Poland. On most occasions, there was at least one of these aloft. This gave coverage near twenty-four hours a day. With its radar and onboard operators, an aloft AWACS controlled NATO air space for hundreds of miles in every direction. NATO air activity was monitored but so too was the flights of Russian and also Belorussian aircraft inside their own territories. There were many military aircraft in the skies. Denied overflight above the Baltic States, Russian transport jets heading for Kaliningrad like those ships went down over the Baltic. There were also combat aircraft in the skies over western Russia and above Belarus. Some of these would charge towards the edges of the NATO countries before turning away at the last moment. NATO fighters, including those French Mirage-2000s at Šiauliai in Lithuania, were busy on interception missions. The recent addition of Belorussian jets in the skies – Belarus bordered Poland as well at Latvia and Lithuania – made the NATO task more difficult first by their presence and then as Russian fighters flew with them above Belarus too. A lot more coverage was needed due to Lukashenko’s actions in tying his country’s armed forces to those of Putin’s.

NATO troops in Latvia with the British-led Baltic Brigade stayed far away from both the Russian and Belorussian frontiers. They were a light force, a tripwire in-place supposedly to deter Russian territorial aggression into the Baltic States. If a Russian invasion came, or, even worse, a joint Russian-Belorussian attack occurred, they were doomed. This was something understood. The three small countries here each had their own armies too yet none of them, even joined by these NATO troops, were going to be able to stop an invasion. That wasn’t their mission though. They were here to deter one by their presence. Many of the officers and men with the Baltic Brigade were starting to feel very exposed out here. Intelligence showed the strength of possible opponents and that was worrying when presented to them. Around them, the local armed forces were working with NATO special forces troops on border patrols. There was the Russia proper frontier that Estonia and Latvia had plus Lithuania had that border with Kaliningrad. The border with Belarus now needed patrolling too. Covert entry by Russian agents and special forces was something they were working to stop by their presence due to the belief that they would come in to cause trouble within the Baltic States as recently done. Down in Poland, NATO forces there consisted of the Polish Army and that Cav’ regiment of the US Army: no more NATO ground forces were in the country despite claims made from the Kremlin that the Americans, the British and the Germans were on Polish soil in number. Small scale exercises took place rather than anything big. Early summer weather helped with this. Troopers from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment moved right into the very north-eastern corner of Poland at the beginning of June. They conducted exercises with Polish tankers in an area deemed the ‘Suwalki Gap’. There were Lithuanian troops active over on the other side of the Polish-Lithuanian frontier here also exercising defending this area against an attack coming into the Suwalki Gap from either east or west… or both. That was because this stretch of Poland provided a territorial buffer right between Kaliningrad and Belarus. In wartime, during an attack it was anticipated that the Russians and Belarusians would try to seize it. By doing so they would physically cut off the Baltic States away to the north from the rest of Poland. It wasn’t perfect tank country and this wasn’t that similar to either the Fulda Gap or the North German Plain of the Soviet era though there were some comparisons there in how a very modern NATO would aim to defend this area. Across in Kaliningrad – which, if history had gone another way in the 1990s, might well have become a fourth member of the Baltic States – the Russian Armed Forces watched those NATO war games without conducting their own. They were busy reorganising their own defensive forces before they would later practice any warfare. Troops here from two previous brigades were merged into a lone division and supporting assets reconfigured. Mobile missile batteries were transferred to new hidden sites and airfields were given upgraded defences. Engineering troops were on the frontiers of Kaliningrad: they were digging defensive positions and also scouting sites for wartime demolitions. Russia’s generals were looking at how NATO would invade Kaliningrad and doing everything to see that the region, sovereign Russian soil, shouldn’t fall in an attack. These defensive measures came with aircraft flights from Kaliningrad’s many airbases though on clear mock offensive tasks and also the activities of the brigade of Naval Infantry – Russia’s marines – within the region as well. Those marines undertook amphibious and airmobile operations along the shoreline. In wartime they would be going elsewhere. NATO intelligence summaries said that the 336th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade had a wartime mission away from Kaliningrad (which was correct) either up in the Baltic States or possibly down on the shores of Poland in the Bay of Gdansk (which was incorrect).


