From Estonia to Bulgaria, passing through Germany. There are 4000 American soldiers, who together with tanks, artillery and armored vehicles will be distributed in the coming weeks in Eastern countries to face the potential Russian threat.
The news seems of 30 years ago, but instead it is these days. On the eve of a change of the epochal guard at the White House, Eastern Europe is still waking up with the sound of tracks. It seems absurd, but it is so.
Today's geopolitical framework is radically different from that of the 80 years, but not everyone seems to have understood it. The same concept of "Eastern Europe" is now an artificial binomial. If at the time of communism, a rigid barrier ran from the North Sea to the Black Sea separating two different systems in all, today it is difficult to find political homogeneity in Eastern countries, especially in an anti-Moscow key.
Without prejudice to Warsaw, Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius (Lithuania declared itself independent in the 1990, even before the USSR dissolved with the Belaveža agreements), other capitals where there are no strong anti-Russian syndrome hotels. It may seem strange but even Budapest and Prague, whose past is full of blood, do not seem to be at home in the Atlantic policies of recent years. We have been talking about the special relationship between the Hungarian Orban and Putin for some time.
In Bratislava, Slovakia, the "populist" Euroscepticism is rampant, as confirmed by last winter's elections. If it is true that EU policies are increasingly similar to those of NATO (only 6 EU countries are not part of the Alliance), the picture appears even clearer. For Bulgaria that voted in December, the same is true: Atlanticism is no longer fashionable.
Despite the little nostalgia for the Cold War, the accounts do not return, however.
Last June, NATO maneuvers Anaconda-16 they involved more than 30.000 men in Poland (it hadn't happened since the times of the USSR). In parallel the great naval exercise Baltop, has brought together 16 NATO countries to which Sweden and Finland have joined, outside the Alliance.
Drills close to the Russian borders and dense patrols of the Baltic coasts are the order of the day, with the risk of accidents reported by the media only in the most striking cases, such as the episode of the overflight of two Sukhoi Russians of the US destroyer Cook last April.
Italy, present every time NATO moves, in October has even made official its willingness to send a contingent of land to Latvia.
Then come to wonder: is the return of "soldier Ivan" really imminent? Is the threat of a Russian invasion of Europe so real? The fulcrum of the Alliance's policies apparently revolves around this: so far the claims of the most "Russophobic" countries seem to prevail.
However, seen from opposite points of view, the current situation in the Baltic is simpler than one might think.
Let's start by saying that for simple survival questions the anti-Russian feeling in the far north is hard to die. It is a historical fact, detached from political courses. 
The Norwegians of Finnmark are well aware of this, for a half-century the only direct frontier (in addition to Turkey) between NATO and the Soviet Union.
Sweden and Finland are well aware of this, and although they were outside the Atlantic Pact, for decades they have fished out curious submarines and trained soldiers along the eastern borders.
Poland, in its own way, is aware of this, caught between an anti-European (and anti-German) nationalism and an irreducible historical grudge towards Moscow.
But they know it more than all the Baltic countries, despite themselves an integral part of the USSR for 50 years.
In short, seen from the north, the dispute with Russia is nothing other than the "n" chapter of a never ending story: on the one hand the aggressive and hungry bear that comes from the ice, on the other the Europe that tries to resist it .
Starting from the East the perspective obviously changes and since the end of the Cold War the considerations are always the same. In just 10 years, NATO has expanded three times to the East, incorporating all the countries of the former Warsaw Pact, to which are added Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, within the borders of Moscow. If in Washington and Brussels they cry out against Russian aggression, the exact opposite is supported by Moscow: "It is you who are strangling us, moving your bases towards the East".
The absorption of the countries of the former Soviet bloc took place systematically until the 2003-2004, when the situation in the Kremlin was still fluid (Putin's first mandate, crisis in the Caucasus still open). Things have progressively changed to generate the current alarm status. Clearly, the recent friction stems from the fact that today's Russia is no longer willing to allow dangerous games in their own backyard. This is demonstrated by the 2008 war in Georgia, when the 58a Armata reacted to the annexation of South Ossetia by the US armed Tbilisi army; this is demonstrated by the crises in the Crimea and in the Xbumx Donbass."Decade that you go, Moscow's military capacity you find" one would say: after all it is undeniable that if Russian was spoken in East Berlin before, today there is a struggle to speak it again at Donetsk airport.
However, the polar cold of the north seems to freeze all reasoning in a strange suspended atmosphere. The date everyone is waiting for is the January 20, when there will be the official handover between Obama and Trump in Washington. Many people think that from then on they will look to spring, when the ice of these times will be just a memory.
Seen from Klaipeda, on the Lithuanian coasts close to Kaliningrad, this is appreciated up to a certain point. In fact, he doesn't like it at all.
While waiting for NATO reinforcements, we still think of winter amid gray clouds and seagulls. Having big and big neighbors is not easy. Ubi maior the Latins said ...
follows from Chapter 1
(photo: NATO, Airborne Forces)
