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New Russian military doctrine

According to Russian news sources,the Russian Federation has updated its military doctrine. NATO is listed as a top threat.

The update was approved last week by President Putin, and includes the worrisome tenet that Moscow would use nuclear weapons in response to what it perceives to be a nonnuclear threat.  Moscow, which has a ten to one advantage over the US in tactical nuclear weapons, has placed short-range ISKANDER missiles on its border with Europe.

The update also reemphasizes Russia’s military interest in the Arctic region.

NATO  strongly disagrees with Moscow’s assessment.

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“As stated by NATO heads of state and government at the Wales Summit in September, “the Alliance does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to Russia. But we cannot and will not compromise on the principles on which our Alliance and security in Europe and North America rest.” …NATO has reached out to Russia consistently, transparently and publicly over the past 25 years.

“The Alliance has created unique cooperation bodies – the Permanent Joint Council and the NATO-Russia Council – to embody its relationship with Russia. It has invited Russia to cooperate on missile defence, an invitation extended to no other partner.

“In the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security, agreed with Russia in 1997 and reaffirmed at NATO-Russia summits in Rome in 2002 and in Lisbon in 2010, NATO stated that “in the current and foreseeable security environment, the Alliance will carry out its collective defence and other missions by ensuring the necessary interoperability, integration, and capability for reinforcement rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces“. The Alliance has fulfilled all such commitments…Thus, neither the Alliance’s policies nor its actions are a threat to Russia.”

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Part II: Can NATO Survive?

The Russian invasion of Ukraine shouldn’t have come as a shock to NATO.

Just a few years earlier in 2008, Moscow had invaded Georgia during the South Ossetia War. Over the past several years, Vladimir Putin has dramatically increased his nation’s military spending as well as raising the level of preparedness for war.

RUSSIA PREPARES FOR WAR AS NATO DISARMS

 Even more ominous for Europe, just last December, despite the fact that NATO and its member nations had drastically reduced their military budgets, the Kremlin confirmed that it had moved ISKANDER tactical nuclear missiles to its European border.

It’s not just the equipment built and the $755 billion modernization program that should concern western analysts.  Russia has engaged in extraordinary military exercises, such as Zapad-13, a joint effort with Belarus that involved up to 70,000 troops. The Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences  described the effort:

“The use of Belorussian troops as an amphibious landing force from hoover craft, shows not just the level of integration between the Russian and Belorussian armed forces, it also should raise some concerns about Russian capacity to conduct landing operations. They should not just be linked to the number of dedicated amphibious units.

“The air defence forces trained to intercept approaching bombers with a fighter escort. Very clearly a task connected with a conventional war. The same goes for the amphibious landings supported by ship-to-shore bombardments.

“The use of UAV`s for target identification and damage assessment, both for the artillery and for ground attack aircraft, point at a quite high level of sophistication when it comes to fighting a modern war. The extensive use of well protected communication systems, both by Russian as well as Belorussian units, is also an import step in enhancing the ability to fight in an environment where electronic warfare is an important part.

“Live firing with long range systems as Smerch and especially Iskander, combined with the use of UAV´s, show an increased capability for “Deep Strike” with ground based systems. This should be disturbing for anyone contemplating to use fixed installations as harbours and airfields within the range of these systems. For example NATO, when considering how to reinforce the Baltic States in case of a crisis.

“The mobilization of reservists in the St. Petersburg area was of course a test if the system works, but it should also lead to some thoughts about the size of the Russian military. It is far too easy to fall in to the trap of just counting regular units, and also to assume that only state of the art units are useful in a future war. The latter depends entirely on who is the opponent.

“Altogether we see a rapidly increasing Russian capability to mount large scale, complex, military operations in its neighbourhood, coordinated with operations in other areas. It would be a mistake to see this just a problem for the Baltic States. It should have implications for most of Russia´s neighbours, and also for other parties interested in the security and stability in the Baltic Sea region.”

