Brexit Doesn’t Mean NATO Can Stop Worrying About Russia
Just two weeks after Britain voted to abandon the European Union, shaking confidence in one pillar of the transatlantic alliance, leaders from the members of North Atlantic Treaty Organization gather Friday for a show of unity in the face of a resurgent Russia.
At the two-day meeting in Warsaw, NATO will announce troop deployments to reassure its easternmost members that it’s committed to defend them. What the summit won’t do is reduce the threat of conflict with Russia, according to military analysts and former diplomats. That’s because the alliance’s moves will do too little to deter a potential assault by Russia, but too much for Russia to be appeased, these people said.
NATO’s 28 members will dispatch four battalions to the Baltic states and Poland to bolster defenses in the east. They’ll also welcome Montenegro as a soon-to-be member and enhance ties with the ex-Soviet countries of Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. At the same time, NATO is nearing completion of an anti-ballistic-missile system in the region.
“Every single thing that has irritated the relationship over the last 15 years will be on display at the summit,” said Andrew Monaghan, a British former adviser to NATO on Russia, who now is an analyst at the London-based think tank, Chatham House.
“Every time NATO thinks about a deployment, what it should be thinking is: What are the Russian plans for dealing with that?” Instead, the alliance negotiates with itself, and then considers what the Kremlin might do, he said. “We’re neither here nor there with Russia.”
For all of the alliance’s talk of unity, NATO members are divided over how to resolve this “neither here nor there” problem. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier recently accused NATO of “saber-rattling” for holding military exercises in members close to Russia. Eastern European leaders, by contrast, want NATO to do more.
Harsh Reaction
“What I see is NATO belatedly moving in the right direction, but it shouldn’t be our last word,” said former Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, in a phone interview. “These things wouldn’t be happening if Putin hadn’t started invading places. It is President Putin who changed NATO.”
Russia reacted harshly even before NATO finalized its plans. In May, the defense ministry announced the deployment of three new divisions in European Russia, citing NATO actions. Last week, President Vladimir Putin told a gathering of his ambassadors that “the alliance is not only seeking in Russia’s behavior justification for its own legitimacy and existence but also is taking truly confrontational steps against us.” He pledged to “respond appropriately.”
Also last week, the EU extended sanctions against Russia imposed over the Ukraine crisis until January, despite growing calls within the bloc for easing them. The U.S., too, has kept its curbs in place.
The challenge in the East won’t be the only agenda item for the NATO summit, which also will discuss the alliance’s work to stem the flow of Syrian refugees across the Aegean Sea and its continued presence in Afghanistan. While Eastern European members are concerned mostly about Russia, those in the south are more worried about threats from the Middle East.
NATO ‘Tripwire’
NATO says its planned forces in Poland and the Baltic states will function only as a “tripwire” in the event of Russian attack. The four multi-national battalions are designed to reassure the alliance’s ex-Soviet and ex-Warsaw Pact members that if ever they should be attacked, NATO would come to their aid. With about 4,000 troops in total, they’re about half the size of just one of the three new divisions Russia plans to deploy.
Russian officials see more of a threat. “When they look, they see NATO forces deployed a two-hour drive from St. Petersburg,” said Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.
A U.K. parliament report published Tuesday summed up the dilemma before NATO leaders on Friday, concluding that Russia would interpret a hesitant response as weakness, but that “facing Russia down may exacerbate antagonism.”
More worrying to Moscow than NATO’s relatively small planned troop deployments in the Baltics are its missile-defense plans, which got a boost this spring when the alliance declared the first part of the system, based in Romania, operational. A second base in Poland is under construction.
Target: Putin
The Kremlin’s concern, said Pavel Felgenhauer, a veteran Moscow military analyst, is that the launchers could be loaded with cruise missiles able to reach Putin’s residence in Sochi in a few minutes.
“The belief of the general staff is that this is just cover, that the bases are there for a first strike, intended to kill Putin,” said Felgenhauer.
The U.S. and NATO say the bases are designed to protect against any potential nuclear attack by rogue states and pose no threat to Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal.
Russia’s military isn’t convinced, Felgenhauer said. The generals who dominate strategic thinking in the Kremlin have zero trust in NATO’s good intentions and a healthy respect for U.S. technological prowess, fueling their feelings of insecurity.
Open conflict between Russia and the alliance remains unlikely, but so is any kind of broader settlement between them, according to Felgenhauer and others. There has been a growing number of near-misses between planes and ships, particularly in the Baltic.
Even those who favor a tough response to Russia believe much stronger routine contacts are needed, from technical military levels up to the very highest, to avoid unintended escalation. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said he hoped to convene a session of the NATO-Russia Council after the summit, but that’s unlikely to be enough, analysts said.
“Most of the people involved can’t remember the Cold War,” said Harvard University professor Graham Allison, who advised the Pentagon in the 1980s. “In dealings with the Russians, you are always just one step away from a game of chicken.”
