Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep! Robbie and Jack here. Before we begin, a special salute to Luxembourg, who showed up in style at this week’s big NATO summit. And by that we mean Depeche Mode’s private jet.
Okay, here’s what’s on the agenda for the day: NATO has big defense plans after the Vilnius summit The Pentagon is getting more and more frustrated whereby the Senate obstructs its candidates, and the The Kremlin summarizes senior Russian military officials who may have backed last month’s (very) short-lived attempted coup by the Wagner group.
In case you haven’t heard, a major NATO summit took place this week. Each year, NATO hosts a summit in different cities within the alliance to bring its leaders together, and each year NATO tends to market these summits as “the most important yet.” But this year was perhaps the most important so far.
Just not for the reasons you might think.
At this week’s Vilnius summit, most eyes (and most of the coverage) were on the issue of NATO enlargement: Turkey eventually reversed its decision to include Sweden in the alliance, and there was heated debate over whether and how Ukraine would join NATO. (It didn’t get what it wanted most, a clear path to NATO entry, but it got a lot nonetheless.)
But while the NATO enlargement debates stole the show, there was another quiet revolution in NATO’s military sphere that you may have missed.
Back to the Cold War script. At the summit, Allied leaders agreed detailed new defense plans for how NATO would defend its regions in the event of a Russian attack. These plans, which have been detailed to SitRep by numerous current and former NATO officials, represent the largest overhaul of NATO defense policy since the end of the Cold War.
Most of the so-called regional defense plans will remain classified for obvious reasons. But in general, they will detail what each country must do and what troops it must deploy, down to the regiments and battalions that go where and when to defend their assigned territory. After the end of the Cold War, NATO abandoned large-scale defense plans, but that era ended after Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.
Ready (ish?) to fight. Under the new plans, NATO will (in theory, at least) have 300,000 troops ready to deploy to its eastern flank within 30 days. This is a sign that the Alliance has seriously shed its Cold War-era directives since invading Russia.
The defense plans emerged as the result of a year’s backbreaking work by General Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s Supreme Commander for Europe (SACEUR) and commander of US European Command, and his team at NATO’s military headquarters.
It may take years for regional defense plans to be fully rolled out and implemented, but NATO allies, especially those on the eastern flank, were keen to get approval in Vilnius and start implementation in earnest.
Rethink deterrence. The new defense plans also come at a time when NATO is undergoing a broader strategic shift in how it thinks about defending its eastern flank, away from a strategy of “deterrence by punishment” and the threat of significant military retaliation from Russia if it enters NATO territories occupies, for example, an invasion of a Baltic country – for “deterrence by denial” – and the accumulation of further troops on the eastern flank so that Russia cannot take an inch of territory in the first place.
NATO has deployed eight multinational task forces on its eastern flank to support this strategic shift. Each battle group has its own lead nation, which provides a majority of the armed forces – the United States in Poland, Germany in Lithuania, France in Romania – while other nations contribute smaller numbers of troops and equipment. Germany last month agreed to increase its presence in Lithuania by permanently stationing 4,000 troops there to deter Russia.
All about the Benjamins. All of these things require money, and in general Europe and Canada are less interested in digging deep into the military spending piggy bank than the United States, where increasing defense spending is as American as apple pie.
Yet more and more countries are increasing their defense spending in a bid to meet the crucial 2 percent mark that NATO has set for decades and which most countries have politely ignored. Now, 11 of NATO’s 31 allies (soon to be 32 with Sweden) meet the 2 percent mark, and seven others are close to it at 1.7 percent or more. Will all allies eventually be able to do this? In theory. Excluding unarmed Iceland, the NATO allies with the lowest defense spending per GDP are Luxembourg at 0.72 percent and Belgium at 1.13 percent. They might not hit the 2 percent mark, but with all due respect to the Belgian and Luxembourg militaries, they probably won’t be groundbreaking anyway. Furthermore, as we mentioned earlier in this newsletter, Luxembourg should get a defense spending waiver just for showing up so gloriously.
Now allies say 2 percent should be the floor, not the ceiling, for defense spending. Easy to say, harder to do. (And there’s an open debate about how useful this metric really is in determining a military’s strength.)
Undoubtedly, the pressure on countries will be greater due to the continued threat from Russia, the new demands placed on countries as part of these detailed regional defense plans, and excessive political pressure from other NATO allies to comply. Former US President Donald Trump had a few opinions on the subject, in case you haven’t heard.