“Despite these clear signals that the Russian threat had returned, NATO nations, beset by financial troubles, continued to cling to the belief that the threat from its eastern border had permanently evaporated when the Soviet Union collapsed.”

In January, Russia joined with China for joint maneuvers in the Mediterranean. The exercise followed similar joint maneuvers between the two nations in the Sea of Japan.

US MILITARY REDUCTIONS ARE A KEY PROBLEM

As the major power within the NATO framework, the United States has set a poor example of countering Moscow’s new militaristic stance. A 2013 Heritage study noted:

“When President Obama took office, the armed services of the United States had already reached a fragile state. The Navy had shrunk to its smallest size sincebefore World War I; the Air Force was smaller, and its aircraft older, than at any time since the inception of the service. The Army was stressed by years of war; according to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, it had been underfunded before the invasion of Iraq and was desperately in need of resources to replace its capital inventory.

“Since the President took office, the government has cut $1.3 trillion from defense budgets over the next ten years. The last such reduction was embodied in sequestration. At the time sequestration was passed, the top leaders of the military, and of both parties (the very people who enacted sequestration), warned that it would have a devastating effect on America’s military.

“And so it has. The defense sequester was the worst possible thing to do to the military, at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way. Coming on the heels of the reductions from 2009-2011, it has resulted in large cuts to the Pentagon accounts that support day-to-day readiness. The Navy is routinely cancelling deployments. Earlier this spring, the Air Force grounded one-third of its fighters and bombers. The Army has curtailed training for 80 percent of the force. Our strategic arsenal-the final line of national self-defense-is old, shrinking, and largely untested. All this is happening at a time when the recognized threats to America-from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, the inaptly named “Arab Spring,” and a resurgent and spreading al-Qaeda-are manifestly rising.”

Indications such as the largely unreported U.S. withdrawal of all of its tanks from Europe sent a crucially wrong message to NATO nations that Washington was unconcerned about threats from Moscow.

EUROPEAN MILITARIES BECOMING TOO WEAK TO FIGHT
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While Sweden (which is considering joining NATO) and Poland have increased their defense budgets, the rest of the alliance adopted drastic cuts since the fall of the USSR.

The 2012 Brookings analysis emphasized:

“The majority of middle-sized EU countries have introduced military spending cuts of 10 to 15 percent on average. And several of the smaller EU member states have reduced their defense spending by more than 20 percent, leading to the loss of entire military capabilities.

“According to Andrew Dorman, although the United Kingdom has officially cut its defense budget by 7.5 percent over four years, in reality the reduction is nearly 25 percent. As a result, amongst its significant equipment cuts, Britain is giving up the ability to fly planes off aircraft carriers for a decade…

“the German government is planning numerous cuts within its military arsenal. These include reselling 13 A400M transport aircraft, even though Germany is likely to have to pay significant indemnities to its partners in the A400M program.

“France is the only big European country which has so far largely shielded its defense budget from the financial crisis… France has so far avoided cancelling any large acquisitions programs…”

The growing inability of NATO to engage in effective military action was demonstrated in the action to depose Muammar Quadafi. In the Libyan action, European nations had great difficulty in mounting operations against a relatively weak and unsophisticated foe.

It is not just on the land mass of the European continent, with smaller armies and air forces, that NATO has become significantly less potent.  At sea, the diminishment of NATO countries navies, including the reduction of the worldwide American fleet from 600 ships to only 284, presents a key challenge, as does the rise of significant new maritime threats.  An American Enterprise Institute study noted:

“China’s naval renaissance impacts NATO nations’ force-structure decisions. As the United States turns more of its interest to the Pacific, baseline security requirements in the Mediterranean will become more important to Europe’s NATO navies, perhaps creating greater incentive to resource them. Additionally, both France and the United Kingdom see themselves as global nations with global interests that extend far into the Pacific. If these nations perceive China’s rise as threatening these interests, they will likely find their navies too small to provide any real impact, given the great distances involved and the paucity of ships to maintain constant presence. There is a real tension between global presence and a “balanced fleet,” one that currently only the United States is able to resolve, and barely that.”

