The more one considers the biology of the anaconda – the snake, that is – the more the name seems fitting for the latest NATO maneuvers in Eastern Europe. It is said that the reptile is at risk from its natural habitats in South America being destroyed. The same could be said for the US-led military alliance if its European «habitats» were to dry up from these countries becoming tired of the constant war games and bellicose rhetoric that have heightened tensions with their Russian neighbors to the East.

With an out-sized girth of 30 cm and weighing up to 200 kg, the giant snake is known to prey on fish, birds, tapirs, crocodiles and even jaguars from crushing its victims by coiling itself in knots. The snake – and this seems particularly apposite – is also known to practice cannibalism by devouring its own species when its normal prey is in short supply.

Appropriately enough, NATO’s Operation Anakonda was writhing with logistical problems on its opening days this week. The mobilization of 31,000 troops and over 3,000 vehicles from 24 countries – all on Polish territory – ran into confusion over gaining access to roads, bridges and railways. There were also unforeseen legal problems for the transit of non-NATO and non-EU troops from Ukraine, Georgia, Macedonia, Kosovo and Sweden participating in the exercises. Such are the consequences when a lumbering giant’s anatomy exceeds its brain power.

But here is a more serious point about how the giant NATO beast is in danger from itself. As recently reported in the Financial Times, NATO European members are now allocating much more of their national budgets to military spending after years of decline. And at a time when their fragile economies and increasingly disgruntled societies can ill afford it.

This turnaround has been driven by the United States. A major foreign policy theme of the Obama administration has been cajoling European allies to increase spending commitments to the NATO alliance. The US accounts for some 70 per cent of the total military spend by the 28-member organization. What had caused deep alarm in Washington is that many of the European states were systematically cutting back on military budgets.

Earlier this year, President Obama chided European allies for being «free riders» on American military power. This theme has been taken up by Republican presidential contender Donald Trump who has also rebuked European nations to take on more responsibility in military defenses.

Of course, the false assumption here is that America is acting as a benevolent protector of Europe, spending way too much beyond the call of duty to «defend the free world». Inordinate US spending on military is not out of chivalry, and much more to do with propping up of its own military-industrial complex – the cornerstone to the entire American economy. NATO is the vehicle for this American juggernaut of publicly subsidized corporate capitalism.

Equally important, the NATO alliance since its foundation in 1949 also provides Washington with a geopolitical license for hegemony over European allies; and especially with regard to preventing strategic economic and political integration between Russia and the rest of Europe.

The problem for Washington is that NATO has become an unsustainably expensive vehicle to maintain. In particular, since the global financial crisis of 2008, when as the Financial Times reported, many European members of the military alliance began slashing their defense budgets.

During the 1980s, European NATO members were spending over 3 per cent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on military budgets. That figure slumped to around 1 per cent since 2008 for key NATO countries like Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. The global financial crisis was part of it, but so too was the end of the Cold War a factor. Why should such high rates of military spending be maintained in an era when the Soviet Union no longer existed?

This would explain why the US began rehabilitating the Cold War animosity towards Russia as an alleged security threat to Europe. The raising of tensions and deterioration in relations with Russia has played directly into Washington’s agenda of mobilizing its European allies to pump up military spending.

At the last NATO summit two years ago in Wales, the US harangued its European allies to commit 2 per cent of GDP to military spending.

The relentless US-led narrative of alleged Russian aggression towards Europe, accompanied by ever-increasing NATO war exercises in Europe, appears to have had the desired corrective effect. Ahead of the forthcoming NATO summit in Warsaw next month, it is reported that years of military budget declines among European members have been dramatically turned around.

«Defence spending by NATO’s Europe states up as uncertainty rises», reports the Financial Times.

The «uncertainty» being the alleged threat to Europe from Russia, as Washington and the dutiful Western mainstream media have continually amplified over the past five years, since the US suddenly reneged on its «reset» policy towards Russia.

The FT quotes NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg as saying: «The forecast for 2016, based on figures from allied nations, indicates that 2016 will be the first year with increased defense spending among European allies for the first time in many, many years».

One of the most remarkable upturns is Germany. The country is now increasing its military budget for the first time after a 25-year decline.

