Triangle Made in USA that Should Pass Through Trieste (Part 2)

The July 2021 issue of the Italian geopolitical journal Limes, directed by Lucio Caracciolo, published a basic map of the European Isthmus (Figure 1), inspired by the geopolitical analyst Mirko Mussetti, very attentive to military aspects, and drawn by Laura Canali.

The same issue of the magazine quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pithy phrase to the plenary session of Parliament on April 21, 2021: “I hope no one gets the idea of crossing the red line with Russia.”

This was before the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

“Red lines” in geopolitics define the shortest front capable of defending a Power’s territory or area of influence, as the shorter the line, the more defensible it is, and the fewer resources it needs.

As can be seen, the Russian red line connects the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg) on the Baltic to the Russian “almost exclave” of Transnistria, with its capital in Tiraspol, and extends to the port of Odessa on the Black Sea, now controlled by Kiev.

In front of it runs the NATO “Blue Line,” which connects Poland’s Gdansk on the Baltic Sea to the Romanian city of Constanta on the Black Sea.

This is the front of the European Isthmus, dotted with military and missile facilities built since 2004, the year of NATO’s fifth enlargement. This line of strategic military facilities was formed long before the bloody Euromaidan uprisings (2014) that brought nationalists to power in Ukraine.

In a Twitter post dated December 19, 2021, two months before the Russia-Ukraine conflict began, Mirko Mussetti commented: “Reinforcement near the Isthmus of Europe began long before Euromaidan (2014). Through requests to NATO and the USA, Russia seeks to bring the system back into balance” (Fig.2). The excellent analyst understood the situation and publicly signaled that the precarious balance sheet was about to collapse, which actually happened shortly thereafter.

As shown in the previous article, a new element has been added in recent weeks: the intention by the Atlantic Council to form “the Trieste – Gdansk – Constanta Triangle, Corridor #3,” connecting NATO’s “Blue Line” of the eastern flank to the Italian port of Trieste on the Adriatic as a strategic rear area for military logistics.

Thus, a third major port will be added in the third sea, the Adriatic, under the Three Seas Initiative (3SI). This is a military logistics function that Trieste already performed, for example, at the end of World War II, providing transportation for Allied troops and military equipment destined for the occupation of Austria and Central Europe.

It is interesting to look at NATO’s eastern front, which will be assisted from Trieste, with its military installations located along the European Isthmus: a geographical concept little known to the Italian press.

An isthmus is a narrow strip of land connecting two large areas surrounded by water. The European Isthmus is the area containing the shortest defensive and offensive front that connects Europe, as we normally understand it, with the rest of Eurasia: it runs through Poland and Ukraine on the north-south route. It consists of vast plains, free from natural obstacles, through which invasions of Russian territory have always happened: in our time, the invasions of Napoleon and later Hitler, supported by Mussolini.

NATO’s two twin Aegis Ashore missile bases are located symmetrically in northern Poland (in Redzikowo) and southern Romania (in Deveselu). Officially they are defensive facilities and can protect European airspace, but Lockheed Martin’s MK-41 vertical launchers are capable of carrying toward Russia nuclear-armed cruise missiles, which are conveniently stored in warehouses.

In the center of Poland is the US (non-NATO) Lask airbase, and symmetrically, in the center of Romania is the US (non-NATO) Câmpia Turzii airbase. Both are far enough off the coast to avoid Air Force and Navy attacks. Tracing the range of US drones produces an ellipse (orange color in Figure 3), covering the entire airspace of the European Isthmus, and notably, the US air bases are located exactly in its two focuses.

Let’s not forget that at the top of the Triangle (#3), 80 km from Trieste, is the Aviano US Force Air Base, from which planes were sent to bomb Serbia in 1999. According to a report by the US Natural Resources Defense Council, the Aviano base stores fifty B61-4 nuclear bombs ranging from 45 to 107 kilotons.

MQ-9 Reaper drones are in service at a US air base in Romania, and F35 aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons could be in service at all three US air bases. In addition, the 57th Multinational Air Base “Mihail Kogălniceanu” is located near the port of Constanta. The latter would be responsible for repulsing the air-sea offensive from the Black Sea, while the US Air Force would be responsible for the counterattack.

A similar concept has been developed for ground forces. American military installations are located west of the Prut (Romania) and Vistula (Poland) rivers, leaving local proxies the task of repelling any attack on the front lines, thereby equally distributing material and human losses among the Allies.

As for the presence of American troops in Central and Northern Europe, their function was also to keep a close eye on Germany. In Ukraine, close to the Polish border and exactly on the Blue Line, we find the NATO training center in Yavoriv, where Western instructors train Ukrainian troops, including the Azov Brigade and Right Sector, known for their Bandera sympathies (the name comes from collaborator Stepan Bandera, now considered Ukraine’s national hero). This training center, officially called with some irony the International Peace and Security Center, was bombed back on March 12, 2022, causing numerous casualties among Western military.

At the end of the Blue Line, we see two major ports: Gdansk and Constanta, the real bastions of NATO’s eastern deployment. To this they would now like to add the port of Trieste, which, together with Aviano, would be at the apex of the isosceles triangle of the “power projection” to the East.