NATO SOUGHT TO REASSURE RUSSIA

 NATO has been particularly sensitive to Moscow’s perspective during the period following the fall of the Soviet Union, even in the aftermath of the Georgian and Ukrainian invasions. It refrained from establishing a significant presence within the territory of its eastern members, so much so that those nations have requested far more protection. It’s patrols in that area have been minimal.

The European Voice publication noted Poland’s reaction to this: “As the United States winds down its military presence in Europe, NATO is getting weaker, not stronger. Poland is worried about this. It has started a big military modernisation, based on the (unstated) assumption that it may have to fight alone.”

A Lexington Institute study  concluded in February noted:

“The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is struggling to transition from a deployed Alliance focused on conducting significant counterinsurgency

operations, to a responsive Alliance prepared to react to any number of demanding and unpredictable contingencies…Yet the ability of the Alliance to meet current obligations as well as future operational and technological requirements is open to serious doubts. For more than two decades, NATO spending on defense has declined to levels today that are perilously close to disarmament. Senior U.S. officials have repeatedly warned NATO that its failure to invest adequately and appropriately in defense places the future of the Alliance at risk…

“[Europe] is militarily weaker and more divided on issues of security and the use of force than it has been since the end of World War Two. both the spectrum of potential crises NATO must face and their geographic diversity continue to increase. The U.S military draw down and the pivot to Asia will stress Washington’s ability to commit forces to NATO. Not only is NATO defense spending continuing to decline and the Alliance’s force structures continuing to shrink but decisions regarding the character of residual forces and the allocation of remaining defense resources are skewed in ways that make it more difficult to deploy effective military power, particularly for expeditionary activities of significant scale. NATO has had to reduce the size of its core crisis response capability, the NATO Response Force (NRF). The lack of coordination among national ministries of defense on force structure changes and modernization programs makes it difficult to ensure adequate capabilities in some areas while there are clear surfeits in others. Non-U.S. NATO continues to lag in its investments in critical enablers for modern, knowledge-intensive power projection military operations.”

CONCLUSION

 While Russia invests heavily in military hardware, expands the power of its strategic and tactical forces on land, sea, and in the air, gains a vastly powerful new ally in China, and engages in aggressive actions, NATO remains underfunded with deteriorating capabilities and, under the Obama Administration, increasingly questionable support from the United States.

It is a blueprint tailor-made to invite aggression.

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Pretending that threats don’t exist

The state of world crises can be summarized in a single sentence: While Russia and China rapidly and substantively build their military might to unprecedented levels of strength and skill, the United States and its allies continue to slash their funding on defense.

The net effect is obvious and worrisome. Both China and Russia, and their surrogates Iran and North Korea, have taken note of this new world order, and are acting without the balance of power restraint that has prevented a world war since 1945.

The Obama Administration has engaged in a suicidal game of “let’s pretend.”  Consistently, in the face of all reality and evidence, it continues to discount the clearly rising possibility of major conflict.  It virtually ignored China’s assault on the Philippines in 2012, in which Beijing’s naval vessels claimed portions of Manila’s exclusive economic zone.  It completely failed to respond to Moscow’s assault on the Ukraine   with the two most important effective tools at its disposal: a cessation of the budget cuts to the U.S. military, and the development of federal land energy assets that would have diminished Russia’s main source of income, gas and oil sales.

The President talks tough.  He announced a pivot to Asia, but doesn’t have the naval assets  to make that strategy anything more than just talk.  He announces his support for NATO, but withdrew all American tanks  from the European continent.
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The White House has announced its plans to reduce the already antiquated American nuclear arsenal,  and continues to oppose the full implementation of an American anti-ballistic missile system.  However, it refuses to make an issue of Moscow’s own developed ABM system.  It accepts, without protest, the Kremlin’s ten to one advantage in tactical nuclear arms.

