NATO's Exercise Defender-Europe 20 tests fragile US-Europe relations

Source
China Military Online
Editor
Wang Xinjuan
Time
2020-04-03 18:27:13

Heavy tanks and armoured vehicles are being offloaded from US vehicle carrier Endurance, which arrives in Bremerhaven, Germany for DEFENDER-Europe 20 on Feb 21, 2020. (Photo by Sgt Dommnique Washington)
 

By Hai Jing

Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has been even more serious in Europe, forcing multiple countries to upgrade their protective measures, and also pressing the "pause" button on NATO's Exercise Defender-Europe 20.

The exercise, scheduled to run from the end of February to the end of June, is one of NATO's largest joint military exercises in recent years. The basic conception of the exercise is a NATO-led counterattack against an assault on a NATO member country in 2028, by following the NATO’s Common-Defense Provision. Despite NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg's claims about Defender-Europe 20 not being aimed against any particular country, it is clear what this really means.

In response to the "threat" of "a certain country," the United States and Europe have repeatedly conducted targeted military exercises to ensure that once a war begins, the US military can rush to Europe for reinforcements on a large scale promptly. Although the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the expansion of NATO eastward have made the pressure a "past tense", with the advancement of Russian military modernization and its overtaking on a curve in many areas in recent years, the "nightmare" scene has been roused in many European countries felt really concerned; thereby the United States also intends to take the opportunity to continue to shroud Europe with its protective umbrella.

The preparations for the exercise are fancy: a total of 37,000 soldiers from both the United States and 17 European countries involved, of which more than 20,000 are from the US military. These exercises will take place mostly in Poland, Georgia, and the Baltic states near Russia. The US military has spent $ 50 million and used more than 100 transport ships to deploy troops to Europe. Several B-2A Spirit stealth strategic bombers, which are usually deployed only in the United States, have also flown to Europe in urgency.

Although the Russian military accused NATO of "going beyond the limits of self-defense" in launching the exercise and strengthened its military alert, Russia is relatively calm in response. However, what is unexpected is that the large-scale exercise is now in an awkward position. What has prevented NATO from conducting a grand exercise is not the imaginary enemy, but the virus: many senior European officials have been diagnosed with COVID-19 after attending the exercise preparatory meeting in Wiesbaden, Germany on March 6; as of March 20, the Pentagon had confirmed that 2,600 US military personnel in Europe had shown symptoms such as fever and been under self-isolation, and another 35 been confirmed to be infected.

In worrying about the spread of the virus, European countries have asked for "withdrawal from the exercise", and refused to host US troops. The United States is neither willing to put its investment in jeopardy, nor dare to hastily take home the US personnel who may have been infected with the virus in the affected area. Thus, the participating US troops have been left to stay in Europe on standby. However, as the pandemic situation has been constantly deteriorating, Europe has been already in lack of supplies for its own, and the US troops have to rely on support from nearby US military bases with the ever-decreasing supplies they could buy herein.

Facing the embarrassing situation, the Pentagon has promptly modified the exercise scheme: setting the exercise background as a “comprehensive protection against the imaginary enemy’s biological and chemical weapon attacks”, and proactively lobbying European countries to “keep the big picture in mind”, to reopen the exercise one month later. However, even if European countries want to bite the bullet and maintain the image of Western Unity at this time, they are still in an unacknowledged dilemma—

In the past few days, from a diplomatic war targeting the acquisition of a German vaccine company to the sudden release of a travel ban on Europe, and to the fact that all leaders of major European countries cannot obtain the US entry visa and can only have the Group of Seven (G7) Summit by video-teleconference... In the face of the pandemic, "America First" has sent another wave of sense of presence, even to its European allies. Not long ago, when the epidemic in Italy was becoming more and more serious, the United States sent military aircraft to Italy to take 500,000 throat swabs back from therein, instead of sending aid supplies, despite that the medical supplies in Italy had been extremely scarce at that time.

The US has always made vocal claims to defend Europe. However, it cannot share hardship with its European allies in the face of the pandemic. The scaling down of the exercise with a grand opening, may not lame the sudden outbreak altogether. Russia's annual military expenditure is only one-tenth of that of NATO. What Europe needs to worry about most today is probably the alliance relation that cannot stand up to the tests time and time again, rather than the threat of this imaginary enemy based on Cold War mentality.

 

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