NATO rethinks its positions in Europe after the Russian invasion, and it is the opposite of what Putin wants

In an underground file under the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the key document that sets out the vision of the Alliance and Russia on their future ties, as it was signed almost a quarter of a century ago. The room is sealed. To touch the document you need to wear white gloves.

“NATO and Russia are not considered adversaries. They share the goal of overcoming the vestiges of past confrontation and competition and of strengthening mutual trust and cooperation.”, reads the preamble to the NATO-Russia Founding Act, signed in May 1997.

Things looked more promising then, less than a decade after the fall of the Iron Curtain and relations between Moscow and the West thawed. Today, with thousands of Ukrainians holed up in bunkers across the country and millions more forced from their homes, the document looks like a dead letter.

When the Act was signed, the post-Cold War period was the beginning of an era of cutbacks in defense spending as the threat from Moscow receded. NATO and Russia sealed important arms control commitments and improved transparency of their military activities.

And most importantly, they promised to limit the deployment of their forces in Europe.

On Wednesday, lamenting the “brutal invasion“Russian Ukraine Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the largest ground war on European soil in decades”will change our security environment” and will have “lasting consequences for our security and for all NATO allies.”

In their conversations at the entity’s headquarters in Brussels, the US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, and his counterparts are assessing what defenses they establish on the eastern flank of the Alliance, from Estonia in the north, passing through Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. , and to Bulgaria and Romania in the Black Sea.

The goal is to dissuade Russian President Vladimir Putin from ordering an invasion by any of the 30 allies, not just during this war but in the next five to 10 years. Before the start of the offensive, Putin asked NATO to stop its expansion and withdraw its forces from the east. But the opposite is happening.

“We are reforming our collective defense: hundreds of thousands of troops on high alert, 100,000 US troops in Europe, and 40,000 under direct NATO command, mostly in the eastern part of the Alliance, backed by sea and air forces.” Stoltenberg explained.

Ministers are expected to task military commanders to work out options to station troops more permanently and in larger numbers in the east, as opposed to rotating battlegroups, totaling around 5,000 troops, deployed in the Baltic states and in Poland in recent years.

The leaders will study these options at their next big summit, which will take place in June in Madrid.

The opinion of the president of the United States, Joe Biden, and his NATO counterparts, who will also meet in Brussels next week, on the current state of the Act could not be clearer.

In a statement last month, the leaders called Moscow’s actions “a blatant rejection of the principles enshrined in the NATO-Russia Founding Act: it is Russia that has departed from the commitments enshrined in the Act.”

“President Putin’s decision to attack Ukraine is a terrible strategic mistake, for which Russia will pay a heavy price, both economically and politically, for years to come.”, they added.