Even when the Obama administration wants to appear like it cares about reassuring allies in Russia’s neighborhood, it can’t quite pull it off. Yesterday’s announcement that the Carter Pentagon will place military ground equipment in six Eastern European countries is, one supposes, better than not doing anything but not by much.
The equipment will be placed in Romania, Poland, the three Baltic states, Bulgaria, and Germany and will consist of 250 pieces composed primarily of Bradley fighting vehicles, as well as fewer than a hundred M1 tanks and fewer than two dozen howitzers. Spread around the seven states, the new resources will be arranged in company-sized equipment sets, with perhaps a battalion-sized set tossed in for good measure.
Certainly, the decision to place the equipment in the region will hardly deter Russian forces, whose snap exercises these days often involve tens of thousands of soldiers, airmen, and sailors, hundreds of aircraft, and several thousand armored vehicles. And, indeed, the added equipment was described by the Pentagon spokesman as an effort to bring down the logistical expense of what smaller exercises we conduct: “To preposition this equipment…it’s a benefit for the taxpayers, it’s a benefit for the soldiers.” Considering the spokesman also confirmed that there were no plans to enhance American air power in the region, one is left with the sense that this is about the bare minimum the administration could do and still argue it was doing something.
Combine this small effort with NATO’s underwhelming response to the Ukraine crisis and the threat on its eastern borders—the creation of a new 5,000 troop “very” rapid reaction force; is there any reason for Putin and the Kremlin to think that Washington and the alliance are really determined to meet his stated plans to challenge the West’s security architecture? In the end, this could well produce a miscalculation on the part of Putin and colleagues about the alliance’s will to uphold its Article V commitments. But it will be one that Washington and Brussels will have invited.
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