06 March 23
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Having catastrophically failed to deter Russian aggression in Ukraine, the western alliance needs a plan to win the war
Prior to Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, few Nato combat forces were stationed in the east European countries that signed up after the Soviet collapse. Last year’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine turned a trickle of eastward deployments into a torrent. Bungling Putin had provoked the world’s largest, best-armed military force into setting up camp slap bang on Russia’s doorstep.
The Ukraine invasion has given Nato a new lease of life, strengthening its members’ sense of mutual support, reinforcing the US commitment to Europe, raising defence budgets and inducing neutral Sweden and Finland to join. Conversely, Nato is again locked into a dangerous eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with Russia that will probably outlast the current conflict.
This was never the plan. Nato states will doubtless congratulate themselves at their annual summit in July on presenting a united front. Problem is, the Russian invasion also produced the worst setback in Nato’s history. A catastrophic failure of deterrence – Nato’s traditional raison d’être – led Putin to think he could seize a European country and get away with it. Presumably, he still thinks he might. Even when the fighting eventually stops, this renewed military, ideological, political and economic east-west confrontation looks set to continue indefinitely – and grow more deeply entrenched.
Nato’s figures give a measure of Putin’s ineptitude. “Over 40,000 troops, along with significant air and naval assets, are now under direct Nato command” in the east, it says, with “hundreds of thousands more” held in reserve. Eight multinational battle groups, in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, guard a bristling Nato frontline with Russia, extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
Putin argues today’s standoff was not sparked by his murderous mistakes. He claims it’s the result of a long-plotted Nato strategy to contain, isolate and ultimately destroy Russia that dates back to the west’s broken promise, supposedly made in 1990, not to enlarge the alliance eastwards. In his telling, Nato is pursuing a historic goal: “to disband the former Soviet Union and its principal entity, the Russian Federation”.
This claim is central to Putin’s self-justificatory narrative of Russia as victim, not predator. And it feeds an even more basic Russia-Nato disagreement: whether they are actually at war. Seeking to explain battlefield reverses, Putin has repeatedly told Russians the west is the true enemy. In contrast, Nato leaders are adamant: they are not fighting Russia, they are helping Ukraine defend itself.
As sophisticated western arms, defence and security assistance and economic aid pour into Ukraine – and Russian losses mount – this distinction is growing harder to maintain. The level of Nato military support now being provided far exceeds what was envisaged a year ago.
It’s a great pity, in truth, that the US president, Joe Biden, and European leaders were not bolder, earlier, in providing tanks and other advanced weaponry. Ukraine is still waiting for fighter planes to enforce no-fly zones and prevent air raids. Much foreseeable suffering and destruction might have been avoided had a too cautious Nato acted sooner and with more grit.
The debate over how far to go, and how quickly, in assisting Ukraine reflects another key problem – Nato’s lack of clearly defined war aims. Does the west seek Russia’s defeat and a generational victory over autocracy and tyranny, or merely Ukraine’s liberation?
Biden gave his answer in Warsaw last month. Ukraine, he suggested, was ground zero in the global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. Yet French and German leaders are sticking to their view that, in the longer term, an accommodation must be reached with Moscow. Britain, Poland and the Baltic republics take a harder line. Such public divisions only help Putin.
Nato unity is also threatened by rightwing, Putin-friendly Turkish and Hungarian leaders, who are obstructing Sweden’s and Finland’s membership. The Finnish parliament voted overwhelmingly last week to press ahead anyway. Turkey’s behaviour is particularly disloyal. It should be told to drop its veto on the Swedes or face suspension from the alliance.
Differences persist, meanwhile, over Ukraine’s ambition to join Nato. The country’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, argues it is already a member de facto. Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, worried about triggering a wider war, demurs. This is irrational. Putin has shown he needs no excuse to up the ante. Kyiv should be given all the security assurances it requires – and to which it is legally entitled under the 1994 Budapest memorandum.
