WARSAW — NATO leaders took pains Friday to demonstrate common resolve at the outset of a two-day summit overshadowed by concerns over European unity and alliance divisions about how to counter Russia’s territorial grabs.
“This will be a landmark summit and the decisions we are going to take together will once again confirm that Europe and North America stand together, act together, to protect all Allies against any threats,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.
U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking to reporters before the summit began, emphasized the continued importance of Europe to American security, adding that while the U.K.’s planned secession from the EU was “a critical moment” in the region’s history, it was not, as some have suggested, the beginning of the end for either European integration or the transatlantic alliance.
“As is often the case in moments of change, this type of hyperbole is misplaced,” Obama said. “The security of Europe and the United States is indivisible. … Europe will remain a cornerstone of America’s engagement with the world.”
Obama’s appearance in Warsaw was part policy discussion and part pep talk as he sought to shore up confidence in the Western alliance and its ability to respond to threats with a common approach, much like the president’s last trip to Europe in April.
At a pre-summit meeting with Obama, European Union leaders stressed they were committed to an amicable relationship with the U.K. after it leaves the bloc. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said afterwards that he didn’t expect a “hostile mood” during negotiations with the U.K. and that further cooperation was essential to preserve a “community of interests” that transcends “the defense and military sectors.”
“It’s in our interest and the global interest to keep Britain as a strong ally,” Juncker concluded as Obama looked on.
Brexit isn’t the only issue gnawing at NATO. Questions over the West’s stance on Russia in the wake of its 2014 annexation of Crimea and support for an armed rebellion in eastern Ukraine, as well as the refugee crisis, have sparked contentious debates that are testing the bloc.
On Russia, the case for a show of force advocated by Poland and the Baltic states has carried the day.
Symbolic deployment
While NATO’s eastern members, which share dark memories of Soviet occupation, failed to win support for permanent NATO bases in the region, the alliance agreed to almost the same thing — stationing four multi-national battalions there by next year. The U.S. will command the battalion to be located in Poland, Germany will command the one in Lithuania, Canada in Latvia and the U.K. in Estonia. Troops will be rotated through from across the alliance.
The battalions will be backed by a quick reaction force of 40,000 able to swiftly deploy to the region in case of an emergency.
“NATO has responded with speed and determination,” Stoltenberg said, calling it the alliance’s “biggest reinforcement in a generation.”
Though the build-up is modest, Russia has vowed to respond in kind
NATO will also improve its missile defense capabilities, which Stoltenberg stressed would not pose a threat to Russia’s nuclear forces, as well as creating a Romanian-Bulgarian battalion in southeastern Europe.
But with a combined strength of just 4,000 troops, the deployment of the four battalions is largely symbolic. Western military commanders acknowledge they wouldn’t be able to defend the Baltics from significantly larger Russian forces already in the region if Moscow were to invade. Nonetheless, the move sends what more hawkish voices in the alliance regard as an important message to the Kremlin. Under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, states are obligated to come to the aid of any alliance member that comes under attack.
Though the build-up is modest, Russia has vowed to respond in kind. The threat of a spiral has particularly unnerved Germany, where a large majority of the population opposes NATO’s move.
‘Stop signal’
Chancellor Angela Merkel defended the NATO policy, calling for a combination of “deterrence and dialogue” with Russia in a speech to parliament Thursday before heading to the summit. But she has done little to sell a stronger NATO response to the German public. As a result, a more conciliatory approach urged by her Social Democrat foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and his allies, a group that includes many of Merkel’s conservatives, has won wide support.
“What we would really need now is some kind of stop signal, a negotiated end to the arms spiral and of course that’s only possible through talks,” Gernot Erler, the German government’s point man on Russia, said in a radio interview on Thursday.
Such views are not confined to Germany. Upon arrival in Warsaw, French President François Hollande said he viewed Russia as a “partner,” not an adversary.
‘This is a way to do deterrence and to make a point’ — Madeleine Albright
NATO officials are due to meet with their Russian counterparts in Brussels next week where they will explain the alliance’s new force posture and try to calm tensions, but Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius didn’t expect there would be any breakthrough in relations, saying the talks would be “two monologues.”
Still, for now at least, alliance members have endorsed the stronger approach toward Moscow pushed by the U.S. and the Eastern Europeans.
The deployment “gives NATO a capability it didn’t have before,” former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright told POLITICO on the sidelines of the summit. “Some of it is psychological, but this is a way to do deterrence and to make a point.”
Albright helped negotiate the 1997 agreement on relations between NATO and Russia, under which the West refrained from permanently stationing troops in Central and Eastern Europe, but she now noted that “Russia broke the deal.” That’s why the alliance “shouldn’t get stuck on words” on the issue of whether the four battalions mean a permanent or rotating presence in the region.