The night of June 7th saw an incursion into Russian airspace. It was an accident though only sort of. With permission from the very top – Bob Gates gave the order: Bush’s defence secretary whom Obama had kept on despite the change in the White House –, US Air Force F-15E strike-fighters flew right on the very edge of the airspace off Kaliningrad’s coastline. These were jets based at RAF Lakenheath in the UK with the 48th Fighter Wing. Tanker support plus a divert field at Swidwin Air Base in Poland allowed them to be flying this far forward from East Anglia. Russian air activity with their bombers right off the coast of the mainland United States last month had seen Gates authorise flights of these tactical aircraft closer than before to Kaliningrad. There was a flight of four of them which overflew the Bay of Gdansk and then headed north along the edge of Kaliningrad. Moving at high speed in the darkness, they should have still not crossed the invisible line in the sky marking Russian airspace because they had their own state-of-the-art navigation gear and one of those AWACS aircraft was controlling their flight.

Well… they strayed into Russian airspace, even skimming above the edges of the Sambian Peninsula – the headland which pushed out into the Baltic – rather than just being above the water which legally belonged to Russia. Sukhoi-27 Flankers raced towards them. These were Russian Naval Aviation jets who had recently been busy buzzing NATO warships at low-level through the Baltic but a pair of them were on hot-alert at Chkalovsk Air Base tasked for air interception and given the go order once those four F-15s were above the Bay of Gdansk. They were thus on an intercept course before the airspace violation occurred. Each side had their advantages in this potential fight. The Americans had better aircraft & systems as well as greater training. The Russians were on home ground though (they had no worry over a fuel issue) and had a lot of recent experience. Numbers were a factor though – four against two – and there was too the fact that AWACS support alerted the Americans to the arrival of the Su-27s.

As quick as they were in, the Americans were out of Russian airspace and back out over the sea. They were looping back around when the fighters coming out of Kaliningrad approached. The F-15s broke into two pairs and swept back around coming towards the inbound Russians. Trigger fingers on both sides were at the ready. All that was waited for was for opposing rules of engagement to come into play. The US Air Force could only open fire if fired upon first. Russian Naval Aviation fighters had the same orders. These standing orders for the aircrews could be changed at any moment from on-high but none came. No shots were exchanged. The F-15s flew away first and racing towards a tanker out over the Baltic. Only then did the Su-27s head back overland to establish a patrol in case more American aircraft showed up to overfly Russian territory with arrogant perceived immunity from retaliation. The stand-off in the skies, with each set of aircraft conducting aggressive manoeuvres while flying at high speed armed with deadly weapons, was over in minutes.

In the days and weeks afterwards, there would be implications from this. American navigation procedures on the edge of Russian airspace were reviewed though they would continue to fly missions off Kaliningrad. Gates would push for Obama and Clinton to get the NATO Council (the Poles themselves would have no objection) to agree to station some of the 48th Wing in Poland afterwards. Russian military authorities in Kaliningrad would receive new orders when it came to airspace incursions. This had been the latest one of several with others made by larger reconnaissance aircraft though those had occurred just offshore and never before over land like this surely deliberate attempt had been. Aircraft would be shot down next time. A verbal warning would be given but unless that was obeyed at once with no hostile intent shown, air intruders would be downed whomever they were. Russia couldn’t have its sovereign airspace violated so nakedly at a time when the West was seeking weakness ready to invade.

You take the words right out of my mouth, second that.

They got intel and their agents are busy elsewhere looking for more.
Well... there are intel reports being discarded with regards to NATO (some countries, not all) not wanting war but this is 2010 not 1983 so the paranoia hasn't moved to that stage yet. Russian propaganda is declaring Poland is full of NATO troops - Germans especially - for their own people but also the usual suspects in the West. As things get far worse, then reports such as those might be tossed but we are not at that stage yet.