Other big military spenders are the Baltic states and Poland. The Financial Times reports: «The Baltic states which border Russia have made the biggest changes. Latvia’s budget will rise nearly 60 per cent this year. Lithuania will see a 35 per cent increase and Estonia 9 per cent. Poland, Eastern Europe’s main military power, is also raising defense expenditure 9 per cent».

Thus at a time of general economic austerity and record high unemployment, European countries are nevertheless finding the resources to boost financial allocations to the NATO alliance. Just as the American leader has been exhorting its allies to do.

The Financial Times even admits: «The rise in European budgets has come as a surprise to many inside NATO in spite of the commitment made in Wales [two years ago]. Many did not expect expenditure to grow at a time of economic travails and political instability in Europe».

Militarism is such a vital engine of American capitalism, dependent as it is on a $600-billion-a-year military-industrial complex. NATO and the military spending of European members are also a vital conduit for American militarism, and hence its general economy. NATO is also an essential geopolitical cover for American hegemony. Therefore, with the erstwhile decline of NATO and European commitments, as a result of the end of the Cold War in 1991, that development represented a structural threat to American capitalism. All the more since US capitalism has arguably entered into historical stagnation.

The corrective, from the US point of view, was to ramp up militarism through its NATO network of European allies. And for that ruse to take effect then the Russian menace had to necessarily be resurrected. The irony is that it is not Russian President Vladimir Putin who is trying to resurrect the Soviet Union, as the American media claims, but rather it is Washington that is reviving the specter of Russian enemy in order to salvage its own decline. A further irony is that it is not Europeans who are «free riders» on American chivalry, but rather it is a dysfunctional, decrepit US economy that is a parasitical, free rider on renewed European military spending.

And, of course, the narrative of Russian threat only gains a veneer of credibility from massive war maneuvers like the current Anakonda military drills in Poland. Without these provocative war drills, allegedly for «defense», the demonization of Russia would shrivel up into the fallacy that it is.

However, at a time of immense economic fragility among European governments and their 500 million citizens, the question is: can the continent really afford a giant slithering beast like NATO? Just like its namesake lumbering snake, there is a real danger of it crushing its own as it coils on itself from not having any real prey to feed off. 

During the years that the former Soviet republics have been independent, these servants of the Baltic Themis were coached in how to make absurd demands of Russia. In 1940 all three republics voted in favor of joining the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, although this fact is at odds with their political doctrine, according to which the elections of 1940 were conducted «with a gun to our heads», and the period from 1940 to 1991 is seen as a time of Soviet occupation. «…It is precisely the legal continuity of the Baltic countries’ existence that makes it possible to present this demand. Under international law, one may demand legal redress for an occupation, both through compensation for material damage, as well as in the form of a formal apology», stated the participants in the Riga meeting.

This «memorandum of cooperation» did not appear out of nowhere. In Latvia, the commission responsible for tallying the «damage» has been working for many years. They have agreed for now on the sum of 300 billion euros, but that is not a final figure and there are constant attempts to increase it. Lithuania is also making similar calculations, which currently amount to about $830 billion.

Estonia has been slightly more restrained. Realizing that instead of money they might only be offered «dead donkey's ears» (in the words of Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, quoting a line from a famous Russian novel in response to the Baltic ministers’ absurd claims), Estonian politicians are willing to be satisfied with an apology from Moscow. And the Prime Minister of Estonia, Taavi Rõivas, has gone so far as to criticize the ministers of justice for raising such a hue and cry for no purpose. He has stated that he cannot understand what his country can realistically gain from this memorandum. 

Nevertheless, this collective paranoia is clearly focused on forcing Russia to make amends. However, the «victims» acknowledge that they are having difficulty calculating the amount that they would like to receive. The ministers have agreed that their first practical step should be to standardize their methodologies for estimating the «damages». Then they will get together to jointly formulate a demand for compensation for these «damages» in accordance with international law and to prepare legal steps to submit this claim. The Estonian Minister of Justice, Urmas Reinsalu, says that in addition to the states’ demands, potential collective claims against Russia from private individuals are also possible, both against the «legal successor to the occupying state» as well as «against the companies that used slave labor». 

