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Russia’s military advance into Ukraine has thrown a harsh light on the Biden administration’s biggest foreign policy crisis yet, and on the importance of NATO as a pro-democracy European security alliance that can further curb Russian aggression in the region.
This is a test that comes after years of criticism when former President Trump faced public and confrontational stances addressing major NATO partners for their reluctance to meet defense spending targets and share the military burden with Washington.
Member spending has increased since 2019. But analysts say, far from countering the prospect of an authoritarian global military alliance between Russia and China, NATO has been too slow to consolidate and modernize to help regional democracies fend off the escalating aggression of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In response, Mr. Putin steadily developed Russia’s once-lost military forces, giving the Kremlin the power to once again project power beyond Russia’s borders.
Analysts say the potential for an alliance of US enemies to expand its dominance in both Europe and Asia over the next decade is huge, frightening fledgling democracies like Ukraine, which is not itself a NATO member but is bordered by four alliance members: Romania, Hungary. , Slovakia and Poland.
While NATO has expanded to include all four, along with roughly a dozen other Eastern European countries, over the past three decades, regional experts say the true size of the alliance’s force structure has shrunk since the end of the Cold War.
“Since the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, [NATO] cut off their power,” says longtime national security expert and former Pentagon official Anthony H. Cordesman. “This applies to the United States and each of the European countries.”
“You’ve seen a steady decline in European and US capabilities for nearly 20 years,” Mr Cordesman, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told C-Span on Tuesday.
The Biden administration and NATO came as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg scrambled to respond to the Ukraine crisis, calling Russia’s threat to engulf Ukraine “the most dangerous moment for a generation in European security”. However, any role that US and alliance troops have had in direct confrontation with Russian forces inside Ukraine is already off the table, something President Biden has consistently denied.
Mr Stoltenberg said NATO stands “in solidarity with the Ukrainian people” and will continue to provide equipment to the Ukrainian army. He also stressed that NATO countries bordering Ukraine can be assured that the alliance will do whatever it takes to protect them from Russian aggression.
Ukraine is Mr. Putin’s immediate target, but in the Russian leader’s eyes, NATO has a greater challenge. Two of its most important demands are NATO’s promise to never take Ukraine as a member, and the Western alliance to withdraw its troops and weapons from a large area of Eastern Europe close to Russia’s western borders.
Fulfillment of promises made
However, questions remain about NATO’s actual capacity to deliver on these promises. “We have over 100 jets on high alert and more than 120 allied ships at sea from the high north to the Mediterranean,” Mr Stoltenberg said on Tuesday, noting that members have deployed and deployed thousands of troops on the alliance’s eastern flank. more in standby mode.
In early February, Mr. Biden dispatched 2,000 US-based troops to Poland and Germany, including elements of the 82nd Airborne Division, and shifted 1,000 other American forces from Germany to Romania. The Pentagon reported Tuesday that a U.S. Army battalion in Italy—probably the 173rd.
Authorities said that a battalion of 20 AH-64 helicopters from Germany and up to eight US F-35 Strike Fighters was destined for Eastern Europe with a separate aviation task force of about 12 AH-64 helicopters moving from Greece to Poland. Added scrolling.
American personnel and equipment moves are the most dramatic move Washington has made in Europe in recent times. They also outperform troop and equipment commitments made by other NATO members in response to Russia’s moves in the region.
According to Voice of America, four Danish F-16 fighter jets arrived in Lithuania in late January to support NATO’s air policing mission there. NATO countries have deployed around 4,500 troops to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland since Russia’s forcible annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
France also recently announced plans to send several hundred troops to Romania. Germany, the Netherlands and Spain have said they are only considering sending troops to NATO’s eastern flank.
Other key members of the alliance focused on arming and supporting the Ukrainians, with Britain reportedly supplying around 2,000 anti-tank guns while sending 30 elite training forces. Meanwhile, Turkey has said it will sell drones to Ukraine, and the two are moving forward with plans to co-produce the advanced drones, according to Defense News.
But NATO has repeatedly found itself on its hind legs in the most recent Ukraine crisis, and has repeatedly found itself reacting to Mr. Putin’s actions, according to General Philip M. found it necessary. By 2016 – Moscow “annexed” Crimea from Ukraine.
“We are currently in passive deterrence and Mr. Putin is in active action,” General Breedlove told Air Force Magazine on Tuesday. “So I think we’re seeing the Russians entering Ukraine now.”
piecemeal
But many see NATO’s response as too fragmentary to provide the level of deterrence needed to face one of a Russian army completely focused on its small neighbor. Analysts also say NATO’s limitations explain why the Biden administration is so focused on using sanctions, rather than a show of military force, to repel Russia’s aggressive moves.
Retired four-star Army General Jack Keane argues that NATO will be significantly behind if Russia threatens other Eastern European countries with something like the more than 150,000 troops it has deployed on the Ukrainian border.
“If [Putin] Keane told Fox News on Monday that there is no match for it in any of the NATO countries it borders – Poland, the Baltics. “It would take a massive deployment to get that kind of match with Putin’s abilities.
Mr. Keane also argued that the US dropped the ball by not forcing more aggressively the NATO Response Forces (NRF), which consists of about 40,000 multinational troops as well as air and naval assets, for deployment in the region. “It must be done,” he said. “I’m not saying that Putin will continue to Poland, but if he thinks we should make him understand that we have the will and determination to do something about it.”
But mustering such determination may be more difficult than authorities are willing to admit. Mr. Trump, for example, was not the first US president to openly complain that his NATO allies were not spending enough to support the alliance.
Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have also expressed disappointment that America has taken on the lion’s share of the costs, forcing countries such as France, Italy and Germany to meet their defense spending commitments. The effort, with Mr Trump’s push, has produced mixed results.
An analysis published by CSIS last week suggested that the alliance should be placed on high alert after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and that the United States in particular “failed to lead effectively at the presidential level”.
“It was unable to effectively rebuild its forward deployed forces and power projection capabilities,” wrote Mr Cordesman and Grace Hwang, research fellows at the think tank. NATO member spending
Critics accused the former president of going too far, threatening to pull the United States out of the alliance unless other members increase their spending.
“The Trump administration has turned US policy towards NATO into a mathematically absurd burden-sharing tyranny,” Mr. Cordesman and Ms. Hwang wrote. “It has driven America’s European allies to spend more without addressing the many differences between them, the very different fundamental shortcomings in the strengths of most member states, and the very different shortcomings in modernization and interoperability.”
• Mike Glenn contributed to this article.
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