Starting this week and lasting several months, NATO is launching the largest military exercise since the end of the Cold War. The large-scale maneuvers were intended to prepare the alliance for a high-intensity conflict and prevent the Kremlin from being swept away from its eastern flank amid a conflict with Ukraine.
Ninety thousand troops mobilized, including American troops from North America, 50 warships, 80 aircraft and more than 1,100 combat vehicles, including 133 tanks deployed for several months: NATO saw big things for its Steadfast Defender 2024, planned The most important is the military exercise. Atlantic Alliance over the Decades.
For comparison, the last edition of the exercise, planned for 2021, mobilized only 9,000 troops. In the recent past, only the “Trident Junction” operation in 2018 could have claimed to have reached a comparable scale with its 50,000 participants.
“This will be a clear demonstration of our unity, our strength and our determination to keep each other safe,” argued American General Christopher Cavoli, the supreme Allied commander in Europe (Casser), during a January 18 press conference in Brussels. Alliance headquarters are located.
“This is a record in terms of the number of troops,” asserted Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, head of the NATO military committee, during the same press conference that brings together heads of state. The chiefs of the armies of the member countries of the organization.
To carry out the large-scale exercise, the alliance’s 31 countries will provide troops, as well as Sweden, which hopes to join NATO soon after a green signal from Turkey.
The main European contributor, the United Kingdom alone, will deploy 20,000 troops as part of the maneuver, its Defense Minister Grant Shapps announced on Monday 21 January.
The challenge of conflict in five dimensions
To find such a show of force from NATO, we must go back to the “Reforger” exercise of 1988, which deployed 120,000 troops to Europe in the middle of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the Atlantic alliance. .
“We’ve lost the habit of it but, during the Cold War, this kind of exercise was NATO’s daily bread and took place every two years. Then, from the 1990s, it was supposed to be the so-called “benefits of peace”. War was no longer possible in Europe. Here We are returning to the basics of a high-intensity conflict”, analyzes General Dominique Trinquand, former head of the French military mission to the UN in New York.
If Russia is never mentioned by NATO, it is indeed a scenario of an invasion of the Alliance from an “adversary of comparable size” that would be simulated on its eastern flank. . In other words, the triggering of Article 5 which provides for mutual assistance between member states in the event of an attack.
“This is an exercise that has undoubtedly been in the making for at least two years,” estimates Olivier Kampf, director of La Vigie firm and associate researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research. “It is then possible that, in the context of the war in Ukraine, the allies want to increase the size of the exercise to benefit from a better response,” the expert adds.
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If NATO hosts “war games” throughout the year, Steadfast Defender also stands out for its ambition to get all elements of allied forces working together.
“During this exercise, we will have several divisions or even army corps. It is an unusual scale because it causes difficulties in logistics, coordination and communication because it is necessary to set up a complete radio system in a very restricted area. It is extremely complex. . when you add coordination with the navy and the air force,” notes Olivier Kampf.
“Especially because there is no longer just air, land and sea coordination. There is also cyber and space. We are now on five dimensions,” adds Dominique Trinquand. According to a military expert, part of Steadfast Defender 2024 should take place in the Baltic countries, a “vulnerable point of NATO” that has a sea front and where alliance troops have already been deployed since 2014. Date of annexation of Crimea.
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During the second part of the Steadfast Defender exercise, the focus will be on the deployment of NATO’s rapid reaction force in Poland, according to Reuters.
“If you want peace, prepare for war”
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Atlantic alliance has continued to strengthen its “forward presence” on the eastern flank, sending thousands of people there. The Allies created four additional multinational battle groups, notably in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, bringing the number of NATO units operating jointly with each country’s national forces to eight.
The prospect of this extraordinary mobilization of NATO forces quickly provoked a reaction in Moscow, which, for years, viewed the alliance’s eastward expansion as an existential threat.
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“These exercises are another element of the hybrid war launched by the West against Russia,” Russia’s deputy foreign minister told state news agency RIA in comments published on Sunday.
“Exercises of this magnitude (…) mark NATO’s definite and irreversible return to the pattern of the Cold War, when the military planning process, resources and infrastructure were prepared for a confrontation with Russia.”, added Aleksandr Grushko.
If the Russian narrative tries to present this military exercise as an escalation provoked by the West, the objective pursued by NATO is truly disingenuous, recalls General Dominique Trinquand.
“Milities are built to prepare for the worst while hoping it won’t happen. Here, it’s a question of telling the Russians not to go too far and showing them we’re ready if they don’t really happen. Get the message. ,” explains the former head of the French military mission to the UN in New York.
“Paradoxically, we should see this as something reassuring,” adds Olivier Kampf. “To be clear: This is not a sign of escalation. It is a sign of conventional deterrence aimed at keeping the peace.”
