US PREPARES FOR AGGRESSION, RUSSIA COULD BE ONE OF THE TARGETS

PRAVDA
March 16 2010
Russia

The US military is to pay extra $500 to all officers and soldiers
(in addition to translators and intelligence officers) who know at
least one foreign language, especially Russian and Chechen. Those
who know two foreign languages will be paid $1000 extra, and so on.

The decision was made by the US Department of Defense. They concluded
that implementation of various missions abroad largely depends on the
ability of soldiers to communicate in the language of the inhabitants
of the country where the operation is conducted. "We are talking about
the human aspect of the mission. To be successful, it is important
to understand the customs and culture of these people and speak their
language," said Lt. Col. Paul Valenzuela, responsible for implementing
the program of language training and regional studies at the Air Force.

According to the lieutenant colonel, approximately 4.3 thousand
military people currently receive the said language allowance.

Interestingly enough, Russian falls into the category of "urgently
needed". Pravda.ru talked to three experts to find out why.

"Choice of a language to be mastered by the US military says a lot,"
says Dmitry Rogozin, permanent representative of Russia to NATO. "This
allows predicting areas where Washington may become active. If we look
at the list of languages recommended for American military pilots,
we will see that in addition to Russian and Chechen it includes
the languages of other peoples residing in the Caucasus, such as
Azerbaidzhan, Armenian, and Georgian. This means that in the near
future the US may pay particular attention to the Caucasus region.

However, I do not see a possibility of a serious conflict between
Russian and the Block NATO. This is not because the alliance is
particularly friendly towards Russia; this is because while we have
modern nuclear weapons, they will not bother us. Yet, it is possible
that they will try to drag us into conflicts through third parties,
like it happened in August of 2008. Then someone pushed Saakashvili
to get aggressive towards South Ossetia."

Konstantin Sivkov, the first vice president of the Academy for
Geopolitical Issues, thinks that is worth remembering that not
long before the aggression towards Iraq and Yugoslavia, American
officers began studying the Arabic and Serbian languages. "Now,
the US is preparing for aggression that would not happen tomorrow,
but this preparation is under way. The increase in the allowance
for American officers should be considered as one of the elements of
this preparation. First of all, it is directly connected to American
military training that recently took place in the Baltic states.

During the training, the Pentagon practiced transitioning of large
military troops from the US and Western Europe to the Baltic states.