Super Power Plays: NATO’s Ready Response to Russia’s Geopolitical Ambitions
By Taras Zhovtenko
Russia’s illegal annexation and militarization of the seized territories in Eastern Ukraine is an integral part of the country’s much more ambitious plan to reinstall itself as a superpower, something akin to the long-gone USSR. In its actions aimed at undermining the European and Euro-Atlantic political and security structures, including NATO, Moscow desires not only to restore its military and political potential but also to revive the Cold War reality. Tactically, Putin needs either total control over Ukraine as a way to achieve former USSR-style geopolitical reign or, at least, the creation and maintenance of permanent “controlled chaos” within Ukrainian territory: the vaster the scale, the better for Moscow as an instrument for solving various domestic problems. Strategically, Putin uses this situation to further destabilize the Euro-Atlantic security system to force Washington to negotiate the new “spheres of influence” in Eastern Europe by threatening the US, European allies, and NATO itself. Russia’s actions add complexity to the already complex set of various asymmetric security challenges (such as terrorism, cyber threats, and WMD proliferation) by mixing them with the more traditional threat of full-scale nation-state conflict and the new “hybrid” playbook. Thus, NATO’s objective as a security organization is aimed directly at addressing these “hybrid” threats. Reacting accordingly to this set of old and new challenges, NATO once again has to prove its ability to remain capable of dealing with the risks of the modern world. To this end, this paper asks the following questions: What is the Kremlin up to, and how can NATO enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) counter Russian forces?
By Taras Zhovtenko
Kremlin Playbook
Russia’s ruling elites seek not only to re-establish political, economic, information, and military control over the post-Soviet region (including Ukraine and Georgia) but also to halt the “expansion” of the influence of Washington and its European allies—Moscow’s old-new “arch-enemy”. According to Russian Parliament Speaker Sergey Naryshkin, US “appetites in Europe” are not limited to NATO’s sphere of influence; rather, Washington “seeks to expand its influence all over the continent”[i], e.g., to Estonia, Georgia, and Ukraine. This statement was in line with an earlier comment by the Russian president during the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy on 10 February 2007 in which Putin accused the United States of provoking a new nuclear arms race by developing ballistic missile defences, undermining international institutions, and further destabilizing the Middle East. The Russian leader formally opposes such a “world of one master, one sovereign”[ii] and sees US actions as a clear invitation for the Kremlin’s aggressive posture.
Russian elites are using everything they have—from “hybrid” scenarios to brutal direct military interventions—to gain footholds all over neighbouring countries. These moves coincide with strong in-country military build up as well as rapid militarization of strategic points, such as Crimea, Kaliningrad (with its constant military reinforcement drills), and the Arctic, to compensate for Russia’s lack of modern strategic arms capable of directly threatening the United States and to hinder Allied capabilities through establishing the A2AD shield. In this, Putin is not an innovator—he is just following in the footsteps of former USSR leader Nikita Khrushchev. Lacking strategic delivery systems, the latter used Cuban territory as a launching point for his more sophisticated tactical missiles to reach targets in the continental US.
In its efforts to undermine the European and Euro-Atlantic political and security structures, Moscow actively utilizes its Cold War playbook mixed with modern instruments of warfare. For instance, Russian “hybrid” warfare technology is conceptually based on the American idea of “Network-Centric Warfare” (NCW) in which one side gains victory over the adversary by planning military operations not to physically destroy the adversary’s military but to achieve the desired media (and psychological) effect, thus achieving information and psychological dominance. What’s more, Russian military “borrowed” another NCW-related concept known as “Effect-Based Operations” and successfully implemented it into its native “Reflexive Control” theory, aimed at the decision-making processes within enemy command and political institutions.
