NATO is a Farce, Part 3: Not Your Daddy's NATO
The alliance today is just a shadow of its former self, but no one wants to admit it.
In the first two instalments in this series, I addressed the various aspects of NATO that make it both farcical and dangerous. In “NATO is a Dangerous Farce — and We All Know It”, I described how the current constitution of NATO and the alliance’s relentless drive for expansion and provocation towards Russia pose a tremendous threat to both Europe and the world.
In “NATO is a Farce, Part 2: The Puppet Parade”, I explained how European leaders had become vassals in the thrall of the United States, and were putting US strategic and economic interests ahead of the the interests and well-being of their own people.
Now I want to explain another dangerous aspect of NATO: a fantasy-driven belief in an alliance whose strength, depth and capability are nowhere near where they once were — and nowhere near where they need to be to take on Russia.
Yes, the Cold War NATO was awesome
I lived in West Germany during the early 1980’s, at the height of the Cold War. Fresh out of college, I had a job as a civilian employee of the US Defense Department working as a bar manager in a US Army officers’ club in Darmstadt, near Frankfurt.
In 1982 everyone on base was excited about an upcoming exercise called REFORGER. The name was a shorthand for “REturn of FORces to GERmany”, and it was an annual military exercise and campaign conducted by NATO during the Cold War.
The exercise was meant to be a show of force to demonstrate the US commitment to its European NATO allies by rapidly deploying up to 125,000 troops from the US to Europe and joining them up with the over 250,000 troops stationed in Germany.
At that time, the US Army base I worked at was just one of over 270 US military installations in Germany alone. All told, the US had over 300 installations across Europe, with over 350,000 personnel “in theatre”.
REFORGER was a massive undertaking. One of the aspects of the exercise was to “match up” the incoming forces with their in-theatre counterparts, as well as the huge stockpiles of pre-positioned equipment, supplies, tanks, vehicles, etc. stored in POMCUS facilities across Europe (POMCUS was military shorthand for “Prepositioning Of Materiel Configured in Unit Sets”).
Once “married” to their units and their equipment, the troops would engage in very sophisticated, large-scale exercises designed to simulate a ground war being fought against the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies on the fields and steppes of Central Europe.
That was then, this is now
The current situation of US forces in Europe is dramatically different today. For example, the US has closed over 220 installations in Germany, leaving only 40 operational, and even those are more for logistics, hospitals, transit and transportation etc. There is very little war-fighting capability compared to the “good old days” of the Cold War.
The number of troops in-theatre is but a small fraction of what was once there. Germany now hosts only 35,000 US military personnel, of which 6,000 are combat troops. There are now less than 80,000 US military personnel in all of Europe.
In short, the US military presence in Europe is now about 10% of what it was during the Cold War.
Secondly, the POMCUS network of supply depots have been mostly decommissioned since the end of the Cold War. This means that for any reinforcement operation, much of the equipment, tanks, vehicles, food, medicine and other supplies all need to be shipped over from the US.
Ukraine’s Maidan Coup changed the game — a little
Some say the post-Cold War period officially ended when the US engineered a coup d’état in Ukraine, a move which placed that country on the road to NATO membership and and resulted in a pro-NATO government that welcomed the CIA. as well as a massive US and Western military buildup right on Russia’s borders. The coup, and the resulting de facto “NATO-isation” of Ukraine prompted Russia to annex Crimea in order to safeguard their largest naval base and home of their Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol.
When civil war broke out in Eastern Ukraine between ultranationalist (some would say Nazi) battalions and rebels who opposed the US-installed coup government in Kiev, Russia was obliged to intervene militarily, as it had promised to do since 2008.
Now, like Rip Van Winkle rousing from a 20-year nap, the US and NATO are once more stretching their Cold War muscles.
As the US Congressional Research Service noted in 2020:
“Events in recent years, particularly since 2014, have tested, if not undermined, the strategic assumptions underpinning USEUCOM’s posture.
“After nearly 20 years of expeditionary operations in the Middle East region, the skills and capabilities necessary to mass U.S. forces onto the European continent and transit them to the front lines have arguably atrophied.
