Russia, NATO and Europe’s looming arms race

The ongoing torturous negotiations over Brexit have exposed a number of important myths. Among these is the preoccupation with Britain’s continued great power status, implicitly tied to its independent defence and security capability. The truth is that despite a position on the UN security council, Britain’s military standing has for many years been based implicitly on multilateralism with both European allies and NATO members.

The UK’s strategic interests have been subordinated to the all-consuming nature of Brexit and financial imperatives, whilst the second Russian assassination plot in almost a decade has been allowed to take place on British soil. Simultaneously NATO is failing to adequately grasp the nature of the threat from Russia or indeed the threat that the failed INF treaty now poses to European cohesion.

This backdrop makes Gavin William’s assertion that it’s time for Britain to adopt a more “assertive” posture on the world stage hard to understand. Britain is barely able to defend her own borders, never mind consider expeditionary military campaigns overseas.

NATO has just finished its largest wargames since the end of the Cold War. Exercise “Trident Juncture” mustered tens of thousands of troops in what the Western alliance intended as a “strong display” of capability, unity and resolve in the face of Russian military and intelligence activity in Europe.

“Russia’s bellicose awakening takes place at a time when US and UK military capability has been weakened by decades of cuts.”

This NATO exercise was preceded by a smaller British one in Oman. Together they represent an unpalatable strategic reality. That NATO and Britain may well have to counter so called “peer plus” opponents, countries such as China and Russia with better equipped forces. The reality of the two exercises is that they bring to life the strategic threat that Russia in particular represents, the ability and willingness to fight in multiple theatres simultaneously. This means potential flashpoints include not just Estonia and Ukraine but the Balkans and Libya.

The point is that Russia’s bellicose awakening takes place at a time when US and UK military capability has been weakened by decades of cuts. America is moving away from the ability to fight two wars simultaneously and the UK’s military posture is a shadow of its former self. The Defence Select Committee gave an unprecedented warning earlier in the year. NATO’s show of strength is illusory, taking place amongst a significantly worsened European security situation. Trident Juncture coincided with the announcement by Donald Trump that the U.S. will withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). Trump’s announcement was in response to the ongoing breech of the treaty by Russia with its 9M729 cruise missile.

Whilst the press in the West is full of critiques of NATO spending by the European allies, far less attention is paid to the equally daunting spectre of Russian capabilities that cannot easily be countered by defence spending alone. Full conflict with Russia wouldn’t mean just defending European territory from attack but also offensive operations against Russia herself incurring a cost that NATO would be militarily and politically unwilling to sustain.

War against Russia would present one threat that no other current challenger to NATO currently does. Russia has extremely sophisticated air defence systems. Much the same as Russia’s other military export, the AK-47 assault rifle, these systems have become almost ubiquitous in conflicts since the end of the Cold War. Kosovo, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the 2014 invasion of Ukraine and the current war in Syria have all lethally illustrated the effectiveness of older Russian air defence systems. Russia herself has the most up to date S-500 system that NATO forces will be hard pressed to counter.

“Europe may well be on the precipice of an arms race with Russia.”

NATO’s military exercises have been matched by Russia’s own Vostok (West) 2018 exercise which can be seen as a specific warning to NATO air forces regarding the formidable mix of short and long range air defence systems. The message was very clear, any attack on Russia would, at best, result in significant aerial losses by NATO and may well be beyond the capability of current NATO airpower. That is a worrying reality check. The US airforce in particular may well be technologically without peer but they have never been tested against a modern air defence system such as Russia’s. Whilst the relative weakness of Russia’s army has been seen in the reliance on so-called hybrid warfare in Ukraine, the Donbass and elsewhere, Russia has sensibly marshalled her military resources to counter Western air superiority. NATO’s apparent strength has thus become something of an Achilles heel. Russia knows this her air defence systems, domestic and exported will seriously constrain Western military options.

The strategic and the political are often inseparable. Russian air defence, coupled with collapse of the INF treaty will start to place real stress on NATO’s political cohesion. Russia’s S-400 system, not even the most up to date, is both mobile and has a range of four hundred kilometres. If based in Kaliningrad this range would cover the Baltic states and large parts of Poland. The point being that any Russian forces that entered into that territory would be covered by formidable air defence and NATO would incur significant losses in repelling them as a result. This compounds NATO’s pre-existing issue with logistics. The high readiness forces at her disposal would simply take too long to receive meaningful reinforcement and current air power would receive a serious battering whilst trying to protect NATO troops and repel Russian forces simultaneously. This twin military challenge opens a political fissure between Poland and the Baltic states and the rest of Europe less immediately challenged by Russia.

The immediate, if unpalatable solution to the twin problem of Russian air defence and NATO constraints on the manoeuvre of troops and supplies could be solved by the placing of intermediate range weapons within Europe now that the INF treaty appears to be in abeyance. NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg was quick to suggest that no new nuclear weapons were likely to be based in Europe. Indeed there has been an effective taboo since the 1980s on this sort of deployment. However with an increasingly extreme government in Poland, Donald Trump in the White House and further nationalist populism within Europe, Stoletenberg’s assurances do not have the ring of authority they might have had even five years ago. Europe may well be on the precipice of an arms race with Russia.

In strategic terms the ramifications for NATO members and the UK are that for the first time since the end of the Cold War they exist in a world poised somewhere between peace and war, without the certainty of post-Cold War military superiority. Without many of the structural safeguards of the international liberal order, it is a world which is already placing extraordinary security demands on the UK and her allies, it is far from clear that we are able to meet them. Despite Gavin Williamson’s ability to secure a better than expected defence budget from the Treasury, that will merely stave off further cuts for the year rather than tackling the £7bn black hole in the equipment budget over the next ten years. Defence and security capability is already significantly compromised. The UK is hard pressed to meet the increased range of conventional provocation from Russia in the form of submarine surveillance against our naval fleet, incursions in the Arctic and routine probing by Russian aircraft. It is all but impossible to see how the UK can meaningfully respond to the even greater issue of Russia’s increased global footprint, not least the worrying level of military cooperation with China.