Daily Archives: July 20, 2017

Tens of thousands of troops are on the move from the Baltic to the Black Sea, as NATO and Russia open up a series of massive military exercises the size of which the continent hasn't seen since the Cold War.

Both sides claim the drills, which involve aircraft, warships, tanks and artillery, are purely defensive in nature. But it is clear the exercises are also meant to show off new capabilities and technologies, and display not only the strength of alliances, but how swiftly troops and heavy equipment can move to squash a threat at the frontier.

The most ambitious undertaking on the NATO side is Saber Guardian 17, a series of over a dozen distinct battle drills being carried out by 25,000 troops from 20 countries moving across Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

The scenario presented to ground commanders is that a technologically advanced land force has pushed into NATO territory and is threatening the alliance as a whole. The drills include air defense tests, live fire tank engagements, long advances by armored columns, fighter planes and helicopters supporting ground movements, electronic warfare, and airdrops.

"Deterrence is about capability, it's about making sure that any potential adversary knows that we are prepared to do whatever is necessary," U.S. Army Europe commander Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges told reporters during the exercise. "What escalates tensions is when we look weak, not connected, not prepared, that is what invites aggression."

But increasing military capability doesn't have to mean war, he added. "The Russians only respect strength, so if we demonstrate cohesion, if we demonstrate that we are together, that we are prepared, then I think we don't have to worry."

The general's blunt comments underscore the planning for Saber Guardian, which doesn't name Russia as the adversary, but clearly has the Kremlin in mind.

The scenario revolves around an incursion into NATO territory by a militarily advanced enemy intent on seizing the economic assets of Black Sea countries. A battle featuring 5,000 NATO troops at the Cincu training range in Romania saw U.S. Apache and Romanian helicopters coordinate with artillery on the ground, U.S. Abrams tanks, and 650 vehicles in support of a large infantry movement to halt the advance.

The U.S. is planning to spend about $23 million on the sprawling Romanian base in order to conduct even larger, more complex battle drills there in the future.

On the other side of the deterrent fence stands Russia, which is preparing to surge as many as 100,000 troops into the field in a series of drills dubbed Zapad, or "West" in the coming weeks.

The Kremlin claims about 12,700 troops will be active in Belarus and Russia for Zapad. But experts and NATO officials say Moscow is more likely to conduct a series of engagements that will swell those ranks by tens of thousands. Under the Vienna Document agreement of 2011, foreign observers must be present for any exercise that exceeds 13,000 troops.

By coming in under that number while conducting several other large drills at the same time, Moscow can avoid the presence of observers and control the narrative of how its troops performed.

But NATO is wary.

Given that Russia used a massive military exercise in 2014 to obscure its incursion into Crimea, and invaded South Ossetia in Georgia in 2008 during another exercise that covered troop movements, the alliance is keeping a close eye on Zapad.

"From previous experiences related to previous exercises, we have every reason to believe there may be substantially more troops participating than the official quoted numbers," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said recently when asked about Zapad.

"We don't consider this year's Zapad exercise in itself to be a direct threat to [NATO] or a cover for an attack," added Kristjan Prikk, undersecretary for defense policy at Estonia's Ministry of Defense during a conference in Washington on July 11. "But we have to keep in mind that the Russians have the nasty habit of hiding their actual military endeavors behind exercises."

The last Zapad, in 2014, focused on displaying how quickly Russia could move forces from one part of the country to another, and illustrated how the Kremlin underplays the number of troops involved in its intertwined military drills.

Moscow claimed about 22,000 troops took part in 2014, but outside observers later concluded that up to 70,000 were involved, once all of the smaller but related exercises were added up.

Whatever number of troops ultimately take part, Moscow is "going to very actively signal what they can and cannot do militarily," said Olga Oliker of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And the fact that Russia often conducts nuclear exercises in conjunction with conventional movements adds an extra element of uncertainty for NATO and the West.

This year, "I'm looking to see what Kaliningrad's role is in the exercise, and what supporting and concurrent exercises are being held in Belarus and Kaliningrad," the Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea, Oliker said.

Three Chinese warships are slated to arrive in Kaliningrad in July 21 to take part in a series of drills with the Russian navy and air force.

The upcoming week's worth of activities will include anti-submarine and anti-ship operations, and practice between the two nations communicating and coordinating while fighting. "The main aims of the exercise are to increase the efficiency in cooperation of the two fleets to counter threats to security at sea, [and] train compatibility of the crews of Russian and Chinese combat ships," the Russian Defense Ministry said.