Moscow closely observed American attempts to put the NCW concept into use in the Afghanistan (2001–2002) and Iraq (2003) military campaigns, as well as the mistakes made, and was eager to learn from them. For instance, during the “Iraqi Freedom” campaign, US military command paid considerable attention to implementing the NCW principles. However, the end result proved dubious. Neither the majority of Western countries, the key Middle Eastern allies of the Coalition, nor Iraqis themselves were persuaded of the arguments used to justify the campaign. What’s more, Washington faced a lot of setbacks on the tactical level aimed at conducting information and psychological operations to support US troops.
One of the most obvious (and consistent with the NCW practice) reasons for this was simple: US Special Operations Command used their regular troops to conduct NCW operations meant to achieve not military (tactical or strategic) but purely information/psychological effects (the so-called Effect-Based Operations, or EBOs). The information domain reacted to those actions in a way not predicted by military planners: instead of producing desirable information chaos, and in this way supporting efforts to guide the information flows, the media focused more on the obvious facts of the troops’ national identification, always associating the operations (and all the collateral damage) with US military forces.
Russians found a perfect solution for this—once you make your forces unidentifiable, you achieve your strategic objective—either taking advantage by gaining information superiority over your adversary or achieving other tactical goals.
NATO Response
Under these circumstances, NATO is as the key international security organization with enough experience (both conceptual and practical), resources, and potential to face the unprecedented challenges to European and Euro-Atlantic security. The steps the Alliance has undertaken over the past five years are aimed at ultimately modernizing the existing collective security system to effectively deal with new threats and security risks. Hybrid methods of warfare, such as propaganda, deception, sabotage, and other non-military tactics, have long been used to destabilise adversaries. What is new about the attacks seen in recent years is their speed, scale, and intensity, facilitated by rapid technological change and global interconnectivity.
In the July 2018 Brussels Summit, NATO leaders further shaped the strategy countering hybrid warfare. They agreed to set up counter-hybrid support teams, which provide tailored targeted assistance to Allies upon their request, in preparing for and responding to hybrid activities.
Following the 11–12 July 2018 NATO Summit in Brussels, the Alliance’s counter-hybrid warfare strategy focuses on the following key points[iii]:
Preparedness – by gathering, assessing, and sharing the information in order to detect and attribute any ongoing hybrid activity with the Joint Intelligence and Security Division at NATO Headquarters. This improves the Alliance’s understanding and analysis of hybrid threats, and the hybrid analysis branch provides decision-makers with improved awareness on possible hybrid threats.
Deterrence – by increasing the readiness and preparedness of its forces, strengthening its decision-making process and its command structure as part of its deterrence and defence posture.
Defence – by deploying forces in a quick and agile way, whenever and wherever needed.
The Article V Challenge
“Hybrid” unidentified“Hybrid” unidentified units units pose a clear and present threat to the implementation of Article V of the Washington Treaty, the cornerstone of the NATO collective security system. The main problem with facing “hybrid” forces is their timely and correct identification, as well as presenting a clear legal and political baseline for the Article to be activated through the North Atlantic Council. After all, among the main threats Allies had in mind when drafting Article V was the potentially vast Westward advance of the Soviet Army—hardly a covert operation carried out with unmarked units. In contrast, “hybrid” aggression develops rapidly, and the timeline for these actions is extremely limited.
At the Wales Summit in September 2014, Allies decided to enhance the already existing NATO Response Force (NRF) by establishing the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) able to deploy within a few days to respond to any “hybrid” challenges that may arise. The VJTF aims not so much at fully repelling the potential “hybrid” invasion but rather at quickly identifying possibly hostile forces in order to more rapidly and efficiently implement Article V. After their instalment these forces began active training with member states’ conventional forces as it soon became clear that the Russian-orchestrated “hybrid” scenario has limited operational and practical efficiency without support from conventional units, especially in a hostile environment.
However, another loophole remained: while the Alliance had successfully installed the VJTF, a lengthy process of deploying the multinational Allied forces remained for which the unanimous political decision by the North Atlantic Council was required. In terms of dynamic and time-lapsed “hybrid” attacks, this delayed the practical utilization of the VJTF units and sufficiently hindered their efficiency. Thus, an exception was made for the Rapid Reaction Force to be deployed through the sole decision of the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. In this way the VJTF units are rapidly deployed and effectively deal with any potential “hybrid” threats anywhere they emerge. Meanwhile, the official NATO response mechanism, i.e., approval from the North Atlantic Council, is set into motion.
