NATO's supreme commander is considering alternative plans for defending Europe in the event that the alliance is attacked by Russia, after the United States announced that it is cutting the number of aircraft and warships it will provide in a military crisis, the Associated Press reported, BTA reports.
The so-called NATO Force Model is a kind of Plan A for a reserve of forces and equipment that the 32-member alliance must maintain in peacetime, in crisis situations and during war. It also defines the military assets that each commander can rely on during the first six months of a military conflict. But last month, the Pentagon warned NATO that it would reduce its commitment to focus on potential threats elsewhere, particularly from China in the Indo-Pacific region. The cuts to US assets include the withdrawal of a carrier strike group, submarines, fighter jets, maritime patrol aircraft, aerial refueling tankers and drones, according to a source familiar with the alliance, quoted by the AP. But US space technology, which helps deliver precision strikes, will remain available. European countries and Canada have been anxiously awaiting more than a year to learn what the Trump administration intends to do after it warned that Europe is no longer a top military priority for Washington. They knew there would be reductions in military presence, but not how big, how fast, or what kind.
US General Alexis Grinkiewicz, the supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe, said the US “remains committed to continuing to provide limited but critical (defence) capabilities to the alliance“.
“We need to focus primarily on (the development of those capabilities) that we can acquire and multiply most quickly and sustain long-term. This also applies to long-range strike capabilities“, such as drones, Grinkiewicz said on the sidelines of the International Aerospace Exhibition in Berlin. “Only with such means can we minimize the risks in the short term.“
EUROPE AND CANADA MUST FILL THE GAPS
Grinkiewicz recalled that on June 2 and 3, the allies discussed the possible gaps that the reduction of the American military presence will leave, therefore, he noted, they must be filled by the European allies and Canada - both in terms of manned and unmanned systems, as well as in terms of naval forces. “And this must happen now, in the near future“, he said.“
According to the NATO source, it is still unclear when the US will withdraw the forces planned for redeployment and when European countries will take their place.
The German publication “Welt“ published some details about the US military assets that will be withdrawn. They include KC-135 tanker aircraft (modernized aircraft from the 1950s); a reduction of 63 from 80 now to the more modern KC-146; F-16 and F-15 fighter jets will be reduced to 100 (from 154 now), and they are not particularly new, since the first of them entered combat duty 50 years ago. We are talking about fourth-generation equipment, not fifth-generation. Bombers will not be withdrawn, as well as attack drones and marines.
Much of this equipment is in short supply in Europe, so it is not clear how quickly it could be replaced. Nevertheless, the US wants the continent to clarify how it intends to fill these gaps by the time of the NATO summit in Turkey on July 7-8, during which Trump will meet with his colleagues from the alliance.
FORCE REDUCTIONS IN GERMANY, POLAND AND KOSOVO
Earlier this year, Washington announced that it would reduce its military presence in Germany by 5,000 people, and the transfer of 4,000 soldiers who were supposed to reinforce the contingent in Poland was canceled.
These actions were in line with Trump's policy of reducing the military presence in Europe because of the continent's insufficient commitment to its own defense, in his opinion, but also because of insufficient support for the US war against Iran, the AP notes.
On Friday, NATO's military command announced that it was reducing its presence in Kosovo by withdrawing forces and equipment. The KFOR mission was deployed in 1999 to maintain peace between Belgrade and Pristina.
The US has 590 troops in KFOR, second only to Italy, which has 907. A total of 31 countries maintain forces in the former Serbian province. US helicopters are also based at the vast Bondsteel base complex in Kosovo.
NO IMMEDIATE THREAT FROM RUSSIA
In Berlin, Grinkevich said that intelligence and Russian troop movements suggest that “Russia is not seeking conflict with NATO”. Moscow is currently mired in the war in Ukraine and is having difficulty recruiting new soldiers.
Governments and intelligence agencies in Europe warn that Russian President Vladimir Putin could be in a position to launch an attack elsewhere on the continent within three to five years, especially if he wins in Ukraine.
THE REDUCTION OF THE US MILITARY PRESENCE IS AN OLD TOPIC
American dissatisfaction that Europe is not investing enough money in defense is not new and is not unique to the Trump administration, but is as old as the alliance, notes the magazine “Foreign Affairs“. Europeans have always wanted a strong military commitment from the United States, and Washington has always wanted strong allies in Europe to relieve it of the military burden and support its foreign policy elsewhere in the world.
The idea of Europeans taking care of their own defense dates back to 1949. At that time, US Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave the famous assurance to Burke Hickenlooper, a Republican senator from Iowa, that Washington would not have to "continually send more and more forces to these countries, because they would develop their own defense capabilities". This assurance would play a crucial role in the Senate's ratification of the North Atlantic Treaty, which established NATO.
Meanwhile, the lack of concrete American security guarantees led the then British Prime Minister Ernest Bevin to ask "whether a pact so weakened was worth signing." This set the stage for a dynamic that continues to this day, in which Americans will always feel used and Europeans - insecure, notes "Foreign Affairs."
The first crisis over defense spending broke out the following year, 1950, after the Soviet Union's successful nuclear test in 1949 and the communist invasion of South Korea, which necessitated a significant increase in military potential. To convince a skeptical American public of the need for four more American divisions in Europe, President Harry Truman reassured his compatriots that the US military commitment would depend on "whether the Allies do their part to the same extent."
While Congress debated Truman's proposal, US senators met with General Dwight Eisenhower, the first Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, to express their concern that if the US created its own European military command, it would reduce the incentive for Europeans to take care of their own defense.
When Congress approved the increase in the US military presence on the continent in 1951, it did so with the assumption that it would be only temporary, until European countries had completed their economic recovery after World War II. But that hope was almost immediately dashed.
“If within ten years all the American forces deployed for the defense of Europe are not at home, then the whole project has failed“, Eisenhower told an aide, believing that the US military presence was indeed only temporary. When he left his post at NATO in 1952 to run for president, an even greater increase in the military presence was already underway, but the death of Stalin in 1953 changed the entire geopolitical context. The sense of an imminent Soviet threat disappeared, and European societies began to view NATO as of little importance. Defense budgets are being cut and mutual accusations are beginning, recalls “Foreign Affairs“.
President John F. Kennedy is trying to get the Europeans to do more for their defense, but, having already completed their post-war reconstruction, they respond that the American nuclear umbrella protects them enough and are increasingly reducing money for military spending in the midst of the Cold War. “If the Europeans do not show a real interest in their defense, it will become impossible for the government in Washington to convince the American public that we are true partners in a mission to guarantee our collective security“, the permanent representative of the United States to NATO, Harlan Cleveland, openly declares to the European allies.
In 1977, the Europeans committed to increasing defense investments, and in 1984, Georgia Senator Sam Nunn introduced a bill that would have required Washington to reduce its forces by a third if they did not take real action in this direction. The bill was not passed, but the Europeans were shaken and slightly increased their military spending.
In 2006, at the alliance summit in Riga, the allies committed to spending 2% of GDP on defense, but by 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, only a handful of the 28 alliance countries had done so, recalls “Foreign Affairs“.
In 2011, in his farewell address to NATO allies, then-US Defense Secretary Robert Gates echoed Cleveland's words. “The bitter reality is that the willingness and patience of the US Congress and politicians to waste more and more precious funds on countries that are clearly unwilling to allocate the necessary resources will become less and less,“ Gates pointed out.