Why the US is Sending an Armored Brigade to Eastern Europe

Whether an armored brigade is "big" depends on the size of the pond it swims in.

At about 1100 armored vehicles (Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and some mobile artillery), such a brigade could easily overwhelm the conventional militaries of most small countries.

In the Eastern European theatre, an armored brigade is nothing close to large enough to be a game-changer. Russia's military sports about ten thousand pieces of active heavy armored equipment (tanks, fighting vehicles, and mobile artillery), most of which is dedicated to its western front.

Despite the numerical gap, the US is sending such a brigade to Eastern Europe, spread out from the Baltics all the way down to Romania. What we know is that such a brigade won't be a decisive force if Russia were to invade Sweden, the Baltic countries, Romania, or Poland (all of which it's threatened to do over the past few years). Why the effort, then?

Some analysts suggest it is a "symbolic" gesture for wary allies. I think a fifteen-second gut check suggests this hypothesis is weak: Eastern European countries are skeptical of NATO, terrified of Russia, and are smart enough to see past symbolic gestures. And US leadership is smart enough to see all of this.

I think what's really going on is that these vehicles are there to be a "positive deterrent" of sorts. That is, rather than deterring Russia by having overwhelming strength on the battlefield, this brigade deters Russia by promising that if Russia attacks one of these countries, the US will be dragged into the war: these units are mixed in with local units and have the right to defend such territory from invasion--all these countries are NATO allies. If that happened, US assets would be attacked and destroyed, with all the shock and fury on the domestic front that would come with that.

The United States' leadership would have almost no choice in the matter: they would face massive pressure to deploy more forces (probably first from Germany) in order to repel the Russians from whichever ally was attacked. For Russia the subsequent fight would be long and messy at best. If Russia lost, defeat could bankrupt the country, wreck Putin's reputation, and set the Russian military back years. Not to mention that countries like Ukraine and Sweden would likely hop on the express train to NATO and request heavy garrisoning by the US to prevent further Russian attacks.

So what this brigade does is that it embodies lessons from the errors of 2004 and 2014 that allowed Russia to invade and annex parts of Georgia and Ukraine. Russia's success in those conflicts depended on avoiding getting entangled with NATO and on pitting their forces only against the small domestic forces of their target territories, and on moving quickly enough that it won the status quo in the area. Such a strategy has worked so far, but its effectiveness would quickly end once an American battle tank was destroyed on the field. Russia could not have a quick, clean victory that way, and would no longer be able to use Europe's lethargy to its advantage.

Russia's leadership is also smart, and knows this. The US administration is putting American lives at risk, yes, but with the expectation that Putin will understand the consequences of attacking, and thus be far less likely to attack at all. It is a clever way of containing Russia in a world where Western European allies are afraid to get on Russia's bad side: the US uses its cowboy reputation to its advantage here, and deploys its own deterrent.

The final stroke of brilliance here is that it is a force that is too small to be a credible offensive threat to Russia, so Russia not only won't feel territorially threatened, but its leadership will have shaky ground on which to pretend that it feels threatened (and thus justify an arms race).

In a comparatively cheap, gentle stroke, the US has out-positioned Russia in most of Eastern Europe, putting time back on the West's side for sanctions to squeeze Russia into acquiescence. 

Little Wars with Russia and Iran

We'll take a quick break from battle lines to look at the "little wars" going on between US/allies and Russia/Iran. Much like during the Cold War, we're seeing regional military action that threatens regional escalation as outside powers become more involved.

Russia

Shelling from rebels in Ukraine has started back up (using rocket launchers and tanks that are both banned and were-never-there-in-the-first-place), which we predicted after Minsk II: the deal with Russia caused successful withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from key areas--especially Mariupol, which is next on the rebel/Russian list of targets. Unsurprisingly, the shelling is happening in Shyrokyne (along with reported rebel presence and gunfire exchanges), just east of Mariupol.

Ukraine requested EU peacekeepers; they have been refused. But Poland and the US continue to reassure Kyiv that they will provide support. The US recently deployed anti-air batteries to eastern Ukraine and says it will keep sanctions on Russia until it has completely fulfilled Minsk II.

Even more interesting: Finland spotted what might be a Russian submarine off its coast in its territorial waters, and dropped depth charges with the intent of scaring it off. Sweden did the same in October.

