But Milley’s recommendation came with a twist: He said he didn’t think the US would need to permanently station troops at those bases to create an effective deterrent.
“I think a lot of our European allies, especially those in the Baltics or in Poland or Romania or elsewhere, are very, very willing to establish permanent bases,” Milley told lawmakers during a congressional hearing. “They will build them, they will pay for them etc. so that we can take turns driving through them. So you get the effect of a permanent military presence, but the actual individual soldier, sailor, airman or marine is not stationed there permanently for 2-3 years.”
The Pentagon’s $773 billion budget proposal released last week shows how the US military still sees China as its top strategic challenge. While the budget was largely prepared ahead of the Russian invasion, Assistant Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said last week that the budget “prioritizes China as a pace challenge” while acknowledging the “urgent threat posed by Russia.”
The two countries pose different threats: China’s economy is significantly larger than Russia’s and has the economic muscle to directly challenge the United States, though it’s still unclear how willing Beijing would be to deploy its rapidly expanding military in a conflict with another major country. However, Russia has shown its willingness to use its military to achieve its goals – the all-out invasion of Ukraine comes after previous military incursions in both Ukraine and Georgia.
“We are in the midst of a shift from two decades of counterinsurgency to a competition that is a competition that is a competition that is just a competition. We thought the only major competitor would be China, but now let’s look at two main competitors,” Senate Armed Services Chairman Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, told CNN.
It is too early to say whether the tens of thousands of new US troops transferred to Europe over the past two months mark the beginning of a permanently expanded US presence on NATO’s eastern flank to attempt to establish a future one to prevent Russian aggression – or whether it will. The focus on Europe will ease after the end of the war, returning the US military’s primary focus to the Pacific.
Still, US and NATO officials say things will never be the same as they were before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an attack on Ukraine, sparking the biggest land war in Europe since World War II. The influx of military forces into Eastern Europe – and the arms flowing freely from NATO countries to Ukraine for use in combat against Russian forces – have likely triggered long-term security and spending commitments by numerous NATO countries.
Military and Pentagon officials, lawmakers and military experts say that while NATO is doing its best to stay squarely out of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the alliance must make important decisions about whether to act in a way that risks a Escalation of tensions with Russia entails such as the admission of new members such as Sweden or Finland. Last month Moscow threatened both countries with joining NATO.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the US is discussing with NATO what has changed since Russia’s attack on Ukraine and how to explain it.
“This unlawful and unprovoked aggression by Putin will change the security architecture in the region for some time,” Austin said. “We expect it will change our footprint. To what extent it changes the US contribution remains to be seen.”
“It’s a wake up call”
The decisions the Biden administration makes regarding US security posture toward Russia will set the direction of a military moving from 20 years of Middle East war and counterinsurgency to a new phase focused on military competition with China and Russia focused. The extent to which the military is shifting its focus to Europe could help determine the future of an army that is expected to shrink slightly over the next year and a Marine Corps whose future role in the US military is currently the subject of significant debate, while it prepares a reorganization.
“I think this is a very protracted conflict,” Milley said of the war in Ukraine. “And I think it’s measured in years at least, I don’t know how decades are, but certainly years at least.” This is a very broad conflict that Russia initiated.”
Austin has added troops and assets to the region since the Russian invasion, increasing the total number of US troops in Europe from 60,000 to about 100,000.
General Tod Wolters, commander of US European Command, said during a congressional hearing last week that the Russian invasion was an unfortunate catalyst for a overdue reassessment of the permanent military presence on the continent.
“It has to change and this is certainly an opportunity as a result of this senseless act on behalf of Russia to review the permanent military architecture that exists not only in Eastern Europe but also in our air policing activities in aviation and in our standing naval maritime groups” , Wolters said.
Mark Cancian, a retired Navy colonel and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Biden administration’s initial inclination before the Ukraine war to focus primarily on China is likely to shift.
“I think their strategy had a very strong sense that China is what they called the ‘pacing threat’ – everything else should be secondary,” he said. “That is clearly not the case now.”
House Army Chairman Adam Smith, a Washington state Democrat, said he doesn’t think additional emphasis on Russia should come at the expense of fighting China. “I think we can do both. That’s what the budget debate and the defense strategy debate will be about,” Smith told CNN. “I think it’s pretty clear that with our NATO partners we are unquestionably ready for a more robust troop deployment in Eastern Europe.”
Republicans have accused the Biden administration of falling short of its planned 2023 Pentagon budget, which would increase by around $30 billion compared to the current fiscal year, and have said that more funds are sometimes needed to achieve better deterrence against Russia.
“It’s a wake-up call,” said Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “There are still a lot of liberal people who don’t think there’s a real threat out there. I think that eliminated that.”
A larger permanent European presence
US officials say Putin miscalculated how NATO would respond to Russian aggression in Ukraine. European countries that depend on Russian energy joined crippling sanctions on Moscow to project unity, and several countries that had previously stood on the sidelines have supplied arms to Ukraine, reflecting the value of the alliance as he claimed members would not contribute enough defense funds, and when he pushed for US troops to be withdrawn from Germany.
But the Alliance still faces tough, potentially conflicting choices.
While Ukraine has seemingly postponed the prospect of joining NATO, other countries such as Sweden and Finland may be tempted to do so, fearing the prospect of escalating Russian aggression and seeking the protection of the Alliance’s Article 5 obligation to member countries protect against attacks. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that both Finland and Sweden could join the alliance if they so wished.
“We have a good dialogue with the Finnish political leadership, with the Finnish President, also with Sweden,” said Stoltenberg. “And of course they have to decide. But if they apply, I expect that they’ll be warmly welcomed by all 30 allies and that we’ll find ways to do that relatively quickly to include them in the alliance if they want to.”
Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Russia’s aggression has “refocused” NATO to promote the security of its core countries. “NATO is in some ways rediscovering its original purpose and in some ways becoming a more cohesive organization,” he said.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, NATO has agreed to create four more Battle Groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. These forces complement the Battle Groups established by NATO in 2017 in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, meaning NATO now has forces deployed along its eastern European flank. Battle Groups are military forces from different NATO countries that train and station together to be ready as a unified NATO force in the event of a conflict.
Wolters, who also serves as NATO’s top allied commander for Europe, said during last week’s hearing that he believed a new US military presence on the continent would have strong support from NATO allies.
This week, Austin authorized an expanded deployment of US service members from the 82nd Airborne Division in Poland, some 7,000 troops and their support elements, and the Mediterranean-based aircraft carrier strike group USS Harry S. Truman. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said during a news conference last week that both groups would “stay around for a while.”
“No matter how this war ends, no matter when it ends, the security environment in Europe will be different. And we have to act on that,” Kirby said. “But we will remain open to such talks as to whether there is a need for … a larger permanent presence on the European continent.”
CNN’s Oren Liebermann contributed to this report.