#Ukraine #NATO #Michta

"Why NATO Must Step Up — Deterring Russia with Real Military Capabilities" [6:16 min]
by Helsinky Commission

youtube.com/watch?v=NdWNEZmUx2…

Quote by HC:
"Nov 5, 2024
The Atlantic Council's Andrew A. Michta speaks at the U.S. Helsinki Commission Briefing on Contesting Russia: Lessons from Central & Eastern Europe.
Michta says that there is no greater imperative for the European allies than simply to rearm at speed and scale. He believes if there is anything that's going to deter Russia, it's real exercised military capabilities with appropriate air and missile defenses, system integration, finding a way to actually meld the different disparate digital infrastructures of 32 Allies, and coming up with an unequivocal message that the new regional plans that NATO has can be implemented because the capabilities commitments that are required are present. Michta preaches this message in Europe to any audience that he can. It's not just about percentages of GDP, he says. While the flank countries are leading (Poland is now advocating 4%, the Baltics are stepping up, as are the Scandinavians), Michta says it's about what you spend that money on that counts.
Michta says we're paying the price for the fact that we didn't respond appropriately to Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine in 2014 with Crimea. Every time Putin used military power, he scored a geopolitical win. After invading, Nord Stream projects were still completed. He was rewarded with power in the Middle East after Syria. Michta says the message given to Russia was that the West has no willpower, has energy dependence, and that political elites can be manipulated to influence public debate. That's why Michta says 2022 is such an important year for us because we stood up, responded from the strategic gut, and NATO is politically unified.
However, when it comes to Ukraine and deterrence & defense, he says, political unity is thinner than it needs to be. When it comes to appetite for risk taking, it depends on where you sit on the map. In Tallinn, Helsinki, Vilnius, Warsaw, Bucharest, Stockholm, or Oslo, it's Russia, Russia, Russia - they get it. However, moving away geographically from the flank, from the frontier, Michta says things begin to change. Germany is no longer a frontier country. France is preoccupied with the Mediterranean. As far as Portugal, it's just migration issues and economic development.
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Michta says the size of European militaries are inadequate. He says we should follow the example of the nations on the flank - small nations like Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and especially Finland, are doing their part. Finland is 5.5M people and can field an army of 280,000 immediately, has the largest conventional artillery, and has resilience programming built into their total defense concept. Michta says the rest of the NATO Alliance needs to go here, including the U.S., which is spending 3.1% of GDP on defense, roughly half of what we spent during the Cold War. Joint force is probably about ~1.3M, he says, while it was never less than ~2M during the Cold War. Michta says that on defense spend, we are playing catch up, in large part because the three decades of the peace dividend were so good. It's very hard to let go and recognize the realities on the ground, but Michta says it's way past time to do that.
Andrew A. Michta is Director and Senior Fellow, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and the former dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies.

Time stamps
00:00 - Russia Will Be Deterred by Real Exercised Military Capabilities
01:20 - We're Paying the Price for 2008 (Georgia) and 2014 (Ukraine)
02:19 - Political Unity is Too Thin
03:16 - We Need a Unified Threat Perception Across the NATO Alliance
05:11 - We Must Recognize the Realities On the Ground

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