Some Russians fear NATO exit through Russia

Washington Post:

The people of Ulyanovsk, a poverty-stricken city sitting high on the banks of the mighty Volga, are having a hard time accepting the idea that NATO is their friend and that they should help the alliance extricate itself from Afghanistan. 

Russia is officially anti-NATO. Most Russians fear it. They say the West betrayed them when Mikhail Gorbachev let the Iron Curtain fall along with the Berlin Wall on his understanding that the military alliance would not move eastward. 

NATO did indeed move eastward, signing up Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Baltics — the West says Gorbachev misunderstood its intentions. Now NATO’s plans for a missile defense system in Europe have aroused that long-simmering anger. Russians say they can’t believe NATO assurances that the missiles would not be aimed here. They have been deceived before, they say. 

Despite the threat it feels, Russia has resolutely supported the NATO presence in Afghanistan. “We both have an interest in Afghanistan being a stable country that doesn’t export terrorism,” said Robert Pszczel, director of the NATO Information Center in Moscow. 

Russian authorities typically portray NATO as menacing, without confusing the issue by mentioning their support for the fight in Afghanistan. Little is said about the Northern Distribution Network, which allows supplies to flow on Russian rail lines and in Russia airspace to Afghanistan, unnoticed, without any distribution points on Russian territory. 

Now, as NATO prepares to withdraw its troops by the end of 2014, it faces a logistical nightmare in removing all the tents, armored equipment and other support material it has sent in since the war began. Russia has offered Ulyanovsk as a transit point, where all that heavy equipment could be flown in, then transferred to rail lines and on to Europe. 

Local officials here in the city where Lenin was born like the idea — it will bring in badly needed revenue and jobs — but many people are very much opposed. They are convinced that NATO will turn this foothold into a permanent base, a stake in the heart of Russia. 

“Let’s start with this principle,” said Alexander Kruglikov, sitting at a small table in the Communist party’s little wooden headquarters house. “No matter where NATO and America go, they will never leave freely.” 

Just look at Okinawa, he said, where American troops have remained for 67 years despite citizen protest and crimes including rapes and murders. “There’s no threat there, but they haven’t left,” he said.

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The suggestion that the US want leave is laughable.  No one wants to stay in Russia and the places where we do stay are because the locals want us there.  While some Okinawans want the US out, the Japanese see it in their security interest to have a US presence to deal with threats from North Korea and China.

My bigger concern is that the long line of retreat from Afghanistan leaves our forces vulnerable to being held hostage along the route. I tend to think it would be safer to just do a forced withdrawal through Pakistan to the sea.  I think the Pakistan government would be forced to back down if we made it clear we were coming out through their territory and that any attempt to interfere with the exit would be met with force.