A “back to the future”” defense plan
The events of 2014 caused NATO to develop a new “Deterrence and Defence of the Euro-Atlantic Area” concept, or “DDA”. The DDA has since evolved into a more concrete attempt to develop what a white paper from the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) calls a “back to the future” strategy of “forward defense and deterrence” following the start of the conflict in Ukraine. To implement it, allies committed to take various measures to strengthen their deterrence and defense at the 2022 Madrid Summit.
“DEFENDER-Europe” is only 16% the size of REFORGER
One part of the “back to the future” strategy is the introduction of a modern day version of the Cold War era REFORGER exercises, called DEFENDER-Europe, which had its debut in 2020.
As with REFORGER, the US military had to come up with a shorthand version of the full name, “Dynamic Employment of Forces to Europe for NATO Deterrence and Enhanced Readiness”.
The name is impressive, but the statistics surrounding the operation are not.
Under early DEFENDER scenarios, only around 17,000 US troops are usually moved to Europe to reinforce an in-theatre combat force of only 6,000 US troops.
All told, the entire NATO troop strength for the DEFENDER exercise is usually around 37,000 personnel — a far cry from the 125,000 that participated in the REFORGER exercises.
The US is simply not prepared for war in Europe
The past 30 years has seen the US military completely devolve from a large war-fighting machine to a mostly “expeditionary” force that is not designed to fight large, force-on-force land wars against a powerful foe.
Not only has the US allowed its resupply and redeployment capabilities in Europe to “atrophy”, the very nature, constitution and structure of the US armed forces are now more adapted to fighting asymmetrical, counterinsurgency conflicts. In short, the US, as the “lone superpower” and the unchallenged globe-straddling hegemon, has built up an army that is used to fighting the “low intensity” brush-fires that happen on the edges of Empire, and is no longer capable of fighting a “great power war”.
In short, the warmongering Eastern NATO states are writing checks that the US’s NATO alliance cannot cash.
European NATO is sounding the alarm
Despite America’s lack of readiness, NATO leaders have, over the past 8 months, made a determined effort to make war with Russia seem inevitable. European political figures and even US based think tanks are telling media outlets that a giant conflict between Russia and NATO is coming.
Several European leaders from the Baltic States and Germany have warned that Russia could attack NATO within three, four, five, or eight years. Polish President Andrzej Duda emphasised in a March 20 interview with CNBC that “Putin is intensifying efforts to shift Russia to a war economy with the intention of being able to attack NATO as early as 2026 or 2027”, citing unspecified German research.
Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen estimated on Feb. 9 that Russia may attack NATO within “three to five years”.
In March, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a notorious Neocon think tank, issued a report that claimed “Russia is preparing for a large-scale conventional conflict with NATO”. Ominously, the ISW added that “while any such conflict won’t happen imminently, Russia is likely planning on a shorter timeline than some Western analysts have previously posited.”
Scare tactics to support spending?
These unfounded alarm bells seem to be part of a coordinated effort to build political and societal support for a massive defense spending campaign to build up NATO forces in Europe.
This may be because, while the US is known for spending obscene amounts on defense, European countries have historically been reluctant to divert spending away from their generous social welfare programs.
For example: in 2014, only two (2) NATO members besides the US were spending the required 2% of GDP on defense. That number has now increased to 17 states, but that means that almost half of NATO’s 32 members are not spending what NATO rules require.
And yet, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has warned that NATO must prepare itself for a confrontation against Russia “that could last decades.”
Rebuilding NATO: Too little, too late?
There now seems to be a frantic movement to “rebuild NATO” in preparation for a “great war” with Russia.
NATO is pushing hard to increase its defense spending and increase its war-fighting capability, but even the CSIS study concludes that NATO will have huge problems fighting a protracted conflict.
Indeed, the CSIS paper notes that, even with the limited engagement over Libya in 2011, “non-US NATO members began running out of precision munitions within a month — and this was a comparatively minor operation compared to defending the Baltics.”
It gets worse.
A 2023 study found that “If Europe were to fight Russia, some countries would run out of ammunition in days,” according to Reuters, who said that many officials from NATO countries had “considered wars of attrition with large-scale artillery battles a thing of the past.”
