Meet the new enemy, same as the old enemy.
NATO leaders meeting in Wales this week have all but declared the Cold War back on, and Russia has responded in kind. Just six months after Russia annexed Crimea and followed that with efforts to destabilize the rest of Ukraine, relations between the alliance and Moscow have entered the deep freeze.
Among the issues on the table at the two-day summit are plans to reinforce NATO’s military presence in Eastern Europe and measures aimed at deterring further Russian moves on Ukraine, which is not a NATO member. It’s a stunning turnaround from just four years ago, when President Obama and then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev discussed ways to deepen cooperation at the NATO summit in Lisbon.
Russia’s aggression in Ukraine was “a wake-up call,” NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen declared Thursday. “It has reminded us, reminded all of us, that our freedom, security and prosperity cannot be taken for granted.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov matched his tone in a series of tweets, saying, “Those who now stand on the path of war, supporting radical militant elements in Kiev, are taking on a huge responsibility … I hope that Washington and other capitals that are now intoxicated with anti-Russian rhetoric understand this.”
But the tough rhetoric coming from Wales hides problems for the alliance in dealing with the new threat from Russia. After years of treating Russia as a partner, the alliance must quickly adapt to counter Moscow’s “new hybrid approach to war” if it’s used on a NATO country, said U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, at an Atlantic Council conference tied to the summit.
Before committing its own troops, Russia sought to destabilize Ukraine through its control of energy supplies and financial resources, as well as with “the most amazing information warfare blitzkrieg we have ever seen in the history of information warfare” and the deceptive use of “little green men” — troops without insignia posing as local separatists, Breedlove said.
NATO’s plans include staffing a new headquarters in Eastern Europe tasked with defending countries concerned about the threat from Russia — particularly Poland and the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — increased rotations of U.S. and allied troops into those countries and a new rapid-response force of several thousand troops that would pre-position its supplies at Eastern European bases.
U.S. and Ukrainian troops will join those of 13 other allied nations in military exercises Sept. 15-26 along the Polish border in northwestern Ukraine, even as Russian troops fight alongside separatists on the other side of the country.
But a permanent troop presence like the hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in West Germany during the Cold War is out of the question, for now. A 1997 NATO-Russia agreement limits the number of NATO forces that can permanently be based in former Soviet-bloc countries, and alliance leaders have said that even though Russia had clearly violated the deal, they are not ready to respond in kind.
“We could take the moral high ground and remain within the act” while still providing for collective defense needs of NATO’s easternmost members, Breedlove said.
Meanwhile, most NATO members have been shrinking their defense budgets in recent years, and now are feeling the pressure for a quick turnaround in the face of Russia’s rapid moves against Ukraine.
In an op-ed in the Times of London timed to coincide with the opening of the summit, Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron noted that “Britain and America are two of only four NATO members to meet the target of spending 2 percent of our [gross domestic product] on defense, and other states must urgently step up their efforts to meet this too. This would send a powerful message to those that threaten us that our collective resolve is as strong as ever.”
There’s also the question of ongoing ties with Russia. Many European countries — including Germany — depend on supplies of Russian natural gas for heating their citizens’ homes, and are loath to jeopardize the supply as winter approaches. France, meanwhile, is building two advanced naval vessels for Russia. Though Paris put delivery of the first on hold Wednesday, it has resisted pressure from other alliance members to cancel the deal outright.