This is another sign, along with continued military exercises near Estonia, that Russia is testing Western resolve and may be intending to create a clearer "sphere of influence" at its border areas where Western military powers cannot operate. Finland and Sweden aren't part of NATO and, like Ukraine, don't have that military umbrella (though unlike Ukraine, they are part of the EU and therefore have more standing to request help). Unlike Ukraine, their militaries are formidable and they do not have restive Russian populations, so don't expect an invasion any time soon; but there may be a rising conflict over the Baltic sea as Russia tries to expand its sphere.

Iran

Last week, US carrier Theodore Roosevelt moved to the coast of Yemen in order to turn away Iranian cargo ships likely carrying arms for Houthi rebels. The ships were deterred, meaning the US now has a partial blockade of Yemen and has for all purposes entered the conflict. Roosevelt has moved back to the Persian Gulf, but the point seems to have been made. 

Iran has responded.

For reasons not yet clear, 5 Iranian combat vessels intercepted a US (Marshal Islands) cargo vessel heading into the Strait of Hormuz, demanding it move towards Iran. After the cargo ship refused, Iran fired warning shots across its bow, and then escorted the ship into Iranian waters and boarded it.

The Strait of Hormuz is a free-go zone (it's all Iranian territorial water but is subject to innocent passage law). The ship may have moved closer to the shore than Iran may have liked, but typical protocol is to demand that such a ship leave, not come closer. So it's interesting behavior.

The US has sortied jets and a destroyer to the area to "monitor." 

American forces aren't likely to open fire or create a direct confrontation, but Iran now has 34 crew members held hostage. It may be a muscle-flexing strategy or Iran may be looking for a negotiating chip of some sort in its standoff with the US over Yemen.

It's the most direct conflict the US and Iran have had in the past few years. At the very least, Iran is making clear that it has no intent to be pushed around by the US, but the Obama administration is unlikely to respond to this by capitulating on Iranian arms shipments to Yemen.

Expect a simmering conflict here, as well.

Little Wars

Like in the Cold War, these "little wars" are unlikely to escalate into major superpower conflict--it's something nobody wants and something that's hard to back down from once started. 

The risk is that Iran and Russia are so inundated in comically-absurd propaganda that it might be politically difficult to save face if backing away from conflict, so these escalations must be managed very carefully.

This will be a longer-term trend over the next decade--the US' "war focus" is likely to shift to an ongoing cold war with Iran and Russia as its attention leaves Afghanistan and Iraq. Once ISIS is pushed out of Iraq and negotiations between Kabul and the Taliban are complete, the US will have its hands newly quite full with Russia and Iran.

But that is likely going to be a problem that comes to a head during the next administration.

With Precedent Set, the Door's Wide Open for Putin in Ukraine. What will Ukraine and the V4 Do?

So, first thing's first: I was pretty wrong. Definitely no shooting war over Crimea.

With that said, the US, Canada, and NATO are all saying Russia looks pretty poised to invade the rest of Ukraine (either to take more of Ukraine or get to Moldova), so stay tuned! There may yet be a shooting war. (The ethnic Russians live in those really red bits and would be the likely target in Ukraine.)



Ukraine up and pulled its troops out of Crimea after Russian troops smashed into the bases. In what is ultimately a complete and unlikely miracle, nobody was shot during this entire process (save for some stray sniper rifle fire from who-knows-whom.) At least the dolphins don't look like they're going to surrender.

Why surrender so quickly?

Simple: it's pretty obvious that Ukraine lacks support. The EU and US just had no interest at all in risking a war with Russia, so they weren't going to come to the aid of the Ukrainian military (which would have lost on its own). Biden may have visited Poland specifically to tell them "no-go" on getting involved in Ukraine (they seemed otherwise chomping at the bit to get in there with the Visegrad 4, which I kept believing would happen).

The US is not considering putting Ukraine under the defensive umbrella of NATO.

The biggest sign of non-support for Ukraine comes from the pretty weak sanctions against Russia. So far, it's only against individuals (travel bans, asset freezes, etc). The US and EU are considering further sanctions if Russia invades the rest of Ukraine, which basically gives Putin a hearty thumbs-up to invade the rest of Ukraine. (The Daily Show actually nails it for once, explaining that "Putin Doesn't Give a S--t.")

(So I'll have to note here that my bias in this matter is pretty obvious. I think undeterred territorial-expansion invasions in Europe are a dangerous thing and set a very bad precedent for the stability of Europe in the future.)