That idea seems so ridiculous that the only response could be to laugh, as did Dmitry Rogozin. But let’s pause for a moment. The potential plaintiffs hope that these lawsuits being dreamed up against Russia will make it possible to take the doctrine of «Soviet occupation» and muscle that idea into international law. Once that has been accomplished, the ethnocratic regimes that exist in the Baltics count on being able to resolve a long list of pressing issues.

Their top priority is to evade their historical culpability for collaborating with the Nazis during WWII and to assert their «right» to include those collaborators among the fighters for «national independence». Should that occur, the government would have a free hand to tear down monuments honoring the Red Army, retaliate against (and criminally prosecute) former Soviet soldiers, and ban Soviet symbols. And, as recent days have shown, they could even cut off cultural ties with Russia, as we have seen in the much-talked-about ban on concerts by the Russian Army’s Academic Song and Dance Ensemble in a number of cities in Lithuania and Latvia, under the pretext that those concerts could become «a well-paid tool of Moscow» attempting to «divide Lithuanian society» (this was the opinion expressed by the Minister of Culture, Šarūnas Birutis).

The existence of a doctrine of «Soviet occupation» is also a prerequisite for preserving the shameful institution of widespread statelessness in Latvia and Estonia (in Estonia they are officially called «persons of unspecified citizenship»). There, the local ethnic Russians are labeled as «occupiers» or «the descendants of occupiers». The laws adopted by the Latvian and Estonian governments in the early 1990s serve as the legal justification for such discrimination. In accordance with that legislation, citizenship in those countries is granted only to residents who can prove that their ancestors were living there prior to 1940.

«If we renounce the concept of the occupation, we will endanger our policy on citizenship, non-citizens and their rights, and other key issues. It is obvious that we cannot take such a step». These were the very frank, almost cynical words spoken back in 2005 by Vaira Paegle, the Chair of the Latvian Saeima’s European Affairs Committee. In the ten years since, the situation has only gotten worse: there are about 300,000 «Negroes» (the local slang for non-citizens, primarily Russians) in Latvia today. In other words, about 15% of the population is completely excluded from participation in politics: they have no voice in parliamentary elections and are subject to more than 80 other restrictions on their political, economic, and social rights. Estonia has about 90,000 residents who hold special non-citizen passports and are deprived of rights. The ethnocratic regimes are also trying to settle old scores against them.

Now the Baltics are ready to take decisive steps to completely rid themselves of the legacy of the «Soviet occupation». However, it should be kept in mind that this could prove a double-edged sword. One thorny issue might be the territorial gains that were won thanks to that «occupation regime».

Today’s city of Klaipėda, for example, used to be the German town of Memel. But in 1923 it was handed over to Lithuania by the League of Nations, which is when it acquired its current name. On March 22, 1939, Germany dispatched its soldiers to the town. A Nazi occupation of all of Lithuania would have been unavoidable had the Soviet Union – which was entering into a nonaggression pact with Germany – not insisted that the Baltic states be included within its zone of geopolitical interest. What is now the Lithuanian city of Klaipėda exists only thanks to the efforts of the Soviet Union.

And what about the formerly Polish city of Vilnius, which became Lithuanian in October 1939? That occurred precisely as a result of the political and military actions of the USSR, specifically the Red Army’s campaign into the eastern regions of a Poland that had been devastated by the Wehrmacht. Should Berlin bring up the subject of Memel, or Warsaw mention Wilno, who would be considered the aggressor? Not the long gone Soviet Union, for sure. Therefore, before any «compensation» can come from Russia, the prized fruits of «Stalinist expansionism» must first be relinquished, at the very least.

And here’s a word to the wise for those who would enjoy making a profit by speculating on all the blather about the «occupation». On June 30, 2015, the Russian general prosecutor’s office announced that they were launching a review into the legality of the decision from the early 1990s to recognize the independence of the Baltic republics – on the grounds that the decision «was made by an unconstitutional body». Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė and Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius rushed to label the work of the Russian prosecutor’s office a provocation.  That was futile. The Russian general prosecutor’s office is simply reexamining the situation from a legal standpoint – in which all the arguments that the arrival of the Red Army in 1940, and then in 1944, brought the Baltics not liberation, but «occupation» – are not only ludicrous, but also legally null and void.