Why the West cannot keep up with Russia
Everyone knows that NATO relies on the United States to provide not just the lion’s share of firepower, but also most of the alliance’s men and materiel.
But America’s massive resources have a problem: they are all located 10,000 km from the front line with Russia.
And meanwhile, Russia is defending from its own territory, with its own, harmonised logistics systems, communications and resupply routes.
Vladimir Putin has put the Russian economy on a “war footing”: factories are working 24/7, churning out tanks, ammo and equipment, all of which can be transported quickly and easily to the front lines with NATO.
Russian conscription programs are working nicely, and the country is well on its way to fielding 1.5 MILLION men by 2025. Meanwhile, given the “existential threat” posed by NATO, Russian armed forces are accepting up to 40,000 VOLUNTEERS each month.
Meanwhile, in the “democracies” of the collective West, munitions and weapons factories stand idle for a host of reasons: lack of raw materials, lack of investment capital, lack of funding, lack of a long term commitment to make a reinvestment at increasing stocks “economically viable”.
In short, Russia’s political system turns out to be much more efficient at meeting the challenge of a strategic threat than any of the Western societies, where shifting priorities and a profit-based defense industry has led to the disappearance of large stockpiles as well as the elimination of “surge capacity” in the manufacturing base.
The move to a 100% “professional” army (i.e., no draft) has led to the British army being so small that it can fit into a European sports stadium - with many seats left empty. The United States is seeing chronic shortfalls in recruiting, with various branches reporting up to a 25% deficit. NATO armies across Europe are seeing similar problems.
NATO’s proposed “land corridors” are a joke
General Dwight D. Eisenhower famously said: “You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics.”
Alas, logistics are NATO’s achilles heel, and no one seems to want to talk about it.
Worse yet, NATO does not just face a shortfall in production and supply, it also is facing a transportation challenge that it has never had to worry about.
This is because a big difference between the Cold War REFORGER exercise and today’s DEFENDER-Europe operation is the fact that the projected front lines have moved.
In the 1980’s the US only had to get its supplies, equipment and men into Germany, because that was where the “Iron Curtain” fell. WWIII would have been fought in East Germany and Central Europe.
Now, the US and its allies have to worry about getting their forces and supplies to the “new member states” such as Finland, Sweden, the Baltics and Poland.
The solution? NATO plans to build “land corridors” to move US service personnel and material to the front lines of any eventual war with Russia.
Infrastructure makes the “corridors” impossible
But this plan is a pipe dream. The cost is astronomical, as the required infrastructure simply doesn’t exist. Train lines in Eastern and Western Europe often operate differently. And unlike Germany’s Autobahn, highways and bridges in much of Europe cannot bear the heavy loads of military transports.
This means that geographic challenges like the Vistula River and its tributaries in Eastern Poland form a natural barrier that will need to be overcome in case of war.
As Breaking Defense explains:
“While Western European infrastructure was often reinforced during the Cold War to handle the weight of 60-plus-ton NATO tanks, Eastern Europe couldn’t afford to build as robustly and, in any case, only had to accommodate much lighter Soviet tanks, like the 45-ton T-72.
“At more than 60 tons, the M1 Abrams main battle tank and most of its NATO kindred — the British Challenger II, the German Leopard II, even the French Leclerc — are already unsafe for many bridges where the alliance most urgently needs them.”
The US is rushing to come up with alternative vehicles, even as countries like Poland try to beef up their infrastructure. But these efforts are only now getting started.
Border issues also pose a problem
While civilian and commercial traffic move freely around the European Union’s Schengen travel zone, no such arrangement exists for the military.
While there is currently talks about implementing a “military Schengen”, those discussions are in their infancy.
Most critically, customs clearances for tanks and artillery howitzers to enter Germany, considered the roundabout of European defence because of its geography at the heart of the continent, often take three to four weeks instead of a few days as in other countries.
“You won’t have a credible deterrence if the Russians know that we can’t move a brigade without tanks being held up at the border,” a senior NATO source told The Telegraph.