When the USSR began placing theater nuclear missiles in Europe during the latter half of the 20th century, President Reagan countered with the U.S. Pershing missile.  Moscow saw it would gain no advantage, and an agreement by both sides was reached stopping deployment of such weapons. The Obama Administration didn’t follow this example, and now Russia’s ISKANDER missiles, unopposed, threaten Europe.  While Putin has committed over $700 billion to new armaments over its already large budget and China spends vastly more each year, the White House continues to seek defense budget cuts.

It’s not a question of hawks or doves, or even of domestic budget priorities.  It’s reality vs. let’s pretend.

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Can NATO Survive?

After a successful conclusion to the Cold War, can the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) regroup to respond to the new threat from Moscow?

Vladimir Putin’s intentions were made clear in a telling comment by Andranik Migranyan, head of the Kremlin-controlled “Institute for Democracy and Cooperation” reported in the Fiscal Times in response to analogies between Russia’s actions in Ukraine, and Germany’s in the 1930’s:

“One must distinguish between Hitler before 1939 and Hitler after 1939…the thing is that Hitler collected [German] lands.  If he had become famous only for uniting  without a drop of blood Germany with Austria, Sudetenland and Memel, in fact completing  what Bismarck failed to do, and if he had stopped there, then he would have remained a politician of the highest class.”

Moscow’s worrisome military moves are not restricted to former Soviet satellites.  In December, the Kremlin confirmed  that it had deployed ISKANDER tactical nuclear missiles on NATO’s border. The move was not in response to any western action.

There have also been a number of incidents in which Moscow’s nuclear-capable bombers and submarines have come threateningly close to the airspace and coasts of NATO nations both in Europe and the United States.

Richard Perle, former chair of the Defense Policy Board for President George W. Bush and current fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, recently stated in a Newsmax interview that Putin is attempting to “put Humpty Dumpty back together again and re-create something that looks like the old Soviet Empire.”

NATO’s forces have shrunk considerably since the end of the Cold War, symbolized by the diminishing military budgets of both European nations and the United States.  The United States has also unilaterally withdrawn all of its most vital land weapons, tanks, from the European continent.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea in early 2014, which the United States and the European Union say violated international law, will likely poison relations with NATO for the foreseeable future. “We clearly face the gravest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,” said Secretary-General Rasmussen of Russia’s intervention.

Russia’s invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, as well as its deployment of ISKANDER tactical nuclear weapons to its European border, have brought back the threat most had thought vanished with the fall of the Soviet Union.  But NATO’s individual governments, including most importantly the United States, have slashed military budgets.

NATO’s sharp reduction in forces, even in the face of increasing threats, has brought into question the viability of the alliance.  A 2012 Brookings Institute study

“There have long been debates about the sustainability of the transatlantic alliance and accusations amongst allies of unequal contributions to burden-sharing. But since countries on both sides of the Atlantic have begun introducing new – and often major – military spending cuts in response to the economic crisis, concerns about the future of transatlantic defense cooperation have become more pronounced.

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“The alliance’s Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has warned that “if European defense spending cuts continue, Europe’s ability to be a stabilizing force even in its neighborhood will rapidly disappear.” While Norwegian Defense Minister Espen Barth Eide has claimed that “exercises have shown that NATO’s ability to conduct conventional military operations has markedly declined. […] Not only is NATO’s ability to defend its member states questionable, it might actually deteriorate further as financial pressures in Europe and the US force cuts in military spending”

Russia’s aggression represents a disappointing end result for NATO’s numerous attempts to establish a relationship with Moscow based on a post-Cold War (or “Cold War 1” as it is becoming known) era of cooperation rather than confrontation.  According to a recent NATO document, 

“Over the past twenty years, NATO has consistently worked for closer cooperation and trust with Russia.  However, Russia has violated international law and acted in contradiction with the principles and commitments in the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council Basic Document,   the NATO-Russia Founding Act,  and the Rome Declaration.   It has gravely breached the trust upon which NATO-Russia cooperation must be based.”

