Only sovereign military forces will protect the Intermarium countries
Feb. 5, 2019 Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks was authorized by the government to sign a memorandum on the establishment of the Multinational Division Headquarters North. It will aslo be signed by Danish and Estonian Defense Ministries, as well as will be open for other allies, quite logically, above all, regional. Allies from Canada, Great Britain and Lithuania have also signed the agreement. The infrastructure at Ādaži base in Latvia is under construction.
While the Headquarters North is aimed at increasing the presence of NATO in the region under threat of the military buildup in the bordering Russian territories, it will enhance the defense coordination of the Intermarium region's countries and will develop practical framework for the planning of joint military operations (interaction of the officers, units and structures of different countries, military trainings and exchange of experience and so on). In this respect, it is quite similar to the tasks of existing LITPOLUKRBRIG (the Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian multinational brigade). At some point, one could set a task of coordinating the military cooperation of two multinational brigades.
At the same time, the issue of the formal subordination of the LIPOLUKRBRIG was widely addressed at the Third Conference of the Intermarium Support Group which was held in Kyiv on Oct. 13, 2018. In short, conference participants were concerned about the inability to apply the military forces of this multinational brigade even in the peacemaking humanitarian missions in Donbas without the permission of the UN, EU and NATO. Croatian participants also made it clear that their path to victory lied through ignoring rather than taking into accout the will of the West. In this case, one could fairly ask: what's the point in regional military forces if the region has no geopolitical sovereignty to take decisions on its own about the necessary security measures?
In this respect, the founder of the Intermarium Support Group, MP Andriy Biletsky was wise enough not to vote today in favor of the legislative bill to amend the Constitution of Ukraine by adding there an artilce about Ukraine's strategic course to enter the EU and NATO, which he fairly labeled as laughable. Firstly, nobody welcomes Ukraine in these structures, secondly, they undergo an obvious crisis, thirdly, the Constitution regulates universal matters of state importance, and a respectable country would never perpetuate in the Constitution temporary and even more so collapsing foreign political structures.
Last but not least, the 1994 Budapest memorandum under which Ukraine renounced the third largest in the world nuclear potential in exchange for "security assurances" by the US, UK and Russia (later France and China added their signatures) learned a good lesson about the value of "international treaties" when one of the signatory countries, Russia, invaded Donbas and annexed Crimea under the silent observation of the West.
In this respect, two main things unite modern Ukraine and Japan: territorial claims to the Russian Federation which "owes" to Ukraine Crimea just like stolen back after the Second World War southern Kuril Islands to Japan, as well as the growing public requirement to restore the nuclear potential of these countries. Today, Feb. 7, 2019, which is the day of the Japan's Northern Territories, Ukrainian party of National Corps headed by the founder of the Intermarium Support Group Andriy Biletsky held a rally in solidarity with Japan in front of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs putting forward the demand to recognize the Russian Federation an occupier of the Kuril Islands.
The story which started in 2008 in Georgia, continued in 2014 in Ukraine and currently threatens with a "peaceful occupation" to Belarus, may be stopped only by means of the sovereign regional military forces. If nothing changes, multinational divisions and brigades that are subordinate to NATO, sooner or later, must allow Eastern and Central European states to secede and take a stand for freedom of their region.
