U.S. Is Poised to Put Heavy Weaponry in Eastern Europe
Oksana Dzadan / Associated Press
By ERIC SCHMITT and STEVEN LEE MYERS
June 13, 2015
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.
An interim step would be prepositioning the additional weapons and
vehicles in Germany ahead of decisions to move them farther east.
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
1997 agreement 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.”
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