The naval activity in the Baltic comes months after NATO established new brigades in Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, beefed up by prepositioned American tanks and heavy armored vehicles.

In June, the U.S. Air Force also sent B-1 and B-52 bombers to Europe to participate in the massive BALTOPs exercise with Baltic allies, which included 50 allied ships running through a series of defensive maneuvers to protect NATO's northern flanks.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Army deployed a Patriot anti-aircraft missile system in Lithuania for use in yet another NATO wargame, marking the first time the system has been brought to the Baltic region where Russia enjoys a robust air and missile defense capability. The deployment is temporary, U.S. officials cautioned, but officials in Lithuania are looking at purchasing the system. Romania recently committed to a $3.9 billion deal for seven Patriot missile defense systems in July.

Closer to Russia's borders and Crimea is another NATO exercise related to Saber Guardian, dubbed Sea Breeze 2017. The 12-day naval exercise currently underway in the Black Sea is co-hosted by the U.S. and Ukraine, and features the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Hue City and the destroyer USS Carney, which join 16 other countries in the Odessa-based undertaking. American surveillance plans and a team of Navy SEALs are also participating.

The naval exercises will be closely watched by Russian forces, who are active in the Black Sea, and have vastly improved their surveillance capabilities in Crimea. Over the past year, Russian aircraft have repeatedly buzzed American warships and aircraft in international waters in the Black Sea, drawing protests from Washington.

In February, an armed Russian aircraft buzzed the USS Porter, and in May armed Russian jets came within feet of U.S. surveillance planes operating over the waterway.

More:
NATO, Russian troops rattle swords along hundreds of miles of borderland - Chicago Tribune

President Trumps assertion that NATO countries are not carrying their fair share of the security burden rings hollow across military bases in Eastern Europe this month, where 45,000 troops from the United States and 23 other countries are staging war rehearsals for a Russian invasion.

Eighteen exercises are underway this summer in the Black Sea region, an area that has grown especially nervous about Russias aggressive posture.

U.S. military leaders do not expect an imminent invasion, but they understand why countries along the Russian border are jittery. These exercises should help them prepare to fight back if and when Russia threatens them, said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of U.S. Army Europe.

I dont think thats likely to happen, but it has happened, Hodges said. And certainly anyone who lives close to that area, from Finland and Sweden all the way down to Romania, believes it is possible.

Hodges spoke Tuesday from Bezmer Air Base, Bulgaria, in a live webcast hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army.

In the largest of the 18 exercises, dubbed Saber Guardian, 14,000 U.S. soldiers are participating. Other troops came from Armenia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Croatia, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Macedonia, Republic of Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

The naval piece of the combat rehearsal is called Sea Breeze, co-hosted this year by the United States and Ukraine. Air, land, sea, and amphibious forces from 17 nations will simulate maritime interdiction operations, air defense, anti-submarine warfare, damage control tactics, search and rescue, and amphibious warfare.

Patriot anti-missile batteries were deployed in Lithuania for the Tobruk Legacy exercise, which focuses on long-range anti-aircraft and missile defense.

Hodges said these drills should not be viewed as provocative acts but as deterrence.

We want to be ready, he said. We are practicing how we would mass power and assemble multinational teams quickly so our political leaders have some options.

A sense of urgency is especially acute among the three Saber Guardian host nations: Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. They are all in on this thing, said Hodges. These countries are completely committed. The public there has welcomed U.S. soldiers, he added. Ive been very pleased with that.

U.S. allies are fretting over Russias upcoming military exercise, called Zapad. About 3,000 Russian troops and 800 tanks will be in Belarus later this year to rehearse and train for a potential confrontation with NATO. There is anxiety about the Russian exercise, said Hodges. This will be the first Zapad since Russians annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The incursion into Crimea was the event that forced NATO to rethink its security posture. Russian aggression in the 21st century has pushed warfare into unfamiliar territory, Army officers Amos Fox and Andrew Rossow wrote in a recent Institute of Land Warfare white paper.

In conflicts in Chechnya, Georgia and Ukraine over the past decade, Russia has perfected hybrid warfare tactics, they noted. It is a whole of government approach that includes covert action, manipulation of public opinion and cyberwarfare.

The exercises in Eastern Europe are important for the U.S. Army as well, said Deputy Commander of U.S. Army Europe Maj. Gen. Timothy McGuire.