Different rail systems make NATO’s Eastern Flank inaccessible
As the Modern War Institute explains, differing railway gauges and systems also pose obstacles all along the would-be front with Russia — especially in the Baltic States and Scandinavia:
“Ultimately, addressing shortfalls regarding rail transport and infrastructure in the Baltic states is aimed at just one aspect of NATO’s vulnerabilities on its eastern flank. A serious discussion on the matter would be welcome at the upcoming NATO Summit this July, though NATO military commanders can begin to address these shortfalls in logistics before bureaucrats put pen to paper.”
Finland: NATO’s “bittersweet” new NATO member
Much ballyhoo and celebration greeted the accession of Finland to NATO. Those cheering the move were quick to point out that Finland’s membership more than doubled NATO’s border with Russia by adding the 1,340 km Finnish-Russian border to the previous 1,213 km border between Russia and NATO members Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Lithuania.
However, that means twice the borderland to be defended. And as the Association of the US Army pointed out, the accession of Finland actually poses huge vulnerabilities for NATO:
“The newly added Finnish-Russian border poses significant vulnerability and liability for NATO due to its provocation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, access to irregular migration and terrorists and lack of security against conventional and irregular warfare forces.”
“Finlandisation” also included the railways, it turns out. The standard gauge for railway tracks in Finland, the Baltic States, Ukraine and other Eastern European states is the Russian standard 1.520 mm, while in the EU, it’s 1.435 mm. This is also a problem for NATO’s “land corridors”.
Finland has recently considered and then rejected a plan to standardise on the EU rail gauge due to its high cost. Perhaps that cost can be covered by NATO states, but it will be a massive undertaking.
As another analysis puts it: “the alliance’s journey toward stronger defense and deterrence has only just begun.”
Indeed, speaking at a Defense Ministerial meeting in Brussels last year, Jens Stoltenberg, the human stick insect serving as NATO’s Secretary General, told reporters:
“We have decided to establish a new coordination cell at NATO headquarters, to map our vulnerabilities, and engage with industry,”
As of January, the EU had spent €1.69 billion, and had allocated a further €807 million for 38 projects aimed at improving troop movements.
The question then becomes: how much can NATO get done before war comes?
What will the next war look like?
The Europeans are desperate. They are being led by the barking dogs of the Baltic States and other ex-Soviet states who want to “make Russia pay” for past grievances by the Soviet Union.
States that were enthusiastic Nazi allies in WWII, and are chomping at the bit for a “do-over” with WWIII to vanquish their old nemesis.
For the US and the UK, the next war will be a continuation of the “Great Game”, the civilisational struggle that I described thoroughly in a deep dive in my article, “Why the West Hates Russia”. For them, the next war will be less about revenge and more about what is euphemistically called “great power politics”.
These two cohorts, the revanchist Europeans and the power-hungry transatlantic Empire players, the United States and the United Kingdom, appear now toi be working together to bering about WWIII.
In my next instalment, I will explain how the West, far from being guided by its “better angels”, is being pushed by its “worst devils” into a confrontation with Russia that could end in disaster for us all.
NEXT UP: NATO is a Farce, Part 4: Reviving Old Hatreds to Create New Conflict
#End.
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Fantastic post, glad to see you writing so thoroughly about this existential issue. Incredible to see how many impossible plans have to be cooked up, all to avoid the straightforward and easy (not to mention sane) solution of making peace with Russia.
Also, on this point:
“…. In short, the warmongering Eastern NATO states are writing checks that the US’s NATO alliance cannot cash….”
It’s worse than that. They are writing checks that even THEY can’t cash.
I spend most of the past 10 years in a country in NATO that is among the worst warmongers.
In those years, they have built brand new bunkers for all the government.
But for the public: none. They have not even refurbished the cold war era bunkers from when the nationa population was half the size. And even if they did, those bunkers are not in any way a credible protection to modern munitions.
I don’t know of anywhere in Europe that actually has adequate bunkers for such a war. They don’t exist really.
So these government they are rushing to CREATE a war that’s GUARANTEED to cause mass death of most of their own populatiom.
Even they cannot cash their own checks.
I don’t know what anyone would do this. It defies all ideas of expectations of rational behaviour.
The best explanation I can find is some recent psychology research on the phenomenon of mass psychosis:
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/96633
Basically human are collective animals and they are vulnerable to all losing their minds en masse.
I think THAT is what is at play here.