So  let's assume a second invasion of Ukraine is pretty likely at this point. It's not clear whether or not Ukraine is going to fight a losing war for the rest of its eastern territories. Certainly Tymoshenko--most influential leader in Ukraine right now--is ready to "wipe out" the Russians and take up arms. Highly controversial statement, but it may get her swept into power quickly if Russia invades again.

Ukraine is clearly not going to get military support if it doesn't fight. I think in Crimea it was ready to see if it could get the support it needed. Russia moved quickly and jammed through the sham-referendum, and the West balked at helping. By the time Ukraine knew what help it could get, it was just too late.

If Russia invades again, Ukraine knows it can't wait for help.If it starts fighting and its people start dying--rather than doing nothing--it is much  more likely to provoke a military response from a friendly nation. It seems somewhat Machiavellian to throw one's army into a fight one knows it will lose (on the hopes that help will come), but the pro-Western part of Ukraine very much sees itself as the Czech / Poland to Putin's Nazi Germany right now. The idea of rolling over is fairly horrifying to many.

Sadly, I just can't predict what's going to happen. They absolutely can't depend on the EU, US, or NATO--they've been quite thoroughly hung out to dry by all of them.

Once again, I turn to the Visegrad 4, the sleeping tiger in all of this (and the only ones that seem to be kicking up any serious dirt about Russia's invasion of Ukraine). It may be the very weakness of the US/EU/NATO response that kicks them into gear. The V4 was formed quite explicitly out of a lack of confidence in the rest of NATO to protect them from Russia, so they're a bit of a rogue element within NATO. To them, Russia is a very real and credible threat, and so the US/EU/NATO responding weakly is going to shake V4 confidence in that leadership. They'll be, in turn, less likely to listen to any warnings about getting involved.

So I'm still going to predict that, if Russia invades eastern Ukraine, and Ukraine fights, Poland and the V4 are going to get themselves in the fight. They won't invade Russia, but they're poised right on the western border of Ukraine and would be ready to send their battle group in to hold the line.



Once that happens, Russia will have a bit of a tough choice: either take them head on or try to avoid a fight and hold on to whatever territory it has. Normally, I'd assume that neither side wants to be seen as an aggressor, but Russia might just not care that much and try to give them enough of a bloody nose to boot them out before NATO can decide whether to back up the V4 and try to win back some shadow of a hint of relevancy in Eastern Europe.

But I'm not going to predict how that fight will go.

The big takeaway here is that the US, EU, and NATO are very quickly losing relevance in Eastern Europe, and that's where the action is. Ukraine is on its own unless the V4 jumps in. If they do, NATO as a real power in Europe is probably doomed.

So it's a pretty big deal.

My Prediction: War in Crimea Within 48 Hours

It sounds like Russia is actually issuing ultimatums to the bases (that they have surrounded and put under siege, by the way) that if they don't surrender, war will begin. Russian troops are digging trenches on the northern coast of Crimea and the fleet is being mobilized to control the seas, giving the Ukrainians only a tiny bottleneck to move through.



I predict that's just what's going to happen. Ukraine won't give up without a fight.


It's not a war Ukraine's going to win. They'll get beat pretty badly and Russia will use this as an excuse to march into the rest of the country. Already, a truly North-Korean-style propaganda blitz is happening within Russia now to drum up domestic support for the war.

The big question will be what the V4 does, but I think they'll get involved. Poland is mobilizing and Russia is actually readying its northern defenses (around St. Petersburg). I think both sides are getting ready to go at it.

The West is responding as weakly as Putin hoped and predicted. The EU is refusing to join the US in imposing sanctions--Russia has too much oil/gas leverage. The US is not threatening a military response, and it's frankly the only kind of response that would give Putin pause.

Quick Update on the V4

Timing is interesting.

The formation of the Visegrad 4 Battle Group seems to have awakened the United States to its own relative distraction from Eastern European allies.

Poland, which has been asking for American "boots on the ground" (if for no other reason than as a symbolic stand that the United States will defend Poland from Russia), finally extracted a pledge from President Obama, who will be visiting Saturday.

The US will be placing aircraft and trainers in a Polish base to beef up the Polish air force. The president has also assured the US commitment to the NATO precept: mutual defense.

