With warnings swirling over a possible war with Russia in a matter of years, NATO's European members have already started laying the groundwork for defenses, should Russian troops set foot on alliance soil.
"Russia is preparing for a war with the West," Bruno Kahl, the head of Germany's foreign intelligence service, said in late November.
But it's not likely to be a large-scale attack into NATO territory, the intelligence chief warned. Moscow could opt for a limited incursion or upping its hybrid warfare tactics to probe the alliance's conviction, Kahl said.
NATO is trying to prepare for both scenarios: an all-out war, and less obvious techniques designed to undermine stability in the alliance's member countries.
"There are multiple options for Russia to test the cohesion of the alliance," including limited land grabs, the former head of NATO's Multinational Corps Northeast based in northwest Poland, Lieutenant General Jürgen-Joachim von Sandrart, told Newsweek just before leaving his post in November.
The urgency is now obvious from senior military and political officials. Andrius Kubilius, the European Union's commissioner for defense, said in September that defense ministers and NATO commanders "agree that [Russian President] Vladimir Putin could be ready for confrontation with NATO and the EU in six to eight years."
Estonia's foreign intelligence service warned in February NATO "could face a Soviet-style mass army in the next decade" if Russia successfully reforms its military. The army would be "technologically inferior" to NATO forces in areas other than electronic warfare and long-range strikes, the service said, but its "military potential would be significant."
"If we take these assessments seriously, then that is the time for us to properly prepare, and it is a short one," Kubilius, a former Lithuanian prime minister, told the Reuters news agency. "This means we have to take quick decisions, and ambitious decisions."
The main catalyst is Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, prompting Sweden and Finland to abandon their long-held policies of non-alignment and join NATO, lengthening Russia's border with the alliance.
Across Europe, NATO is now battling to raise defense spending up and beyond the two percent of GDP requested—but not enforced—by the alliance. Many countries have historically fallen far short of this benchmark in the decades since the end of the Cold War.
But times are changing. European nations have pledged to meet or exceed the target, and officials and experts broadly expect the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump to double down on pressure on Europe to increase military spending further.
The countries snaking along NATO's eastern flank are way ahead. How quickly Europe will be able to pull up spending and prop up the companies producing more equipment, however, remains to be seen. NATO's top military official, Admiral Rob Bauer, said in late last November that businesses "need to be prepared for a wartime scenario and adjust their production and distribution lines accordingly."
"While it may be the military who wins battles, it's the economies that win wars." Bauer said.
Already, there are visible signs of preparations across Europe, particularly striking in the countries closest to Russia's borders.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said in July that NATO was "not ready now" for a possible war with Russia but that they "will be ready" in the future.
"They are already preparing for a conflict with the Russian Federation and are preparing much faster than some people would like to see, in every sense," he told Serbian television, in remarks reported by Russian state media.
"We know this from military preparations. We know how they are being conducted. And I want to tell you, they are preparing for a military conflict," Vučić said.
Germany has started putting together plans for how Berlin would would shield important buildings and installations in the event of an attack, and how Germany would be a conduit for hundreds of thousands of soldiers heading further east in Europe, the German daily newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, reported in November.
The first draft of the strategy paper, labeled "Operationsplan Deutschland," is 1,000 pages long, the newspaper reported.
No comments:
Post a Comment