Battle of the Atlantic: Citing Nazi Germany as Model, U.S. Military Chief Hails New NATO Command
General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Norfolk, Virginia on July 15 to mark the second NATO command in America achieving full operational capability. NATO’s Joint Force Command – Norfolk (JFC-Norfolk ) joined NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT) in the same city as the only NATO commands outside Europe.
ACT, whose website is titled Allied Command Transformation: NATO’s Warfare Development Command, was inaugurated in 2003.
The new command was initially launched shortly after NATO’s Joint Support and Enabling Command was in Ulm, Germany in late 2019. Both commands at that time achieved initial operational capability (or initial operating capability). Joint Force Command – Norfolk is designed to expedite the deployment of troops and armor across the Atlantic; Joint Support and Enabling Command’s mission is to “speed up, coordinate and safeguard the movement of allied armour and infantry across European borders.” The two are thus integrally connected.
Their joint purpose is to move military personnel and equipment from the U.S. across the Atlantic Ocean, then from European ports across the continent to the Russian border. The recent DEFENDER Europe-21, the largest since the Cold Warwith 31,000 troops from 27 nations, activated the new system to expedite the transit of large military, including armored, units from the U.S. to the Russian border.
On July 15 General Milley addressed what the Defense Department described as assembled dignitaries on board the USS Kearsarge amphibious assault ship and was accompanied by the new Joint Force Command – Norfolk commander Vice Admiral Andrew Lewis. Lewis is also the commander of the U.S. Second Fleet. As with other NATO commands, its commander is simultaneously in charge of a U.S. command as well, as with U.S. European Command/Supreme Allied Commander Europe, U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet/Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO and U.S. Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa/NATO’s Allied Air Command.
As the Pentagon story on the event states at the beginning and without equivocation, “If deterrence fails, the mission of the command is to fight and win the Battle of the Atlantic.”
In language that evokes the epochal if not the apocalyptic, Milley said:
“In my view, the world is entering a period of potential instability as some nations…and clearly terrorist groups and perhaps some rogue actors, are seeking to undermine and challenge the existing international order. They seek to weaken the system of cooperation and collective security that has been in existence for some time. The dynamic nature of today’s current environment is counterbalanced by an order that was put in place 76 years ago, at the end of World War II.”
The activities of terrorist groups are hardly capable of upsetting the entire post-World War II global order. The nations he alluded to are Russia and China. They can be no others. Every American unified combatant command has recently identified those two nations as the main focus of the Pentagon’s attention, in every part of the world, with Iran and North Korea branded second-tier regional threats.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/battle-atlantic-citing-nazi-germany-model-us-military-chief-hails-new-nato-command/5750294