RIGA, Latvia — In a significant move to deter possible
Russian aggression in Europe, the Pentagon is poised to store battle tanks,
infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons for as many as 5,000 American
troops in several Baltic and Eastern European countries, American and allied
officials say.
The proposal, if approved, would represent
the first time since the end of the Cold War that the United States has
stationed heavy military equipment in the newer NATO member nations in Eastern Europe that
had once been part of the Soviet sphere of influence. Russia’s
annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine have caused alarm and
prompted new military planning in NATO capitals.
It would be the most prominent of a series of
moves the United States and NATO have taken to bolster forces in the region and
send a clear message of resolve to allies and to Russia’s president, Vladimir
V. Putin, that the United States would defend the alliance’s members closest to
the Russian frontier.
After the expansion of NATO to include the
Baltic nations in 2004, the United States and its allies avoided the permanent
stationing of equipment or troops in the east as they sought varying forms of
partnership with Russia.
“This is a very meaningful shift in policy,” said James
G. Stavridis, a retired admiral and the former supreme allied commander of
NATO, who is now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts
University. “It provides a reasonable level of reassurance to jittery allies,
although nothing is as good as troops stationed full-time on the ground, of
course.”
The amount of equipment included in the planning is
small compared with what Russia could bring to bear against the NATO nations on
or near its borders, but it would serve as a credible sign of American
commitment, acting as a deterrent the way that the Berlin Brigade did after the Berlin Wall crisis in 1961.
“It’s like taking NATO back to the
future,” said Julianne Smith, a former defense and White House official who is
now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a vice
president at the consulting firm Beacon Global Strategies.
The “prepositioned” stocks — to be stored on allied
bases and enough to equip a brigade of 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers — also would be
similar to what the United States maintained in Kuwait for more than a decade
after Iraq invaded it in 1990 and was expelled by American and allied forces
early the next year.
The Pentagon’s proposal still requires
approval by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and the White House. And
political hurdles remain, as the significance of the potential step has stirred
concern among some NATO allies about Russia’s reaction to a buildup of
equipment.
“The U.S. military continues to review the best
location to store these materials in consultation with our allies,” said Col.
Steven H. Warren, a Pentagon spokesman. “At this time, we have made no decision
about if or when to move to this equipment.”
Senior officials briefed on the proposals, who
described the internal military planning on the condition of anonymity, said
that they expected approval to come before the NATO defense ministers’ meeting
in Brussels this month.
The current proposal falls short of permanently
assigning United States troops to the Baltics — something that senior officials
of those countries recently requested in a letter to NATO. Even so, officials
in those countries say they welcome the proposal to ship at least the equipment
forward.
“We need the prepositioned equipment because if
something happens, we’ll need additional armaments, equipment and ammunition,”
Raimonds Vejonis, Latvia’s minister of defense, said in an interview at his
office here last week.
“If something happens, we can’t wait days or weeks for
more equipment,” said Mr. Vejonis, who will become Latvia’s president in July.
“We need to react immediately.”
Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University who has written extensively on Russia’s military and
security services, noted, “Tanks on the ground, even if they haven’t people in
them, make for a significant marker.”
As the proposal stands now, a company’s worth of
equipment — enough for about 150 soldiers — would be stored in each of the
three Baltic nations: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Enough for a company or
possibly a battalion — about 750 soldiers — would be located in Poland,
Romania, Bulgaria and possibly Hungary, they said.
American military specialists have
conducted site surveys in the countries under consideration, and the Pentagon
is working on estimates about the costs to upgrade railways, build new
warehouses and equipment-cleaning facilities, and to replace other Soviet-era
facilities to accommodate the heavy American weaponry. The weapons warehouses
would be guarded by local or security contractors, and not by American military
personnel, officials said.
Positioning the equipment forward saves the United
States Army time, money and resources, and avoids having to ship the equipment
back and forth to the United States each time an Army unit travels to Europe to
train. A full brigade’s worth of equipment — formally called the European
Activity Set — would include about 1,200 vehicles, including some 250 M1-A2
tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and armored howitzers, according to a senior
military official.
The Army previously said after the invasion of Crimea
last year that it would expand the amount of equipment it stored at the
Grafenwöhr training range in southeastern Germany and at other sites to a
brigade from a battalion.
Army units — currently a battalion from the Third
Infantry Division — now fly into the range on regular rotations, using the same
equipment left in place. They train with the equipment there or take it to
exercises elsewhere in Europe.
That, along with stepped-up air patrolling and training
exercises on NATO’s eastern flank, was among the initial measures approved by
NATO’s leaders at their summit meeting in Wales last year. The Pentagon’s
proposal reflects a realization that the tensions with Russia are unlikely to
diminish soon.
“We have to transition from what was a series of temporary decisions made
last year,” said Heather A. Conley, director of the Europe Program at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The idea of moving prepositioned weapons and materials to the Baltics and
Eastern Europe has been discussed before, but never carried out because it
would be viewed by the Kremlin as a violation of the spirit of the 1997agreement between NATO and Russia that laid the foundation for cooperation.
In that agreement, NATO pledged that, “in the current and foreseeable
security environment,” it would not seek “additional permanent stationing of
substantial ground combat forces” in the nations closer to Russia.
The agreement also says that “NATO and Russia do not consider each other as
adversaries.” Many in the alliance argue that Russia’s increasingly aggressive
actions around NATO’s borders have made that pact effectively moot.
The Pentagon’s proposal has gained new support because of fears among the
eastern NATO allies that they could face a Russian threat.
“This is essentially about
politics,” Professor Galeotti said. “This is about telling Russia that you’re
getting closer to a real red line.”
In an interview before a visit to Italy this week, Mr. Putin dismissed fears of any
Russian attack on NATO.
“I think that only an insane person and only in a dream can imagine that
Russia would suddenly attack NATO,” he told the newspaper Corriere Della Sera.
“I think some countries are simply taking advantage of people’s fears with
regard to Russia. They just want to play the role of front-line countries that
should receive some supplementary military, economic, financial or some other
aid.”
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