The U.S. military illustrated on Friday why America remains the instrumental global force for freedom.
It did so by delivering the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division 4,600 miles from its Fort Bragg home base to Estonia. Without stopping to rest or refuel, approximately 750 paratroopers were dropped into northern Estonia in a simulated forcible entry operation. Once on the ground, they were just 70 miles from the Russian border and 150 miles from Vladimir Putin’s home city of St. Petersburg. The U.S. paratroopers jumped alongside B company, 2nd Battalion of the British Army’s Parachute Regiment.
In war, supported by an allied air campaign and as in 1944 in Normandy, the American and British paratroops would be outnumbered and surrounded by the enemy. They would be tasked with delaying Russian forces in their advances to Estonia’s capital, Tallinn, and buying time for NATO armored and mechanized forces to launch a counteroffensive. Theirs would be a high-risk, bloody operation. Put another way, an operation in the finest tradition of the Airborne Infantry.
In this case, the 3rd Brigade was acting as the Army’s Immediate Response Force. Under that contingency, one brigade of the 82nd Airborne is always deployable on 18 hours’ notice. No other nation can match this speed and scale of flexible response. It’s not just about the airborne troops. It’s about the logistics, mobility, intelligence, and field headquarters assets that go with them.
It’s a force with special utility toward Russia.
After all, any Russian invasion of the Baltics would likely entail a blitzkrieg-style assault into Estonia, probably with supporting invasions from Kaliningrad into Lithuania and from Belarus into Latvia and Lithuania. This would offer Russia the prospect of isolating the Baltics from NATO reinforcements. It would be a military reality Russia could then translate into a binary blood versus cease-fire political choice for NATO.
Moscow would hope to split the alliance’s 30 member states between those willing to fight to liberate the Baltics and those willing to abandon the Baltics in return for a Russian cease-fire. Considering the appeasement policies that Germany, Belgium, and much of the European Union apply to Russia, this is no small concern. (Interestingly, non-NATO member Sweden is taking a more robust stance in response to Russian aggression.)
This exercise forces Putin to pause before launching such an endeavor. President Joe Biden should now use this display to make a clear argument to Europe: We’re here for European security, why aren’t you?
The need for such an argument is clear. On Monday, the German foreign minister used an EU foreign ministers meeting to call for conciliation with Moscow. The dichotomy is thus striking: As American troops practiced liberating a foreign land far from home, the government of Europe’s largest economy knelt before Putin.
Is America still the greatest force for human freedom?
The affirmative answer was just measured in 4,600 miles.
