‘The wolf’s at the door.’ How Russia is reshaping the NATO alliance

What Obama tried to accomplish with appeals and Trump with threats is now happening without a great deal of either from President Joe Biden: amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO member nations are significantly ramping up their defense spending levels. 

Days after the Feb. 24 invasion, Germany announced plans to increase its defense funding, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz committing 100 billion Euros in 2022 to beef up its military and promising to invest more than 2% of gross domestic product – the NATO baseline – into defense moving forward. At least seven other European nations have followed suit with defense spending increases: Belgium, Romania, Poland, Italy, Norway, Denmark and – the only non-NATO member on the list – Sweden. 

An M1 Abrams main battle tank is the first of nearly 200 vehicles and equipment items from 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division to arrive in Europe aboard the “Liberty Passion”, a commercial cargo vessel, which docked in Alexandroupoli, Greece, March 21, 2022. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Austin Steinborn, 5th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment)Related: NATO Response Force: The Answer to Russia’s Aggression?

Russia’s aggression, underscored by a March 13 missile strike in Western Ukraine, just 15 miles from the Polish border, constitutes an existential threat that is promoting historic united action among allies in Europe, at least for the moment.

As Biden travels to Belgium and Poland this week to meet with NATO leaders and address response efforts, many expect him to push for long-term defense commitments from the alliance that will outlast the current crisis.

If leaders can coordinate new investments and move swiftly to admit new partners to the alliance, NATO will emerge more formidable and influential, explains Jim Townsend, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security’s Transatlantic Security Program.

Townsend played a role in making NATO what it is today: in the 1990s, he served as principal director of European and NATO Policy, director of NATO Policy and director of the Defense Plans Division at the U.S. Mission to NATO in Brussels. He’d later work for eight years at the Pentagon as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO policy. Among Townsend’s accomplishments in support of NATO expansion and defense planning was assisting in the creation of the NATO Response Force, which began as an initiative in 2002 and was exp …

The post ‘The wolf’s at the door.’ How Russia is reshaping the NATO alliance appeared first on Populist Press ©2022.