NATO Summit: How the Alliance is strengthening its eastern flank

World leaders gathering in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius on Tuesday for a two-day NATO summit will seek to formulate a united message on Ukraine’s eventual membership within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization amid efforts to  reinforce the Alliance’s eastern front in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.   

NATO began increasing its military presence on its eastern flank (Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria) following Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. Four months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced the Alliance would boost the number of troops on high alert by more than sevenfold to more than 300,000.  

NATO has been conducting the biggest transformation of its defence plans since the Cold War to deter Moscow from encroaching on its neighbours. At the NATO summit in Vilnius, member states are expected to announce increased investment on defence and elaborate long-term security plans.   

“No country is immune to all threats; they all have vulnerabilities. For NATO, the eastern flank is important,” said Vaidotas Urbelis, defence policy director of Lithuania’s ministry of defence.

Lithuania has reasons to be concerned. It shares a border with Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave located to the west on the Baltic Sea, and Belarus, which many analysts consider to be a de-facto military extension of Russia.

“This is why we are saying geography matters, control over the Baltic Sea matters,” Urbelis said. 

As the war in Ukraine drags on, Poland also has security concerns. After having experienced successive Russian invasions and occupations throughout its history, Warsaw’s leaders aren’t taking any chances. The right-wing government of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced in January that Poland would increase defence spending from 3% to 4% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), putting it on track to become the NATO member that spends more on defence than any other relative to its GDP.

‘We need to close the gap’

NAT0 has seen several of its members fall short of defence financing pledges over the past several years. NATO allies agreed in 2014 that member states should spend at least 2% of their GDP on defence within a decade. But many have still failed to reach this target. In 2022, France’s defence spending was 1.89% of its GDP, Italy was at 1.51% and Spain was at 1.09%. Only the three Baltic states, Poland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Greece met or exceeded the 2% threshold.

“We need to close the gap,” said Urbelis.

The Ukraine war has reawakened fears of an expansionist Russia.

“In order to defend ourselves, we need as many forces on the ground as possible, with speed being key. With Russian capacities just across the border; our forces must be ready to react to any incursion on NATO territory,” Urbelis added.

Zygimantas Pavilionis, a member of Lithuania’s parliament, sees the NATO summit as the right occasion to rally members on their defence budgets.

“I hope the Vilnius summit will be the moment when all member states commit to NATO defence spending,” he said.

Lithuania wants to press allies to spend more money on bolstering their military industries. This means persuading members of NATO to spend like the Baltic states, which have pledged to raise their defence spending to 3% of their GDP.

Integrating Ukraine into NATO is also an important piece of the puzzle for the Baltic states.

“Clearing Ukraine’s path to NATO membership by the time of the Washington NATO summit in 2024 will show Ukrainians and Russians we have a clear end-game strategy and all other attempts to destroy Ukraine will fail,” said Pavilionis.

Keeping the big picture in mind

The threats to NATO’s eastern flank can vary, and some military experts say the Alliance needs to keep the big picture in mind.

“Whether it’s an infantry attack on Poland or an intervention in Moldova, these are completely different scenarios,” said Yohann Michel, a research analyst at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

To prepare for some of the possible scenarios, allied air forces began the largest deployment exercise in NATO’s history last June. Hosted and led by Germany, the two-week-long  Air Defender exercise had been planned for months, with training missions that took place over the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and southern Germany. The drills were aimed at boosting the Allies’ preparedness against aircraft, drones and missile attacks on cities and infrastructure.

But in modern warfare, an adversary doesn’t need to cross NATO’s borders to be a threat. Michel cited the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which delivered Russian oil and gas to Europe, as one example of Russian influence that could be wielded aggressively. “These are the kinds of scenarios we would like to plan for in the future,” he added.

As for Stoltenberg’s 2022 objective to have a rapid-reaction force of more than 300,000 troops ready to move to its eastern flank within 30 days, officials and experts admit NATO forces are nowhere near meeting that objective. “To reach this goal, European armed forces need to improve their readiness capacity. This means improving artillery in some areas and air defence in other areas,” said Michel.

Decades of underspending on military capacities among NATO countries also means that many have out-of-date military equipment, including parts that need to be replaced.

“Readiness implies what can you move at ‘time t’ (right away) in terms of equipment and troops,” said Michel.

NATO’s forward presence

NATO countries have been adapting to the new security reality by moving increasing numbers of troops to the eastern part of the Alliance. NATO’s forward presence is made up of eight multinational battlegroups provided by Allies on a voluntary and rotational basis.

The battlegroups operate in tandem with national armies, with Canada currently leading a battlegroup in Latvia and Britain leading one in Estonia. French foreign legionnaires have also been assigned to the UK-led battlegroup in Estonia as part of what France calls Mission Lynx.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, NATO countries have been stationing their battlegroups in host countries for longer periods of time and with increased numbers of troops. Germany’s Defence Minister Boris Pistorius recently promised to upgrade Germany’s military presence in Lithuania to the size of a brigade (4,000-5,000 troops).

Berlin already leads NATO’s multinational battlegroup in Lithuania with a reinforced battalion of approximately 1,000 troops. “We agree that the brigade will grow step-by-step as the infrastructure is established,” Pistorius said, adding that such a deployment could not be completed within “a few months”.

“It could take years before the infrastructure for the brigade is in place”, said Michel. Yet by constructing the necessary infrastructure, including schools and housing areas for families, Germany is turning around the logistical problem of maintaining troops in one place over long periods of time, he added.

A plurality of voices

While NATO has remained mostly united in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, member states can have different – even competing – interests. A recent example is Turkey’s resistance to Swedish membership over what Ankara saw as Sweden’s lack of action on Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants, before a last-minute reversal on the eve of the summit.

The NATO summit in Vilnius will focus largely on regional plans and resources, along with efforts to find a consensus on Ukraine’s future membership in the Alliance.

“We (the member countries) each have our political line and interests,” Urbelis said. “Our ambitions are not always the same. That’s why we talk with our partners from other countries.”

Urbelis said the Russian system is under stress due to the highly centralised nature of power in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, particularly now. Putin is spending exorbitantly on defence while human lives and social programmes are put on the back burner, he said.  

“Democracies are actually better equipped to take care of their own because of transparency,” said Michel. “We are not bad at restoring our armed forces – when we want to – because of our flexibility and adaptability.”