Reinforcing Allies
NATO had seemingly overcome the challenges related to the end of the Cold War, when the West (European nations and the United States) tried to peacefully coexist with the Russian Federation. Among the marks of the goodwill of the West were the demilitarization of Western Europe and the significant reduction of US military presence on the continent. NATO’s peaceful coexistence with Russia was even more important in the days after the 9/11 tragedy, when it became clear that the West’s next major opponent was not going to be a traditional nation-state but rather an aggressive international terrorist entity with no vital connection to any state or geographical location. Now, however, after more than a decade and a half of intense fighting against militant Islamist movements across the globe, an old Cold War-like threat has emerged in Europe, reverting the West’s posture toward Russia. The political course of continued Russian aggression is aimed at creating regional crisis hotspots and thus assuring that Russia’s military, (dis)information campaign, and political influence operations in neighbouring states do not drift outside of the Kremlin’s direct control. Speaking to the US Congress on 3 April 2019, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned of the threat posed by “a more assertive Russia”, including a massive military buildup, threats to sovereign states, the use of nerve agents and cyberattacks[iv].
It was thus crucial for NATO to re-adapt its defence and security mechanisms to face these challenges. One of the first things on the “to-do list” was to boost Allied military capabilities on its Eastern flanks. The decision reached by the NATO Defence Ministers during the 2016 Warsaw Summit on NATO’s “enhanced Forward Presence” (eFP) defined eFP as a “multinational” force, making it clear “that an attack against one Ally is an attack against all Allies, and that the Alliance as a whole will respond”, according to the NATO chief.[v] Following this, NATO was set to deploy logistical hubs to effectively mobilize its forces to counter Russian “hybrid” threats.
As a result, NATO has enhanced its forward presence in the Eastern part of the Alliance, with four multinational battalion-size battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, led by the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and the United States, respectively. This structure largely originated from the German idea of the Framework Nation Concept, shaped in 2013 as a means to address NATO capability gaps and attain a higher level of burden sharing between the European NATO member states and the United States. The original idea behind the initiative was that smaller states should group themselves around larger framework nations in the process of “plugging in” their capabilities to those of larger states that possess a broader set of military capabilities. The larger state would provide the military backbone of the cooperation and benefit through the increased depth and sustainability of its forces.
These units are set up on a rotational basis. This rotational characteristic is important as it eases the political weight of such decisions, giving the Alliance space for political manoeuvre in avoiding military escalation with Russia. These battlegroups are robust, multinational, combat-ready forces. They demonstrate the strength of the transatlantic bond and assure that an attack on one Ally would be considered an attack on the whole Alliance.
NATO’s eFP is part of the biggest reinforcement of Alliance collective defence in over a generation. NATO also has a forward presence tailored to the southeast of Alliance territory and in the Black Sea region. Responding to the constant militarization of Russian-seized Ukrainian Crimea, Allies are expected to contribute forces and capabilities on land, at sea, and in the air. The land element in the southeast of the Alliance is built around a multinational brigade, under the Multinational Division Southeast in Romania, and is coordinating multinational training through a Combined Joint Enhanced Training Initiative. In the air, several Allies have reinforced Romania and Bulgaria’s efforts to protect NATO airspace.
Transforming the Battle Plan
In terms of the ongoing transformations, it was vital to quickly shift the US and its allies’ strategic priorities, which were set by the decades-long fight against insurgent Islamist militants and heavily relied on SpecOps Forces with little to no conventional support to carry out spearheaded operations.
