NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said NATO envisioned a “reboot” that would change the role of troops in eastern European member countries from a trap in the event of a Russian attack to a full-fledged deterrent, the newspaper said.
Decisions are expected at a NATO summit in June, he said.
“We have until the summit to make long-term decisions,” said Stoltenberg. “This is part of the reset we need to do, from tripwire deterrence, which is the current concept, to something that’s more about denial deterrence or defense deterrence.”
Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional hearing Tuesday he could turn to permanent NATO bases in countries like Poland, Romania and the Baltic republics to host a rotating troop presence.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said this week there was no decision on “additional rotating forces or permanently deployed forward forces” or a combination of both. “These are things that need to be resolved” and “we will work on them with NATO,” he said Thursday at a Senate hearing in Washington.