The United States and its NATO allies are planning for a long-term rivalry with Russia in Eastern Europe even as they hold out the hope that Moscow will reverse its aggressive stance, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said en route to a weeklong trip to the continent.
“The United States, at least, continues to hold out the prospect that Russia, maybe not under [President] Vladimir Putin, but maybe some time in the future, will return to a forward-moving course rather than a backward-looking course,” Carter told reporters on Sunday. “And I can’t say whether or when that will occur. But it is the U.S. intention to keep the door open for that.”
Carter was in Berlin on Monday for meetings with German officials and was to travel to Estonia on Tuesday ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday.
Though he told reporters he hoped Russia would reverse the confrontational stance that began with the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea a year ago, he said NATO was prepared to respond in kind.
“Our policy is quite clear, which is we are going to continue to deter and prepare to respond. And we’ll continue to adapt those preparations so that they remain a strong deterrent to Russia,” Carter said.
Tensions in Europe have skyrocketed since Russian-backed troops seized Crimea in March 2014 and rebels in eastern Ukraine declared their independence from Kiev. Many Eastern European NATO members, particularly Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all of which have significant Russian-speaking populations, have called for an increased alliance presence, fearing they may be next.
Last week, NATO concluded two weeks of military exercises in the Baltic Sea. This year’s version of the annual BALTOPS exercise was significantly larger as a show of force against Russia. The Russians responded in kind, aggressively buzzing NATO ships and aircraft multiple times.
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Carter also criticized Putin for recent comments surrounding the deployment of additional nuclear ballistic missiles in Kaliningrad, a non-contiguous Russian territory between Poland and Lithuania.
“Nuclear weapons are not something that should be the subject of loose rhetoric by world leadership,” Carter told reporters. “We all understand the gravity of nuclear dangers. We all understand that Russia is a long-established nuclear power. There’s no need for Vladimir Putin to make that point.
“And so I obviously can’t explain for you why he would posture in that way, but it’s not appropriate behavior, in my judgment, for leaders to be speaking that way about something as grave as nuclear weapons and their nuclear responsibilities as responsible and longstanding nuclear powers,” he said.