Russia’s NATO envoy, Aleksandr Grushko, responded in a statement reported in the Russian publication RT that “…NATO still has a double standard policy. And Cold War stereotypes are still applied towards Russia…”

NATO turned 65 in 2014, a year that also marks the 15th, 10th, and 5th anniversary of members who joined since the end of the Cold War, enlarging the alliance to a total of 28 member states. It is, arguably, the most successful military alliance in history, winning its original goal of preventing a Soviet invasion, without having to actually go to war.

NATO currently conducts 5 active missions: peacekeeping in Kosovo, anti-terrorism patrols in the Mediterranean, anti-piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa, assistance to the African Union in Somalia, and fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. But it is the Russian threat that looms largest.  NATO seems unprepared to deal with.

Particularly under Vladimir Putin, Russia, despite numerous NATO overtures for peace and cooperation, has viewed NATO’s growth with anger.  Moscow, which spends a greater percentage of its GDP   (4.1%) on defense than either the U.S. (2.4%) or NATO nations (averaging about 2%)  maintains that it opposes NATO growth because it views it as a threat to its nation, despite all evidence to the contrary. A more accurate analysis indicates that the alliance prevents the Kremlin from re-forming the Soviet Empire in a different format.

The Council of Foreign Relations  notes that NATO’s Bucharest summit in the spring of 2008 sharply deepened the distrust. The alliance delayed “Membership Action Plans” for Ukraine and Georgia but declared its support for eventual full membership for both, despite repeated warnings from Russia of political and military consequences. Russia’s invasion of Georgia in the summer, following Georgian shelling of South Ossetia after what it termed an occupation by Russian forces, was a clear signal of Moscow’s intentions to protect and enlarge what it sees as its sphere of influence.

Many had hope that Moscow’s opposition to NATO’s growth had been resolved in 1997, when the alliance and Russia adopted a security agreement in which Moscow consented to NATO’s growth in return for a promise that masses of troops, equipment or nuclear missiles would not be placed on Russia border. The hope was not realized.

The Report continues next week.

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US Cuts Nuclear Arms as Russia Moves Ahead

President Obama is conducting, without the consent of Congress or the American public, a high-risk experiment in unilateral disarmament.  He is doing so despite all evidence that his concept is fundamentally flawed. His action is exceptionally endangering the safety and sovereignty of both the United States and its allies.

Andrew C. Weber, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, and Elaine Bunn, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, testified last week before the House Armed Services Committee  that the United States will cut nuclear stockpiles under the New START treaty with Russia.

In October, Russia tested it SS-25 mobile ICBM, the fourth time in the past two years it engaged in tests violative of the 1987 agreement. In January, the treaty was again violated by the deployment of the RS-26 missile test.

In January, it became public that Russia was also violating the 1987 missile treaty. Despite that fact, the U.S. has taken no action.

The Administration’s move comes despite Russia’s placement of nuclear-armed ISKANDER missiles on the border of Europe in response to absolutely no threat from NATO.
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It is done in compliance with a treaty despite Moscow’s obvious current and historical record of treaty violations, in response to a treaty that was bad for the United States since it allowed Moscow a 10-1 advantage in tactical nuclear weapons, and one that is especially inappropriate in the face of the dramatic change in international conditions since the rise of China as a nuclear power that is hostile to the United States and its allies.

In addition to the development and deployment of new atomic weapons systems, Russia has engaged in updating and testing of its nuclear weapons, while the American arsenal has gone untested and un-updated for decades.

President Obama’s planned cutback comes in the face of undeniable evidence of massive Russian cheating.  It comes at a time when Russia has evidenced its hostile intent through its invasion of Crimea, its threats to other parts of the former Soviet Empire, and its return to engagement in military-related activities in Latin America, especially in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. It comes as the United States has slashed its military spending, while Russia and China dramatically expand their armed forces budget.

A full analysis of the nuclear weapons reduction issue will be published Monday, April 14.