What do we do in a crisis? he said via webcast from Bulgaria. The U.S. military for a long time has not trained for the type of war that it would have to fight against a sophisticated enemy like Russia. We have to bring back that toughness, McGuire said. We are trying to get back to being agile, he said. The days of going to a FOB [forward operating base] with three meals a day provided by [military contractor] KBR are over.

One of the challenges is logistics, he said. Youve heard the saying: Tactics are for amateurs, logistics are for professionals. The U.S. Army has three combat brigades based in Germany, so moving troops and supplies to Eastern Europe would require careful planning. We have to get diplomatic clearances from nations, said McGuire. Weve had friction at the borders; the coordination is not as solid as it should be. Even routine checkpoints can hold up supply convoys.

In the United States, meanwhile, the debate continues over how much of the Army should be permanently based in Europe.

The presence there was downsized dramatically after the Obama administration in 2012 adopted a pivot to Asia strategy that deemphasized Europe. Two armored brigades in Europe were eliminated. Two brigades a Stryker and an airborne infantry remained.

Priorities had to be reevaluated in the wake of Crimea. An armored brigade and a combat aviation brigade now rotate there for nine-month tours. A study by the Army War College suggested the Army should consider stationing a brigade in Poland.

Most U.S. military leaders have pointed to Russia as their top national security concern. Trump administration officials have not said much on the issue, which is not surprising, as the White House remains embroiled in scandals related to Russians meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Trumps nominee for principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, David Trachtenberg, explained his thinking on Russia last week during his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. We face no shortage of challenges. Russia has invaded a neighbor whose territorial integrity it pledged to respect, violated its arms treaty commitments, and threaten NATO allies with nuclear attack.

See the original post:
NATO Is Staging War Rehearsals for the Ultimate Nightmare: A Russian Invasion - The National Interest Online (blog)

More than 6 million people in Turkey spent the last weekend in the streets commemorating the failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016.

The reason why the people's reflexes are still alive after all this time is that they believe that the danger is not yet over.

Now, the whole world knows what that belief is. Turkish people think what happened on that night was not an ordinary coup like the previous ones in the country and that the purpose was to make the country vulnerable to invasion.

As opposed to what some Western politicians and strategists think, the only factor in the proliferation of this conviction is not the political atmosphere in Turkey.

The West itself has the lion's share in the emotional break of Turkish people from the West.

This is because Turks personally witnessed that the West and its institutions did not even formally side with them on that night.

Feeling alone in the face of the silence of Western institutions such as the EU, NATO and the U.N. on the night of the coup attempt, the people joined hands. They clamped together even more tightly as a result of the fact that soldiers deemed responsible for the coup escaped to U.S. bases or took shelter in EU countries such as Greece and Germany.

Moreover, there were examples in front of them such as the embarrassing design of the West, which pretends to be the knight of democracy, in Egypt and Syria.

Obviously, this course of things has brought Turkey, which has been in the Western bloc for a century since the founding of the modern Republic, to a crossroads. However, the path that Ankara points to and moves toward is poised not only to influence its EU accession talks, but also its relations with institutions like NATO, which has high symbolic value.

For instance, the fact that Turkey, a member of NATO since 1952, is purchasing S400 air defense systems from Russia, the de facto enemy of the organization, is an issue that must be emphasized.

News from Ankara and Moscow reveal that the parties even discussed concrete figures regarding the rocket batteries and their cost.

There is no problem with NATO. In other words, Turkey's NATO membership does not prevent it from pursuing a multifaceted policy, including procurement. Experts argue that this diversity in defense will not create a contradiction for Turkey's close relations and interests in other regions.

Obviously, however, such a de facto situation will make NATO, the most iconic institution of the Western bloc against Russia, rather than its function, lose credibility.

Brussels is aware that it will not be able to make up for Turkey, its strategic border ally, with the new member countries it has in Eastern Europe or with alternatives in the chaotic Arab world.

I think that NATO's condemnation of the July 15 coup attempt, even though delayed by a year, and its rejection of Germany, which demands pressure on Turkey because of the base visit crisis, are signs of this awareness.

However, almost all of the Turkish electorate now wants more solid assurances from the West and its institutions. Hence, NATO should not adopt a rigid attitude like the EU and must increase its gestures in its dialogue with Ankara, which indexes its presence to the electorate's reflexes.

NATO should do this before Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has looked at an ally like Turkey with great aspiration for years, comes much closer to Turkey.

Follow this link:
EU failed, NATO in the limelight - Daily Sabah