NATO and Russia Restore High-Level Communications

According to news reports from Sputnik News, Reuters, and AFP, the high-level communications between NATO and Russia that were shut down following the Maidan coup in February 2014, have been formally reinstated. According to a report, initially published in Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and the NATO Military Committee have re-established communications with their Russian counterparts. The Sputnik News coverage highlighted the role of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who wants to restore “constructive dialogue with Russia.”

Washington sources added that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff pressed for the restoring of the “fail safe” lines of communication, out of growing concern that the world was getting closer and closer to a thermonuclear confrontation.

Recall that April 19, Gen. James Cartwright, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff co-authored an op-ed in the Sunday New York Times with Russian retired Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, warning about the nuclear war danger. And Cartwright chaired a Nuclear Zero Commission study, released last week, that called on Russia and the United States to abandon the doctrine of “launch on warning,” due to the mounting danger of a thermonuclear confrontation, and the breakdown of line of trusted communication. As the LaRouche PAC documented several years ago in a documentary video, “Unsurvivable,” the decision-making time from detection of a possible enemy first strike is reduced to just minutes.

European defense experts, commenting on the restoring of the high-level communications channel, also emphasized that there are critical areas of common interest between Russia and NATO, including the fight against the Islamic State, which has a large number of Chechen fighters.