G8: Kaliningrad - Nuclear Chess or Armageddon
January 30, 2020 · 10:00-12:00 pm
Description: The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad (Koenigsberg) on the Baltic Sea is sandwiched between Poland to the south and Lithuania to the north and east. Annexed from Germany in 1945, Kaliningrad was one of the most militarized and closed parts of the Soviet Union, and the military were the region's chief economic mainstay in the Soviet years. When the USSR ceased to be, that military presence was decimated along with the economic benefits it provided. However, Kaliningrad is still of great strategic importance to Moscow. It houses the Russian Baltic Fleet at the port of Baltiysk and is the country's only ice-free European port. In 2013, Russia deployed short-range Iskander ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads in the region, in what it said was a response to US plans to deploy a ballistic missile defense system in Europe. Many recent books are dedicated to examining Russia, the United States and its involvement in NATO, where steel meets steel along the Fulda Gap in northern Germany. Several divisions of Russian Armor have long been poised to overrun defending NATO forces there. Provocative excursions have tested both the military response capability of NATO and the underlying will to engage with either conventional forces or tactical nukes. It is literally an Armageddon-type chess game where the stakes involved are the survival of the planet. *Updated with new information!
Purpose: Learn about Kaliningrad, Russia's current use of the site, and what future scenarios might look like involving NATO
Facilitator: Joe Martin |
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