Army Lieutenant General James Mingus was appointed Deputy Army Chief of Staff, a position that would bring him to a four-star rank. However, that may not be the case anytime soon as the Senate holds hundreds of Pentagon candidates on hold (see below).
The Senate Special Committee on Intelligence held its first hearing on Wednesday to confirm the Air Force lieutenant general. Timothy Haugh to become the next head of the National Security Agency and the US Cyber Command.
Michael Horowitz joined the Pentagon as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Development and New Capabilities.
Former staff member of the Obama administration’s National Security Council ryan hate joined the Brookings Institution as director of the think tank’s John L. Thornton China Center.
Jenna Ben Yehuda is stepping down as President and CEO of the Truman Center for National Policy to join the think tank Atlantic Council as the new Executive Vice President.
Russian political scientist Ekaterina Schulman Is accession the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.
Jerry Dunleavy has joined the House Foreign Affairs Committee to lead Republican Chairman Michael McCaul’s investigation into the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. He was previously a reporter for the Washington Examiner.
If you haven’t already, what should be at the top of your radar?
The Tuberville conflict continues. The White House and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin have escalated their criticism of Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville, who is holding up hundreds of Pentagon candidates and military promotions for opposing the Biden administration’s policy on abortion access for military personnel. Team Biden said the blanket arrests would undermine national security. For the first time in more than 150 years, the Marine Corps is left without a commander as a result of Tuberville’s controls. Tuberville is one of several Republican lawmakers who have imposed blanket lockdowns on Biden’s national security and diplomatic nominees over various political disputes with the government, leaving numerous senior government posts vacant.
spy games. The Biden administration’s great power diplomacy with China could fail again due to Beijing’s propensity for espionage. But this time, it’s not a big balloon in the sky that’s derailing talks. The Wall Street Journal reports that Chinese hackers broke into the non-secret email systems of US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and senior State Department officials around the time US Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to China in June. While China is not believed to have accessed sensitive data that could impact US national security, it will not benefit US government efforts to establish safeguards on defense and trade issues: Raimondo muses a trip to China for months.
warrants out. The Kremlin has arrested several senior Russian military officials who may be linked to the Wagner Group’s short-lived revolt against President Vladimir Putin. Russian authorities are interrogating several senior military officials, including General Sergei Surovikin — the one-time commander of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and now the head of the Russian Aerospace Forces — who is believed to be close to Wagner. Also arrested was Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, a former deputy Russian defense minister who led the deadly siege of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol and later joined Wagner. Surovikin’s deputy and the deputy head of military intelligence were arrested but later released but suspended from the military.
Capitalizing on the perceived division, top US military official Gen. Mark Milley told fellow traveling reporters on Thursday that the Russian leadership has suffered from “friction and confusion” since the Wagner uprising.
Children swing on a playground with Patriot anti-aircraft missile systems deployed in the background as part of heightened security measures during the NATO summit at Vilnius International Airport in Lithuania July 8.
Children swing on a playground while in the background Patriot anti-aircraft missile systems are deployed as part of increased security measures during the NATO summit at Vilnius International Airport in Lithuania July 8. Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Monday, July 17: The recent 60-day extension of the Turkey-brokered Black Sea Grains Agreement between Russia and Ukraine is about to expire.
Tuesday, July 18: The three-day Aspen Security Forum begins in the Colorado mountains. Former US President Donald Trump is in court before his first hearing over his alleged misuse of classified government documents.
Wednesday, July 19: Israeli President Isaac Herzog is expected to address a joint session of Congress.
Thursday, July 20: The FIFA Women’s World Cup is expected to start in Australia and New Zealand. The two-time defending champion of the US national team is favored on Dreitorf.
“You know, we’re not Amazon. I told them that last year when I drove 11 hours to get a list.”
– British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace expresses frustration that Ukrainian officials are not showing enough gratitude to Western military aid. Wallace’s boss, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, has distanced himself from the comments.
coffee, anyone? Outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte wasn’t thrilled received a coffee from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy yesterday at the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. “No, no, you’re waging a war,” Rutte said to Zelenskyy and pushed the mug back across the table. “This is your coffee.”
Rutte didn’t want to accept anything else: the post of NATO Secretary General. The Dutch Prime Minister was considered the top candidate at the beginning of spring, but decided not to appear. He now faces his resignation as prime minister after his governing coalition failed to find a workable solution to the migration crisis in the Netherlands.
With friends like that… A probably unflattering endorsement for Twitter owner Elon Musk via Euronews: “Twitter’s free speech approach is backed by Taliban officials.”