All Unquiet on NATO’s Eastern Flank

NATO is steadily bulking up its military footprint along its eastern flank in a show of force to Russia, but behind the scenes Eastern European allies fear that most of their Western European counterparts are still too slow to respond to the threat from Russia. 

Eastern European countries are pushing to expand the size and scope of eight units of NATO military forces stationed along the alliance’s eastern flank and advocating for larger NATO allies to preposition more military equipment farther east to ensure all the forces stationed there are well supplied and ready to fight at short notice. Some allies, such as Poland, are also pushing the United States to expand its intelligence and command-and-control capabilities along NATO’s eastern flank. More policy proposals are expected to come up during NATO’s next major summit, scheduled for July in Vilnius, Lithuania.

“We’re as a region investing in our own defense as we deliver all we can to Ukraine and setting up ways to host more allied troops here as soon as they are ready,” said one Eastern European official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We’re waiting with arms wide open and just hoping we don’t have to wait too long.”

Most allied defense officials agree that Russia, bogged down in Ukraine and hemorrhaging manpower and equipment at alarming rates, doesn’t pose an imminent threat of invasion to NATO territory. But some Eastern European allies fear that NATO forces deployed near Russia’s borders aren’t being expanded quickly enough or backed by adequate defense spending commitments from their allies farther west. 

The internal debates within NATO reflect a growing belief that Russia will find a way to reconstitute its military power over the medium term, despite its stinging battlefield setbacks and high casualty rates in Ukraine. The debates also coincide with the leaking online of a massive tranche of classified U.S. documents that paint a dour picture of Ukraine’s prospects in the war against Russia, including ammunition shortfalls and predictions of bloody stalemate in the coming spring campaign. As many as 354,000 Ukrainian and Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war, according to the trove of purportedly classified documents.

The debate also comes against the backdrop of growing friction between Eastern and Western NATO allies over their views of the threat from Russia and ties with the United States, showcased by French President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial visit to China last week. “We believe that more America is needed in Europe,” Marcin Przydacz, a top foreign-policy advisor to Polish President Andrzej Duda, told Polish radio broadcaster Radio Zet in an interview this week. “Today, the United States is more of a guarantee of safety in Europe than France.”

NATO in 2017 created four multinational military units, dubbed “battle groups,” for Poland and the three Baltic states—Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia—along the alliance’s exposed northeastern flank. In 2022, in response to Russia’s renewed invasion of Ukraine, it established four more: one each in Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania, all allies that share a land border with Ukraine, and one in Bulgaria, along the Black Sea coast. Each one has a conductor: The United Kingdom oversees the battle group in Estonia, the United States manages the battle group in Poland, and France leads the battle group in Romania. 

All told, there are roughly 10,300 troops dedicated to these units, each of which vary in size and composition. Since a meeting of NATO leaders in Madrid last year, Eastern European allies have sought commitments from other NATO members to expand the size of these military forces from a battalion, typically around 1,000 troops, to a brigade, typically ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 troops. 

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said expanding the groups to brigade size is critical for deterrence against Russia. The Baltic region is virtually surrounded, with Russia to its east, Belarus to its southeast, and the small but heavily militarized Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to its west. Only a narrow strip of land around 60 miles across, known as the Suwalki Gap, connects the Baltic states geographically with the rest of NATO territory. 

Moscow also announced late last month that it would deploy tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus—the first deployment of Russia’s nuclear arsenal outside its own territory since the fall of the Soviet Union. 

“We are at the front lines of the alliance. We don’t have the strategic depth and cannot cede territory for the time necessary for reinforcements to arrive,” Landsbergis said. With no strategic depth, what the Baltics need is strategic strength, like NATO brigades rather than battalions. Landsbergis pointed to Russia’s increased defense spending, mass conscription, and deployment of more troops on its western frontier.

Farther south, Romania is waging its own diplomatic charm campaign to convince the French to expand the scope of their forces there. Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu, meeting with his French counterpart, Catherine Colonna, last Saturday, stressed the urgency of bringing the French-led NATO formation up to brigade level. 

But actually fielding combat-ready brigades is proving to be easier said than done for every country except the United States, said several NATO defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues candidly. The United Kingdom, for example, has committed about 3,000 troops to its battle group in Estonia—but is keeping some of those forces in the U.K. and their equipment in Germany, to the quiet frustration of some Estonian officials. Canada, which leads the NATO battle group in Latvia, is struggling with severe military manpower shortages that have opened up questions about its ability to staff up a full brigade to deploy to Latvia with other allied troops. 

Germany has also established a battle group headquarters for Lithuania, but its troops will remain at home, a fact that is a source of frustration in Eastern Europe. 

“It should not be like this. They should not be in Germany—they should be in Lithuania, at least 70 to 80 percent of brigade strength,” said Artis Pabriks, a former Latvian defense minister. “It’s not a secret that NATO countries are struggling with numbers and struggling with capabilities. This is the reason why they should beef it up, also for themselves.” 

“We cannot afford to lose any inch, any centimeter, any meter of our territory,” Pabriks added. “Because then, we can simply expect more Buchas and Iziums,” he said, referring to cities in Ukraine where Russian forces committed war crimes and massacred Ukrainian civilians. 

The United States by contrast, the unrivaled military juggernaut in NATO, is leading the NATO battle group in Poland while simultaneously keeping around 4,000 troops stationed in Romania. The U.S. force in Romania is expected to stay in place through late 2023 at least. Experts say that across the board, NATO is playing a frantic game of catch-up, on both the military front and the balance books, to the new geopolitical reality of Russia’s offensive wartime footing.

“NATO was very late to the game in coming up with actual plans for defending these countries,” said Kristine Berzina, an expert on NATO defense issues with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a Washington-based think tank. “On top of that, now all of these countries leading the battle groups have their own budget issues, have their own manpower issues, have their own equipment issues.”

The slow and uneven pace of upgrading these battle groups to brigade-sized forces underscores the perennial problem of laggard defense spending in the alliance, often a sore spot for successive U.S. administrations and one made all the more urgent by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In a leaked memo obtained by the German newspaper Bild this week, for example, German officials admitted that a division it had promised to allocate to NATO’s war plans wasn’t battle ready. 

NATO set a benchmark for all of its members to spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defense. Currently, only 11 of NATO’s 31 members—including Finland, which formally joined NATO this month—meet that benchmark. Most are in Eastern Europe. 

“The problem is not so much a lack of philosophical commitment. I think we’re there,” Berzina said. “The problem is that there’s consistent underinvestment in defense in many of these countries.”