As shown in the previous article, all infrastructure promoted by the Three Seas is clearly intended for civilian/military “dual use,” dominated by the military, even if they have been formally presented to public opinion as initiatives that promote joint economic development.

A prime example is the Rail2sea railroad, which connects Gdansk and Constanta, both on semi-enclosed seas, and which is hardly used for distribution of goods in Central Europe that could be reached more efficiently by a rail network leading to Trieste or ports in northern Germany. However, it has the great utility of allowing rapid movement of weapons and troops along the axis of the front line from north to south.

What would be the economic benefit to Trieste from the proposed logistics corridor with Constanta and Gdansk, as well as with the Rail2sea railroad that itself is already little used for commercial purposes?

The deployment of opposing forces along the “red line” of the European Isthmus began in September 1990, when Transnistria declared its independence from the disintegrating Soviet Union, and the Russian army immediately stockpiled Warsaw Pact munitions there: it is in a huge warehouse in Kobalsna that more than 22,000 tons are kept under the supervision of a small Russian contingent of 1500 to 4000 men.

In 1990, the capital Tiraspol was home to the 14th Army of Russian troops, which remained there even after the declaration of independence and the collapse of the Soviet Union, formally to protect its most important arsenal and ammunition depot in Europe.

Apparently, Russian military strategists believed that sooner or later they would have to return to this Red Line.

Curiously, the EU began accession talks with Moldova (and Ukraine at war) on June 25, considering Transnistria an integral part, including the military depot at Kobalsna, despite the fact that it declared itself independent only in 1991, a year after Transnistria itself, which the Moldovans never controlled for a day. Indeed, Moldova and Transnistria were at war with each other until 1992, and the truce guaranteed by the presence of Russian troops is still in force.

These are the impenetrable mysteries of the political drive to draw states into at least problematic conditions at all costs.

Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic (now a NATO lake whose shores are controlled by Atlantic Alliance countries) has nuclear Iskander missiles that could hit Berlin, only 500 kilometers away, in the absence of a US missile umbrella. And the Americans like to remind this to the Germans, whose interest in building relations with Russia, its cheap sources of energy, and raw materials, as well as with China, its main economic partner, is not appreciated.

“The Berlin – Moscow – Beijing triangle is essentially the worst geopolitical nightmare for the USA, as it would form the basis of a Eurasian bloc that could easily overcome their power and undermine their planetary hegemony.”

The logical interest of Russian strategists would be to repeat in Transnistria what has already been done in the Kaliningrad exclave: a combination of missile systems capable of symmetrically countering the dual defensive/offensive features of NATO’s Aegis Ashore missile base in Deveselu, Romania, and effectively defending the airspace of the southern segment of its Red Line. Only logistical isolation of Transnistria, surrounded by Ukraine and Moldova and landlocked, currently hinders its implementation.

Hence the strategic importance for Russia of the adjacent port of Odessa, a city founded in 1794 by Empress Catherine II “the Great” on the site of the former Turkish fortress of Yeni Dünya, conquered by her lover General Potemkin, to make it the main Russian port on the Black Sea, thus realizing Russia’s centuries-old desire to have access to “warm seas” navigable all year round.

Since the 1990s, Western forces have been gradually deployed and organized along a parallel and continuous Blue Line, increasing Russia’s fear of being pressured and attacked in strategic areas considered vital. Existential fear for one’s own security, which, whether justified or not, should not be underestimated if we want to avoid catastrophes that appear to be overshadowed by the announced revision of Russian military doctrine regarding lowering the threshold for the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

It is clear that the Russian deployment of the Red Line on the European Isthmus is far more fragile, discontinuous, and equipped with only one port in the north (Kaliningrad on the Baltic, which is now a lake surrounded by NATO countries) than the solid, continuous, and structured Western Blue Line, which also runs behind the lines that includes Trieste.

There is a clear imbalance, which in geopolitics tends to collapse in the absence of compensation.

It is true that NATO positions itself as a “defensive alliance,” but it is also true that the Russians have well-founded doubts about this, given that the Atlantic Alliance has intervened militarily several times and none of its members has been attacked by another state: 1992-1995 war in Bosnia with aerial bombardment of Serbian troops as part of Operations Sharp Guard and Sharp Force; 1999 Kosovo war with bombardment of Serbia and Belgrade with the never forgotten (by the Chinese) destruction of the Chinese embassy; 2001-2021 war in Afghanistan, where NATO led ISAF (International Security Assistance Force); 2003-2011 Iraq war; the 2011 war in Libya (Operation Unified Protector) with the bombings that led to the elimination of Gaddafi and the current Libyan chaos.

These kinds of military facilities require long lead times for development, construction, implementation, and organization, so everything was planned and started long before the “revolution” or “coup d’état,” depending on one’s viewpoint, of Euromaidan 2014 in Kiev.

Trieste, which wants to present itself on July 7 as the “City of Peace and Coexistence” on the occasion of Pope Francis’s visit, risks being drawn into the conflict because it has become a strategic NATO military bastion like Gdansk and Constanta.