The U.S. military will deploy an additional 20,000 personnel for NATO exercises in Europe next spring. I have no problem with that. The alliance preserves common freedom, peace, and prosperity. Americans benefit from it.
But I do have a question: What will our allies bring to next spring’s exercises?
I ask that question because any alliance requires fair burden-sharing. I suspect Canada and most European allied states won’t be doing their fair share. Here are three relevant predictions.
Prediction one: Don’t expect the European allies to support reinforcement of the front lines.
While fighter jets and bombers are the most snazzy of air force platforms, they are only one element of what makes NATO a credible deterrent force. Equally crucial are the strategic airlift platforms that transport troops to a theater of operations. But today, only the United States has anywhere near a sufficient military airlift capability. As of 2018, the U.S. had 264 airlift aircraft, and the European NATO members had 63 collectively. The obvious problem here is that if Russia invaded the Baltics, or stormed into Poland through Belarus, NATO would have a hard time getting adequate ground reinforcements into the fight.
European allies could show their support for next spring’s exercises by deploying more ground forces in advance. But I doubt they will. After all, where French President Emmanuel Macron’s eloquent words on upholding the liberal international order come cheap, big deployments of troops and equipment cost a lot of money.
Prediction two: Don’t expect our allies to show much interest in combined arms activity.
A marker of any serious military is its ability to deploy in a combined arms posture. That is to say, with tanks operating alongside mechanized brigades, operating under fighter air cover, operating with naval and logistics support. The U.S. will show this capability next spring, but don’t expect many other NATO members to do so. The problem: Most allies lack the platforms and the willingness to do what is necessary to build their combined arms potential.
Rather than keeping their tanks operational, for example, European allies have mothballed them or culled them for spare parts. Rather than using their advanced warships for deployments in support of NATO control over the sea lanes, European allies prefer to keep their ships in port. Rather than confronting Russian aggression, European allies enable Vladimir Putin’s energy blackmail strategy, resupply his warships, and support his push for sanctions relief. Rather than invest in more power projection capabilities, the Canadian elite write jokes about defense spending.
France is better than Germany, but both nations’ defense spending skimping proves they aren’t all that serious about standing up for the alliance.
Prediction three: Don’t expect our allies to show much interest in supporting NATO’s intelligence and command-control activities.
Outside of the U.S. and Britain, NATO lacks intelligence, surveillance, and target acquisition platforms such as aerial drones. In the event of a Russian invasion, the alliance will need to know where enemy forces are, where they are moving, and what they are planning. But rather than complementing NATO’s existing intelligence and command-control framework, European allies are either neglecting relevant investments or diverting their investments into outside-of-NATO European-command centers. Again, it will be up to America to plug these gaps come next year.
So what should be done? What can we do to address these gaps?
While upholding NATO’s mutual defense commitment, the U.S. should keep up the pressure on allies to adequately support the alliance. That means demanding increased defense investment and reorientating the alliance should that investment fail to arrive. But it also means pointing out the reality of next spring’s exercises, and who is carrying the load.