The term “steel-on-steel fight” was the primary characteristic of the Russia–Ukraine conflict given by then Commander of the US Army, Europe, Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges in his May 2015 interview to “Defense News”[vi]. He described the fighting as “a very serious, kinetic, violent” affair with “massive amounts of artillery, massive amounts of rockets, T-72 tanks, land mines, direct-fire weapons, thousands of troops involved”. The new 2015 US National Military Strategy reflected the return of “classic” threats to global stability, i.e., threats poised by nation-states rather than previously favoured “networked” international terrorist groups. Among others, the Strategy specifically referred to the Russian threat, citing Russia’s military actions as “undermining regional security directly and through proxy forces”, lacking “respect to the sovereignty of its neighbors” and the Kremlin’s willingness “to use force to achieve its goals”[vii]. The document thus stressed the importance of the threat emerging from direct conventional conflict with the regular armed forces of a hostile nation-state blended with “hybrid” elements. This fact set another priority: strengthening the US global network of allies and partners, with improvements to NATO at the top of the list.
The 2015 Strategy stated that the presence of US military forces in key locations around the world underpins the international order and provides opportunities to engage with other countries while positioning forces to respond to crises: “security cooperation activities are at the heart of our efforts to provide a stabilizing presence in forward theaters”[viii]. This clearly resonated with the concept of NATO enhanced Forward Presence, setting ground for the contemporary concept of deterrence. The four battalion-sized battlegroups deployed in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland provide a deterrence presence as well as contribute to the self-defence capabilities of their host nations.
What’s more, the Alliance was directly named as a provider of “vital collective security guarantees and is strategically important for deterring conflict, particularly in light of recent Russian aggression on its periphery”. Accordingly, the Pentagon began to turn to the idea of vast conventional forces use and deployment. This became the central idea of the new US Army TRADOC Pamphlet TP 525-3-1 “The US Army in the Multi-Domain Operations”.
The 11–12 July 2018 NATO Summit in Brussels also set into motion the NATO Readiness Initiative, also known as “Four Thirties” Readiness Initiative. The response plan requires the Alliance to have 30 land battalions, 30 air fighter squadrons, and 30 ships ready to deploy within 30 days of being put on alert.
These efforts combined will surely set the current and future priorities for NATO members facing modern “hybrid” challenges and threats.
About the Author
Taras Zhovtenko is an assistant professor at The National University of Ostroh Academy. He specializes in international relations and international information. He received a PhD in National Security with the thesis “Information assurance of the state policy on confronting international terrorism on the example of the USA”. He is the co-author and featured expert of the “Security Factor” TV show, developed with the NATO Public Diplomacy Division, which airs nationwide in Ukraine. Taras is also a postdoc researcher at the National Institute of Strategic Studies. He is a guest lecturer on national/international security issues for the “West” Regional Military Command and separate military units. Taras is a regular national security columnist for the Radio “Liberty” (Ukraine), RL’s counter-Russian propaganda projects “Donbass.Reality” and “Crimea.Reality”; “Obozrevatel” (“The Observer”) online; “Novoie Vremia Strany” (“The New Time of the Country”) magazine; “Ukrain’ska Pravda” (“Ukrainian Truth”); and other national media outlets.
Notes
[i] Наришкін переконує: конфлікт в Україні створили США, щоб "відтіснити" РФ, https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2015/05/18/7068215/, accessed 11 September 2019.
[ii] Putin Says U.S. Is Undermining Global Stability, The New York Times, 11 February 2007,
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/world/europe/11munich.html, accessed 18 September 2019.
[iii] NATO’s response to hybrid threats, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_156338.htm, accessed 28 September 2019.
[iv] NATO: good for Europe and good for America. Address to the United States Congress by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_165210.htm, accessed 19 September 2019.
[v] Boosting NATO’s presence in the east and southeast, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_136388.htm, accessed 19 September 2019.
[vi] Interview: Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, Defense One, 28 March 2015, https://www.defensenews.com/interviews/2015/03/28/interview-lt-gen-ben-h..., accessed 19 September 2019.
[vii] The National Military Strategy of the United States of America 2015, https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Publications/2015_National_Mili..., accessed 20 September 2019.
[viii] Ibid.