BUDAPEST — The Obama administration’s plans to quadruple military spending in Central and
Eastern Europe, largely in response to recent aggression in Ukraine and
elsewhere by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, were greeted warmly but warily in the
region on Tuesday.
“It is clear that the European Union can no longer adequately respond to
Russia’s demonstrations of power, so it is comforting that at least the United
States is finally stepping up,” Roman Kuzniar, a professor at the Institute of
International Relations at the University of Warsaw, said Tuesday.
Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and his continued support for
pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine — along with provocative incursions into
Ukraine’s airspace, increased submarine patrols and military maneuvers near Russia’s western
borders — have unsettled many of
the former Communist states in the region and have led to increasing demands
for a concrete Western response. The news from Washington was welcomed by several government officials.
“We appreciate
President Obama’s decision to boost funding for an increased U.S. military
presence on the territory of NATO’s
front-line allies,” the Czech Defense Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The U.S. is the leader of the Atlantic alliance and has an indispensable role
in making its collective deterrent sufficiently robust and credible.”
Raimonds Bergmanis, the Latvian defense minister, said
in a statement on Tuesday, “Deterrence is what we are after, and a decision by
the U.S. authorities to preposition equipment in Central and Eastern Europe
would send a clear message of resolve and determination.”
Analysts said Mr. Putin was likely to respond with a
buildup of his own, although they doubted that it would inspire a new arms
race.
“Russia will not welcome the strengthening of the
American contingent in Europe at the time when, regardless of the overall
political difficulties, there is no risk of a direct military confrontation
with NATO,”
said Igor Korotchenko, editor in chief of the Russian magazine National Defense. “This will
make the system in Europe more unbalanced. It is one thing when the Americans
deploy their forces in Spain, but it is very different when they deploy them in
Poland, Romania or the Baltic States.”
Still, Mr. Korotchenko added, “the response will not
be hysteric.”
Western officials had previously announced at a NATO
summit meeting in Wales plans to build military supply bases and to station
troops in Eastern Europe to bolster NATO’s ability to respond rapidly in the
event of Russian aggression.
The Obama administration is
proposing more than $3.4 billion in military spending in the region next year —
far more than the $786 million in the current budget — and will position new
equipment and have a full armored combat brigade deployed somewhere in the region,
on a rotating basis, at all times.
Administration officials argued that the rotating
deployment would keep the United States in compliance with the NATO-Russia Founding
Act of 1997, under which both sides promised not to station large
numbers of troops along borders shared by Russia and members of the alliance.
Government leaders in Poland and the Baltic nations have argued that
Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine have already violated the act, and they
urged American leaders to station permanent troops in the region. Poland’s new
right-wing government, in particular, has made the deployment of NATO troops in
the region a major foreign policy goal.
This summer’s NATO summit meeting will be held in
Warsaw, and the American proposal anticipates some of the demands likely to be
raised.
“It seems that they have finally realized that
their previously weaker interest in this part of Europe hadn’t done them any
favors,” said Lukasz Kister, a security and foreign policy expert from the Collegium Civitas in Warsaw.
“This decision will try to make up for that.”
Radko Hokovsky, executive director of European Values, a research
organization in Prague, said he hoped that allies in Europe would respond to
the United States’ example. “Europeans really need to step up their defense
efforts so that they are not like a child always waiting for an American mom to
come save them because they are so lazy to spend their wealth on their own
security,” he said.
Despite Russian aggression,
European military spending has dropped in each of the past three years,
according to the NATO 2015 annual report. Although the
alliance asks its member states to contribute 2 percent of gross domestic
product to military purposes, only a few countries in Europe do.
“Russia is still strongly
perceived as a threat, and bolder U.S. moves and capabilities would be most
welcomed,” said Radu Magdin, a political analyst in Bucharest, Romania.
Romania, Poland and the Baltics have been especially
vocal in criticizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its continuing support
of separatists in eastern Ukraine.
“This is not signaling a return to Cold War-era
deterrence, which relied on a very heavy U.S. military buildup in Europe,” said
Eoin Micheál McNamara, a NATO specialist at the University of Tartu in Estonia.
Instead, he said the increased American commitment is “an important down
payment on the new-style U.S. deterrence posture in Eastern Europe.”
Not everyone will react positively to a larger
American military presence, analysts said. In some countries, like the Czech
Republic, where some leaders have increasingly made overtures to Moscow, the
move may be seen as counterproductive.
“The tone in the country is increasingly being set by
the president, Milos Zeman, who speaks openly of ending the sanctions against
Russia and would see this as a step in the opposite direction,” said Erik Best,
the American-born, Prague-based author of The Fleet Sheet,
an online political and business journal.
In Moscow, analysts tried Tuesday morning to predict
Mr. Putin’s reaction. They agreed that it would almost certainly involve
increasing troops and equipment along the country’s western border.
“What will happen is that, on the one hand, Russia
will further develop its military infrastructure in the western regions that
was underdeveloped only five years ago,” said Ruslan Pukhov, head of the Center for Analysis of
Strategies and Technologies. “On the other, the new weapons
will be deployed in Russia’s west, instead of east.”
Mr. Korotchenko agreed that new weapons systems would
probably be deployed in the region, but he did not expect there to be a major
increase in Russian military spending — something the Kremlin might be
hard-pressed to support with low oil prices and international sanctions
hobbling the Russian economy.
“We remember well how the arms race ended for the Soviet
Union,” Mr. Korotchenko said. “We
will not make the same mistake twice.”
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