Washington and Brussels announced last week that they would suspend the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe after Russia announced that it would end its participation. 

The North Atlantic Council, the governing body of NATO, said Moscow’s decision to withdraw last Tuesday was just the latest in a “series of actions that systemically undermines Euro-Atlantic Security.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that the dissolution of the treaty will mean the U.S. will be able to flood eastern European countries with troops as the Ukraine War approaches its two-year mark. The suspension will go into full effect on 7 December, the date Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941.

A senior State Department official told the paper that Russia’s decision to withdraw is “unsustainable and requires a strong response from the alliance. Taking no action would send the wrong message.”

The paper reported that the treaty was put into place to prevent the Soviet bloc’s “overwhelming numerical superiority in conventional forces.”  The purpose of the treaty was to stop Cold War rivals from building up forces that could be used in a swift assault, Al Jazeera reported. 

Russia said NATO’s expansion has made the 1990 treaty irrelevant. Just days before Russia formally pulled out of the treaty, President Vladimir Putin revoked Russia’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

The U.S. has accused Russia of disregarding the treaty for years. The treaty is often referred to as the “cornerstone of European security” and eliminated the Soviet Union’s “overwhelming quantitative advantage in conventional weapons in Europe by setting equal limits on the number of tanks, armored combat vehicles (ACVs), heavy artillery, combat aircraft, and attack helicopters that NATO and the Warsaw Pact could deploy between the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural Mountains,” ArmsControl.org reported. 

Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, said on Saturday that relations with the U.S. were “below zero.”

TRENDPOST: Gerald Celente has said we are already in WWIII, but it will not become official until there’s a nuclear flash or a major false flag event. (See “NEW HOUSE SPEAKER IDENTIFIES NEW ‘AXIS OF EVIL’: CHINA, IRAN, AND RUSSIA” 31 Oct 2023, “U.S. CALLED OUT BY DEVELOPING WORLD FOR BLATANT HYPOCRISY OVER ISRAEL AND RUSSIA” 31 Oct 2023, and “CHINA, RUSSIA RISING WHILE U.S. IS DECLINING: XI, PUTIN DESCRIBE ‘FAIRER, MULTIPOLAR’ WORLD” 24 Oct 2023.)

China Daily reported that Russia has been looking to exit the treaty for years after being sanctioned by NATO in 2015 and—in June—announced that it would exit the treaty after the required 150-day notice. 

The paper noted that the treaty was largely symbolic because both sides seemed to disregard the terms. But it is an example of the worsening relationship between Washington and Moscow.

Sergey Lavrov, the top Russian diplomat, said in September that the U.S. and its NATO allies are in a direct war with Moscow—no matter how these countries try to officially frame it. (See “LAVROV AGREES WITH TRENDS JOURNAL: U.S. IS AT WAR WITH RUSSIA” 26 Sep 2023.)

“You can call it anything you want, but they are fighting with us, they are straight-up fighting with us,” he told the UN in New York. “We call it a hybrid war, but that doesn’t change things.”

The foreign minister noted how the U.S. and its Western allies have pumped Ukraine with billions in advanced weapons, provided training, and intelligence for Kyiv before major strikes on Russian targets. 

Lavrov said the West is “de facto fighting against us, using the hands and bodies of Ukrainians.”