The fact that President Obama needed to make this reassurance to an ally that was staunchly secure during the Bush years is a sign that the US has begun to recognize its poor attention to the area. It's also a sign that the V4 is being taken very seriously, and immediately.

Komorowski's Win a Polish Westward Entrenchment

Whether the Poles voted for Komorowski for his foreign policies is not yet clear to me, but his victory is significant in the long-term shaping of the European landscape.

Komorowski's pro-EU (and Berlin-friendly) stance is likely a minor blow to Russian hopes for a friend along the plains of Europe (and a friend strategically positioned to surround the Baltics). The win is a sign that at least a majority of Poles resisted the charm offensive from Moscow after the tragic plane crash of April that killed a large swath of Polish leadership.

The win is also a sign that the EU and US may have dodged a bullet after allowing a perceived "sympathy gap" to form between themselves and Russia after the plane crash.

Sarkozy Comes to Obama's Rescue

Nicholas Sarkozy, Diplomatic Rock Star, has made an appearance to reduce Mr. Obama's list of foreign policy challenges by at least one--to great effect.

Hours after McCain conceded the American Presidential election to Obama, Russian President Medvedev announced that Russia, in response to US anti-missile shields in Poland , would be building offensive missile capabilities right outside of Poland.

Allow me to first digress into how silly this is as a foreign policy scheme. "If you install anti-missile technology in Poland, we will install offensive missiles next to Poland!" seems unnecessarily bellicose. Of course Russia can overwhelm almost any missile shield with sheer volume--which means it's rather unlikely the missile shield was meant to defend against Russia, rather than Iran. But anyway.

Sarkozy led an EU-Russia meeting that caused the Russians to agree to back off of the claims--giving Obama some much-needed pressure relief. The Russians are asking Mr. Obama to attend an EU-Russia security meeting in the summer, but it may be a largely face-saving measure on their part--the longer that these missile shields are the norm, the tougher it will be for the Russians to overturn their existence (even though they are not yet installed).

Sarkozy's meeting and convincing has helped Obama avoid an early bout of brinksmanship, in which he would have to act in a way that might either be perceived as aggressive on one hand or weak on the other. This double-bind was probably the intent of Mr. Medvedev, who would benefit from either. Mr. Sarkozy has bought Mr. Obama some much-needed time to make a consistent foreign policy materialize before he faces any serious great power challenges. The Americans owe the French some thanks on this one.

Ineffectual Deterrence

The Russians have been hoping to deter the Poles from adopting anti-nuclear missiles for a long time. They failed, obviously, and have responded with a fair bit of rage.

But Russia's response is not only way over the top, it's reached the pinnacle of silliness. In response to Poland's isntallation of these missiles, the Russians have threatned to nuke Poland.

"If you buy a shield, I will stab you," the Russians say. The only reason to want a country to keep itself from arming with completely defensive measures would be to properly bully them, and the Russians are hoping to continue their bullying power by making it clear that a flurry of missiles could probably overwhelm Polish defenses. But if you are trying to convince a country to disarm its anti-nuclear shield, threatening to nuke them seems like the single worst way to accomplish that. If the Russians have done anything, they have convinced Poland and other nations that the Russians are such loose cannons about their nuclear weaponry that they better all arm themselves with American shield technology. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Czechs and Ukrainians falling in next. Honestly, the Russians are looking like this.

The Russians seem determined to achieve pariah status by doing what they can to intimidate and break their neighbors. Who are we to deny them?

How the West is Capitalizing on Russia's Aggression

While shocked and reeling from the blistering Russian attack on Georgia, the West is doing what it can to capitalise on Russia's perceived aggression and use a surge in anti-Russian popular opinion to slip through anti-Russian measures that might otherwise overworry the Europeans.

The first is a response to Russia's use of Ballistic Missiles in its war on Georgia. Russia's signal that it is willing to employ such weaponry upon its neighbors has helped Mr. Bush to convince the Poles that anti-Ballistic Missile weapons emplacements are a necessary defense measure (this on top of radar installed earlier). The US is insisting that this is happening right on schedule, but the talks yesterday were by no means guaranteed to lead to a quick and easy Polish acceptance--especially after 18 months of tough negotiations. Radar installations will be waiting for Czech parliamentary approval soon--but they are likely to pass, given the jolt that Eastern Europe has recently received.

