M1 Abrams tanks and M2 Bradley fighting vehicles were sent via ship across the Black Sea from Bulgaria, demonstrate multinational resolve to assure Allies and Partners that external threats will not be tolerated. Other shows of assurance and deterrence, including the brief fly-through of two F-22 Raptor fighter jets into Romania, and exercise Noble Partner in Georgia, an unprecedented deployment in which a small number of U.S. Army Europe orchestrated exercises Swift Response and Saber Strike during this same period, the annual Anakonda exercises, led by Poland, maneuvered defensively oriented forces across much of Eastern Europe. In late spring and early summer 2016, U.S. Īnother round of multinational exercises by NATO Allied and Partner countries have been underway. While Russian officials fulminated and state-controlled press decried the maneuvers 5, informed Russian leaders and planners fully understood their intent: while not an offensive threat, they had been served notice that the Baltic States, Poland, and other Eastern European countries were fully under NATO’s security umbrella, with all of the protections of collective defense outlined in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. 4 There they celebrated Estonia’s Independence Day. Army’s 2 nd Cavalry Regiment and British forces rolled through the three Baltic states all the way to Narva, an Estonian city dominated by ethnic Russians that lies just 90 miles from St. 3 In February 2015, Operation Dragoon Ride, in another determined show of assurance and deterrence, elements of the U.S. military in April 2014 sent three modest paratrooper companies from the storied 173 rd Airborne Brigade into these geographically vulnerable countries to show allied solidarity and support, as well as to convey an unambiguous message to Russia not to consider any offensive or subversive action against them. In response to Russia’s actions, the U.S. Russia’s illegal invasion and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in March 2014, as well as the continued beleaguerment of eastern Ukraine by Russian-supported proxies, have caused troubling clouds to loom over Eastern Europe, including over Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, three key North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Baltic allies. More than half a century after Operation Long Thrust, a modern-day version of this forgotten Cold War deterrence operation reprised itself in Eastern Europe as the United States instituted Operation Atlantic Resolve. As the post-Cold War period unfolded, many thought that a new Russia would, with fits and starts, join the Western community of nations, while the Central and Eastern European lands traditionally caught between Russia and the West would finally find security and maintain peaceful relations with their neighbors. That bold demonstration was part of a difficult, and potentially incendiary, period that nearly all experts and observers thought had expired with the end of the Cold War in 1991. Too small to be an offensive threat, but formidable enough to be serious, Operation Long Thrust skirted the fine line between resolute deterrence and go-to-war provocation, and allowed the United States to avoid becoming militarily embroiled with strident adversaries in East Germany and the Soviet Union. I draw upon four Victory Day events which I attended as a non-participant observer to explore how the emphasis on Victory has shifted in the local parades and social events in south Brooklyn, where those who celebrate it publicly express an ethnicity and identity that is distinctive to their shared past as Russian-speaking Jews from the former Soviet Union.On August 20, 1961, an American armored battle group of the 18 th Infantry Regiment stationed in West Germany crossed the heavily militarized border at Helmstedt and rolled its way approximately 100 miles along the autobahn across Soviet-controlled East Germany into West Berlin. My methodology includes the use of secondary data, textual analysis and non-participant observation. This study demonstrates that in the post-Soviet era, Victory Day remains an important yet contentious holiday commemorating the end of fascism and World War II. Victory Day on May 9 th is known by Russians as “the holiday with a tear in one’s eye.” But in south Brooklyn, many miles away from their “motherland,” confers the Russian Jewish immigrants a freedom to express allegiance on their own terms, choosing their own set of songs, emblems, and activities by blending premigration symbolism from the Soviet era with adaptations to American society.
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