While for many years the United States had been engaged in a discreet withdrawal of its forces in Europe to reposition them in the Indo-Pacific, as tensions between Kiev and Moscow escalated, some 20,000 American troops were sent back to European soil. The in-depth analysis of the newspaper Le Monde
The symbolic threshold of 100,000 repositioned troops has been exceeded in recent weeks.
This is one of the main consequences of the war in Ukraine, which has gone relatively unnoticed until now, and a sign of a sudden and unexpected change of strategy by the world’s first military power. The strengthening of the American military presence in Europe in recent weeks, with the overcoming of the symbolic threshold of 100,000 troops deployed, had to be particularly emphasized at the NATO summit on Thursday 24 March in Brussels, in the presence of Joe Biden. The summit – we read in the Le Monde article – is part of a diplomatic marathon, with the American president who is expected to participate in a meeting of the G7 and the European Union on the same day, and then in Poland on Friday.
While for many years the United States had been engaged in a discreet withdrawal of its forces in the Old Continent to reposition them in the Indo-Pacific, in the face of the rise of Chinese economic and military expansionism, with the escalation of tensions between Kiev and Moscow, between January and March, about 20,000 American soldiers were sent back to European soil. This represents a 25% increase in just a few weeks, taking the US military presence in Europe to a level it hadn’t seen in more than fifteen years, and which represents about a third of its presence by the end of the Cold War.
From a strictly accounting point of view, the Pentagon has always had a large number of soldiers in Europe, particularly in Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Poland. American bases extend from Bulgaria to Greenland, from Greece to Finland. Before the war in Ukraine, the US military, which is a mass army (1.4 million active soldiers), had approximately 67,000 soldiers permanently stationed in these various locations – a figure that was supplemented by 13,000 complementary rotating unit men. . “RISING TIDE”
But in just three months, these numbers are back to their 2005 level, when the United States was engaged in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The exact distribution of these troops is deliberately left somewhat vague by the Pentagon. However, it appears that most of the reinforcements that have arrived since January have gone to Poland, where more than 10,000 US troops are now officially deployed (an increase of more than 7,000). About 2,500 troops are now also deployed in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, while about 1,500 troops are now stationed in Slovakia, 350 in Bulgaria and 200 in Hungary.
This American return to the Old Continent is the culmination of a cycle that began in 2014, with the annexation of Crimea by Russia. A sort of “rising tide”, as Camille Grand, NATO Deputy Secretary General describes it. The increase was as discreet as the “pivot” towards the Indo-Pacific, made official two years earlier, in 2012, by former US president Barack Obama. Until 2014, the Pentagon tended to progressively exfiltrate its European troops into Iraq, where they transited before returning to the United States. They have never been replaced.
This American reinvestment in Europe in recent years has mainly occurred through the strengthening of NATO, of which the United States is the largest contributor. A discreet strengthening, again, which resulted, for example, in the adaptation of the NATO command structure inherited from the Cold War, and in a consolidation of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). This post has traditionally been filled by a US Army general officer who has a “double hat”, as he is also the head of the US European Command, whose area of responsibility is virtually identical, as NATO itself remembers. on its website. Since 2014 Saceur has gained around 100 positions. THE OPPORTUNITY OF A “RESET”
It was also under pressure from the United States that a strong push was given to increase the defense budgets of NATO allies, especially as regards major equipment. Before the annexation of Crimea, only three Alliance countries spent 2% of their GDP on defense, a threshold considered structural. Today they are 11 out of 30, according to the indicators published by the organization. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is expected to encourage allies to make a collective effort on Thursday, when the war and the arrival of many US troops will be presented as an opportunity for a “reset”.
The US reinvestment in Europe should also be the occasion, Thursday, for the announcement of the creation of four new “battle groups” on the eastern flank of the Alliance. Troops from various member countries are already deployed in Hungary (800), Bulgaria (900), Slovakia (2,100) and Romania (3,300, of which 500 French). But this time they will be given a joint official command. This is similar to what has been done since 2016 in Estonia, where around 2 000 men from different member states are positioned under British command – including 350 French -, in Latvia, with 1 700 soldiers under Canadian command, in Lithuania. , with 4 000 soldiers under German command, and in Poland, with more than 10 500 men under American command. France is currently pushing to take command of the battle group in Romania.
Another reassuring signal sent by the United States was that the new troops deployed to Europe were drawn from the 82nd Airborne Division (about 5,000 men), a parachute division capable of being operational very quickly. A large contingent also comes from the 1st Infantry Division, a division of the US military that fought in WWI and WWII, Vietnam and Iraq. While so far most of the American troops deployed in Europe were Air Force affiliates, these reinforcements illustrate Washington’s desire to diversify its capabilities. These troop movements are also accompanied by technical means, in particular air and missile defense systems. THE REACTIVITY OF NATO
How long this return of American boys to Europe will be maintained
“It is a forced reinvestment that goes against the initial plans of the Biden administration,” notes a European diplomat. The principle of “substantial and permanent” NATO combat forces could also question the spirit of the founding act between the Alliance and Russia, signed in 1997, which provides a political framework for military confrontation on the eastern flank. “At the time, very precise negotiations prohibited military deployments above the level of a brigade, or about 3,000 men, according to the American definition,” says a good connoisseur.
Even though NATO is still a very large and relatively “clumsy” machine, as the European diplomat himself describes it, its ability to react to a possible aggression has partly shown that it works with this crisis. A reactivity that was illustrated in particular with the deployment in Romania, in recent days, of its rapid reaction force, created in 2014, and called “joint task force with a very high level of readiness” (VJTF). Thursday, the Alliance summit should in any case be an opportunity to show the unity of relations between NATO and the European Union, and to remember that a NATO-Russia conflict must absolutely be avoided, while concerns remain about Moscow’s use of possible chemical or nuclear weapons.
(Extract from the foreign press review by Epr Comunicazione)
