NATO and the Ukraine: Reshaping NATO to Meet the Russian and Chinese Challenge By Anthony H. Cordesman With the assistance of Grace Hwang February 16, 2022 Please provide comments to acordesman@gmail.com Photo: GENYA SAVILOV/AFP/Getty Images
Cordesman: NATO and the Lessons of the Ukraine Crisis February 16, 2022 2NATO and the Ukraine: Reshaping NATO to Meet the Russian and Chinese Challenge Anthony H. Cordesman with the assistance of Grace Hwang There is no way to predict whether Russia will actually take military action against the Ukraine, what kind of actions it will take, and how serious the military results will be at the time of this writing. What is already clear, however, is that the U.S. and NATO are not prepared for a serious military challenge from Russia. It is equally clear that the U.S. blundered badly under the Trump administration by focusing on burden-sharing rather than developing an effective mix of U.S. forces and a coherent effort to correct the many shortfalls in European forces. Furthermore, it is clear that NATO is not making any serious real-world effort to improve its capabilities. The U.S. did provide some $2.7 billion in military aid to the Ukraine following the Russian seizure of the Crimea and the Russian military intervention in the Eastern Ukraine in 2014. The U.S. did make some improvements in the forces it deployed to Europe. NATO European states also made limited improvements, and various NATO countries took action to improve the speed with which U.S. and European forces could deploy forward in a crisis. The Russian buildup has also led the U.S. to respond by accelerating improvements, albeit limited, to its own forces. Several NATO European countries have also rushed aid and deployed small military elements forward. Nevertheless, it is all too clear from this analysis on the size of current European forces by country as well as from any analysis of the current military balance between NATO and Russia why the U.S. has threatened to use sanctions against Russia as a substitute for military capability. Regardless of how the current crisis develops, NATO will now need to make far more effective efforts to improve its forces, make them interoperable, and deal with the challenges posed by the lack of any real integration and by emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs). In fairness to NATO as an organization and to the advice coming from many U.S. and allied military experts, they all focus on the need for added military forces, for a new strategy, for more effective and interoperable forces, and for modernization on an interoperable level that can adopt to a wide range of new technologies and tactical concepts. As the following analysis shows, however, the steps toward these objectives fell far short of creating an effective mix of forces and deterrent capabilities in NATO’s forw...
