NATO's ‘Most Ambitious Exercise’ Only Showed It Will Lose

NATO's Trident Juncture 2015 maneuvers, described as its “most ambitious exercise in over a decade” were intended to send President Putin a strong message; instead, it turned a fiasco, “virtually unreported by US media, but noticed in the European and Russian press”, according to Peter Vincent Pry, an expert in National and Homeland Security.

“If the United States gets into a war under the leadership of Team Obama, we will lose,” Pry stated critically in his article for The Washington Times.

He then elaborated on why he held President Obama's military policy in such low regards. 

“US troops numbering 1,000 during the Cold War might have been a deterrent by serving as a 'nuclear tripwire',” he wrote, referring to the “mere 1,000 troops” that were deployed to the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia during the NATO military maneuvers held in October and November.

“President Obama has allowed the US nuclear deterrent to become obsolete. US nuclear forces date back to the era of President Reagan and before. They are not being modernized, or even adequately maintained, to deter new generations of Russian and Chinese advanced nuclear missiles.”

The expert made his point by underscoring that the US supply of tactical nuclear weapons has been reduced to “a few hundred old gravity bombs stored in Germany, while Russia has at least 3,000 and perhaps as many as 20,000 tactical nuclear weapons.”

“Many of these reportedly are high-tech third-generation nuclear weapons — such as surgical, 'clean' nukes for the battlefield that make no radioactive fallout or other unwanted collateral effects, improved neutron warheads and Super-EMP weapons — that have no counterparts in the legacy US nuclear deterrent.”

He was also incredulous about the White House's approach to fighting terrorism. “Mr. Obama’s response to a terror attack on Paris is a summit on climate change?” he questioned.

He was critical of the reduction of the US defense budget. “Draconian cuts in the defense budget reduce the capability and readiness of the US armed forces in many critical categories to the lowest levels since before World War II,” he said. “The president’s 18-month air war against ISIS (Daesh) fails to achieve any noticeable results.”

He excoriated the Defense Department for spending $500 million training 'merely four or five rebels' for the war against what he calls “Syrian dictator Bashar Assad”, also noting that Obama’s “leading from behind” during his Libyan war has created another haven for terrorists.

According to Pry, the US military is being used as a social experiment in gay rights and gender equality. The bad guys are getting the message, he says, which is why they are becoming more aggressive.

“The president and his national security team are the gang that cannot shoot straight. And after nearly eight years of Mr. Obama, incompetence has spread like a cancer through the whole body of US national security institutions,” he finally stated.

He then urged “to quickly rebuild American strength and competence after Mr. Obama, in order to survive the growing world crisis that is his legacy.”