The second move by the West has been a Ukrainian decision to formally require the Russian navy to ask for permission to dock in Sevastopol--a port leased to the Russians until 2017. The move is mostly symbolic, but it shows that the Ukrainians are officially unwilling to facilitate Russian action (particularly given that Georgia rests on the Black Sea), and that the Russian navy will have a great deal of headaches over the next 9 years, unless it builds its own major naval seaport.

Finally, NATO seems to be doing what it can to make very clear its own anti-Russian stances--not to deter Russia (especailly coming from the mouths of the Canadians), but to encourage the Germans not to veto Georgian and Ukranian membership in the future--or so it would seem. Along with NATO's unanimous resolution of support for Georgia, such anti-Russian rhetoric might actually convince the Germans that they simply must go along with Georgian and Ukranian inclusion, and be ready to face the consequences as an alliance.

But regardless of what the West does, the Russians have lots of options in Georgia--from mere bases in Georgian breakaway regions to full annexation of Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Russians may be more passive-aggressive and ask the Georgians to cut down their military (to make it easier for these regions to break away), or just continue killing Georgians in the regions to eliminate any grassroots support for Georgian control. No matter what, Russian refusal to pull out, let humanitarian aid in, or allow international reporters is ominous at best. In this Russo-Western cold war, the Georgians are but an unfortunate pawn that will continue to lose civilian lives, economic prosperity, political stability, and territory, all so the Kremlin might show the West that it is not to be trifled with.

Eastern Europe is Heating Up Again

Just when we thought that Europe was no longer a problem (perhaps we have been ignoring it due to the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa...), forces in Eastern Europe have started to turn it into a hot spot once more.

Perhaps some of these issues will fizzile, but for now, bitterness and tension are growing over events-about-to-happen, as well as a West vs. Russia proxy war over the loyalty of Eastern Europe States.



The first fight: Will the undecided factions of Eastern Europe end up pro-West or pro-Russia? Ukraine and Serbia are critical battlegrounds (where places like Poland, the Czech Republic, and Albania are clearly West-leaning, and Moldova and Belarus are Russian-leaning), where both sides are using propaganda and low-level political support (including criticism of opposition parties) to help coalitions loyal to them win. Yuschenko's victory in Ukraine two years ago scored a big win for the West, but his mandate has broken, and Ukraine is back up in the air. Pro-western forces barely won re-election in Albania. Why all the fighting over these states? The sense that a Cold War is returning is slowly and very reluctantly creeping back into foreign policy circles.

The second fight: Missile Shields. The US has made deals with Eastern states like Poland and Ukraine to provide (technologically questionable) anti-ballistic missile technology, and has been working for years to actually deliver--this shows a clear anti-Russian hostility (though the US State Department once insisted that it was to protect Europe from Iran) from both the US and these Eastern European states. The EU has been quiet on the subject, giving the US a silent mandate to continue. But the Russians are furious; enough so that Putin has threatened to target Eastern European states with its ballistic missiles if these states go ahead with US missile shield plans. I am not quite sure why the US is insisting on the shield, other than (now) to avoid looking like it will back down to Putin's demands.

The third fight: Kosovo. Elements of Serbia are strongly against the Kosovo secession, as is Russia, while the US and EU support it. The barely-majority government of Serbia has decided to let Kosovo go, despite its strong displeasure with the idea, and has told Serbia to brace for the fracture. The West will recognize Kosovo and give it the diplomatic legitimacy it needs to get on its feet, but all elements are hoping that this is the final fracture of the failed experiment of Yugoslavia.

As Russia grows, the West-Russia fight is likely to grow in magnitude, as well. The Russians are looking for, at the least, respect from the West. But until Russia is willing to play by the West's rules, the EU is unlikely to accept Russia into the fold, and high tensions will remain for a great deal of time to come.

The big losers out of all of this are, of course, the buffer states: former Soviet republics whose economies are only barely starting to recover from the Soviet planned economy can do little to stand up to Russia without Western support, and surely, many of them would rather work with all of their neighbors to improve their domestic economy, rather than engage in a faux Cold War, but they may be forced to choose a side. Should such coercion happen, they can only lose; siding with either coalition will hurt their economy if the losing coalition cuts them off, and leaning against Russia is likely to lead to very high security risk, unless the West is willing to fight for these nations (it's not). This is a classic bandwagoning problem, and we may see more of it in the future.