This question leads back to the fundamental dilemma of the “new Nato”. Is it still purely a defensive alliance? Or will its leaders accept the inherent logic of the emerging situation? That is to say, Putin’s continuing military, geopolitical and rhetorical escalations, and the deepening involvement of individual western nations, mean Nato’s unassertive, semi-detached posture is no longer tenable or practicable, if indeed it ever was.
It’s not just about Ukraine. The western democracies must accept that the wider, head-on confrontation with Moscow that they have striven in vain to avoid is now upon them, exploding around their ears. Putin is mobilising Russian society for a second great patriotic war. He is going all out. French “ifs”, German “buts” and American “maybes” are increasingly unaffordable.
This is a fight the west cannot afford to lose – but cannot hope to win while a chronically reactive Nato, unsure of its purpose and aims, pulls its punches and lets Putin set the pace.
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Demonstrators in police custody outside the South River Forest after protesters broke into Cop City, Dekalb County, outside Atlanta, Oct. 5, 2023. (photo: Nicole Craine/NYT)
Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said at a midnight news conference that several pieces of construction equipment were set on fire Sunday at the site for the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center in DeKalb County.
It was the latest flare-up in a cause that has drawn to Georgia both anti-police demonstrators and environmentalists who call themselves defenders of the forest.
Surveillance video released by police show a piece of heavy equipment in flames at the facility under construction that opponents call “Cop City.” It was among multiple pieces of construction equipment destroyed, police said.
Protesters dressed in all black threw large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police officers Sunday at the construction site, police said.
Other police agencies stepped in to assist city officers, and no officers were injured, Schierbaum said. Officers used nonlethal enforcement methods to disperse the crowd and detain those involved, he said.
“This was a very violent attack, very violent attack,” Schierbaum said. “This wasn’t about a public safety training center. This was about anarchy ... and we are addressing that quickly.”
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said the people involved “chose destruction and vandalism over legitimate protest, yet again demonstrating the radical intent behind their actions.”
“As I’ve said before, domestic terrorism will NOT be tolerated in this state,” Kemp said in a statement Monday.
“We will not rest until those who use violence and intimidation for an extremist end are brought to full justice,” he said.
The names of those in custody and the criminal charges against them were not immediately available early Monday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. But Schierbaum said many were not from the Atlanta area.
In January, a 26-year-old environmental activist was shot to death by law officers in the forest where the training center is being built.
Demonstrations spread to downtown Atlanta on Jan. 21, when a police cruiser was set ablaze, rocks were thrown and fireworks were launched at a skyscraper that houses the Atlanta Police Foundation. Windows were shattered in that building and others.
The Atlanta City Council approved the $90 million Atlanta Public Safety Training Center in 2021, saying a state-of-the-art campus would replace substandard offerings and boost police morale, which is beset by hiring and retention struggles in the wake of violent protests against racial injustice that roiled the country after George Floyd’s death in 2020.
In addition to classrooms and administrative buildings, the training center would include a shooting range, a driving course to practice chases and a “burn building” for firefighters to work on putting out fires. A “mock village” featuring a fake home, convenience store and nightclub would also be built for authorities to rehearse raids.
Opponents have said the site will be used to practice “urban warfare.” Self-described “forest defenders” say that building the 85-acre (34-hectare) training center would involve cutting down so many trees that it would be environmentally damaging.
The protests are leading to proposals for tougher criminal penalties.
As part of a broader tough-on-crime push, state lawmakers have proposed making rioting a felony in Georgia instead of a misdemeanor, and are considering creating a separate crime for burning a police vehicle.
Many of those accused of violence in connection with the training site protests are being charged with domestic terrorism, a felony that carries a penalty of up to 35 years in prison. Those charges have prompted criticism from some that the state is being heavy-handed.
However, lawmakers are considering strengthening the penalty by classifying domestic terrorism as a serious violent felony. That means anyone convicted of the crime must serve the entire sentence ordered by a judge, can’t be sentenced to probation as a first offender and can’t be paroled unless an offender has served at least 30 years in prison.
Meanwhile, more protests are planned in coming days, police said Monday.
“With protests planned for the coming days, the Atlanta Police Department, in collaboration with law enforcement partners, have a multi-layered strategy that includes reaction and arrest,” police said in a statement.
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