NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – The optimism for peace at the end of the Cold War has proven to be a mistake as Russia used the lull in Western defense attention to occupy Crimea and aggressively support separatists in Ukraine and insert itself in the Syrian civil war, three chiefs of European navies agreed on Monday. “We were very optimistic in 1989,” Vice Adm. Andreas Krause, Inspector of the German Navy, said on Monday at Navy League’s Sea Air Space 2018 exposition. “2014 came like a surprise.” Meanwhile, the Chinese began paying more attention to affairs in and around the Mediterranean, … Continue reading European Navies Are Grappling with Aggressive Russian, Chinese Operations in Baltic, Mediterranean