Putin will lash-out if he perceives weaknesses – that risks extinction

Even if the war in Ukraine were to end soon, events to date have already transformed the European security environment. Among the main questions that must now be addressed is this: How should the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies strengthen their military postures on eastern NATO territory in the future? I believe there is now a need for a permanent forward defense posture of modest size and scale, going beyond the tripwire approach NATO has employed in the Baltic states and Poland since roughly 2017.

American strategists anxious to prioritize China as the “pacing challenge” for U.S. defense strategy may object to any increase in the resources devoted to European security. That would be a mistake. Ensuring that Russia does not further destabilize Europe will have to be just as high a priority in the years to come as the China threat. That is because any scenarios that could involve hostile threats to NATO territory could raise terrifying questions about possible escalation, even eventually to the use of nuclear weapons, and could have existential implications. Moreover, despite the ongoing emphasis on Asia as the most dynamic region on Earth, Europe remains the region where America’s preponderance of democratic, advanced, prosperous allies is found — and also the region where the world wars originated in earlier eras. Its strategic significance should never be doubted. What is more, Europe’s role in addressing the rise of China will be central to any successful effort. Finally, to the extent China is seen as a major challenge, it is all the more reason that European security must be stabilized as an anchor of the future global order. The United States and allies do not have the military, economic, or diplomatic bandwidth to address escalating crises and conflict in both Europe and Asia at the same time. New crises and conflicts in Europe must be prevented before they begin, to the maximum extent possible.

I argue here that NATO should shift from what has been, in effect, a tripwire defense of the Baltic states and Poland since 2017 to a modest forward defense posture. Russian President Vladimir Putin must know of NATO’s unambiguous commitment to defend alliance territory and feel no doubt that the United States and its allies would do whatever it took to prevail in a war that he might initiate against one or more of the alliance’s members.

The United States and allies should build facilities and position forces with the intent of making this forward defense enduring. The concept of rotational deployments is no longer appropriate given the scale of what is now needed, together with the severity and hostility of the Russian actions that have made such changes necessary. NATO should not adhere to its previous policy, dating to the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, that ruled out permanent stationing of allied combat forces on the territories of new members. Those days are gone. Russia, with its attack on Ukraine, has now violated the foundational principle of that Act — the peaceful resolution of disputes. Nor is rotational presence less expensive than permanent basing. Indeed, by placing upward pressure on the size of the U.S. force posture, it risks being much more expensive, given the large number of units it inevitably entails.

Thus, what has been termed NATO’s enhanced forward presence (eFP) will need to beef up. Rather than have small and disparate combat formations from many countries, NATO should establish enough combat punch in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania that it could credibly fight to protect these countries’ territories in a future war against Russia, while awaiting reinforcement from points further west. As the alliance’s military and strategic backbone, U.S. military formations must be an integral part of that NATO mix, to make the alliance’s commitment to successful defense and military victory absolutely unambiguous. That is the most promising way to make deterrence robust, given what we now know about Putin and his romanticized, twisted, dangerous vision of a greater Russia. The force packages need not be particularly large, but they should be combat capable, positioned in forward locations, and set up for the long term, given the likelihood that Putin or a similar successor will remain on the scene for many years.

My recommended additional American force posture would include an Army brigade combat team, an Army combat aviation brigade, and two to three squadrons of Air Force tactical aircraft, all permanently stationed in the Baltic states. After such augmentations, the American force posture in Europe would grow by 10,000 to 15,000 uniformed personnel relative to pre-2022 levels (that might in fact allow a slight reduction relative to what is in Europe today, post-Ukraine invasion, with the total number of American troops winding up just under 100,000 on the continent). Other NATO states should collectively add comparable amounts of capacity to the Baltic region. Such an addition can be made from the existing force posture without necessitating a net growth in the size of the American armed forces, despite the challenges posed by China and North Korea in the Indo-Pacific theater.

THE STRATEGIC CONTEXT

NATO has lots of full-time troops — more than three million in all.[1] About two million of those are already in Europe. But most, of course, are based on their respective home territories. Prior to the Russian aggression this year, only slightly more than 10,000 troops from the alliance’s biggest and most powerful militaries were stationed on its eastern front lines near Russia.

Ukraine’s courageous resistance to Vladimir Putin’s attack makes some think that no big changes in NATO force posture will be needed for the future security environment. With Russia likely bogged down on Ukrainian territory for months or years to come, and with Russian leaders now presumably sobered about the capacity of their own military, it seems unrealistic to believe that the Kremlin could add chunks of NATO territory to its military wish list.

Alas, there is another possibility. In addition to his callous brutality, President Putin has demonstrated such recklessness in this horrible attack on a sisterly neighbor that he no longer seems predictable. While not crazy, he is angry and vindictive. Meanwhile, Russian forces have suffered huge attrition and the Russian economy is in bad shape (even if Ukraine is hurting worse overall). That makes his next move hard to foresee. Particularly if he thought that by attacking part of NATO territory he could split the alliance internally and weaken its current strong consensus to punish Russia’s aggression, he might lash out. This would be, at a grand strategic level, a version of Russia’s “escalate to de-escalate” nuclear doctrine — by doing something big and bold, Russia might be able to change the whole game, and persuade some Western countries that it was time to seek some type of compromise peace rather than risk wider war and even nuclear conflict. If Putin finds his economy in great duress with no end in sight, his forces mired in a war they cannot decisively win, and NATO already treating him like an enemy, he might try to shake things up — soon, or at some point in the future.