Yves here. Andrew Korybko provides a useful update on how European NATO members are moving forward with what amounts to fantasy self-protection schemes, based on the further wild idea that Russia would attack them just because.
Admittedly, France does have nukes, but absent that, experts have repeatedly pointed out that Europe’s hollowed out industrial base means on paper it would be at least a decade before Europe could adequately arm up.
But the weapons picture is even worse. Stanislav Krapivnik has described long form that supposed European weapons systems are not really that. 30% to 40% of their critical components come from the US. Krapivnik estimated it would take the Europeans on the order of 20 years to develop a truly indigenous arms industry.
And there is the wee problem of force structure. NATO provided for the US to oversee and integrate combat operations of national forces. I recall Aurelien discussed in detail in an article I cannot locate, the huge impediments to forming a NATO army, which included the considerable pitched battles over which country would be at the top of the command structure.
And let us also not forget that NATO is a weak alliance. Even when the US was far more powerful than today, European states were not willing to cede much sovereignity to NATO. Officially, all NATO decisions are on a consensus basis; there’s no notion of a qualified majority which can bind all states, as is the case for many EU proposals. And Article 5 is much less potent than officials and the media would have you believe. It merely requires members, on an each by each basis, to consider defending a fellow state if attacked, as opposed to obliging them to saddle up.
So as those in Maine are wont to say, “You can’t get there from here.”
By Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst who specializes in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the New Cold War. He has a PhD from MGIMO,which is under the umbrella of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Originally published at his website.
The EU’s planned creation of an Article 4-like mechanism suggests that European NATO suspects that the bloc’s American leader might not share their threat perception of whatever it may be, which can contextually only refer to Russia, that prompts at least one of them to request urgent consultations.
The Financial Times recently reported that the EU plans to move forward with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal to establish an Article 4-like mechanism among the bloc’s members. Per the NATO Charter, “The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.” Most EU members are already NATO members, however, so this proposal might seem redundant.
That’s substantively true, but the salience lies in the insinuation that European NATO (E-NATO) suspects that the bloc’s American leader might not share their threat perception of whatever it may be that prompts at least one of them to request urgent consultations. Extrapolating from that, the innuendo is that the US can’t be relied upon to unquestionably support them through the dispatch of troops and/or the launching of strikes if tensions (which can contextually only refer to Russia) explode into a hot war.
Accordingly, E-NATO is building parallel decision-making mechanisms for the scenario of them going it alone against Russia, in which case the US could remain on the sidelines on the grounds of having advised against whatever course of action E-NATO proposed during their Article 4 consultations. Nevertheless, in the spirit of Article 5, the US might still support them with arms, intelligence, and logistics just like it and the rest of NATO as a whole are presently supporting Ukraine.
E-NATO leaders have fearmongered that Russia might either soon test their resolve or do so by around 2030 at the latest, ergo the urgency with which they plan to move forward with von der Leyen’s Article 4-like proposal. In parallel, the US is reportedly planning to withdraw up to 40,000 of its 80,000 troops in Europe upon the impending conclusion of the Pentagon’s European force posture review by year’s end, thus imbuing a further sense of urgency to this task even if the US obtains a permanent base in Poland.
On that topic, Poland’s ruling liberal coalition has been leading E-NATO’s hysteria about a Russian attack against the bloc, yet its Foreign Minister just met his Belarusian counterpart on the sidelines of the UNGA in the first meeting between their countries’ top diplomats in a decade. Their resultant “snowdrop diplomacy”, which is inspired by Radek Sikorski’s quip right after that “a snowdrop can bloom if the weather is favorable”, could alleviate the hysteria that he and his coalition sparked if successful.
Even in this best-case scenario that could still easily be derailed, Poland and the rest of E-NATO likely wouldn’t ever feel fully comfortable due to their liberal elites’ sincere fear of Russia (irrespective of its irrationality), so it’s still important for them to prioritize the creation of an Article 4-like mechanism. The main role therein will arguably be played by Poland due to its central role in the western flank of the new “cordon sanitaire” around Russia imbuing it with outsized significance in the new security architecture.
That being the case, the most realistic guarantor of stability would then be the parallel pullback of some E-NATO forces from the Baltic States and some Russian forces from Belarus if the US first pulls back some of its own from the Baltic States, with Poland then taking responsibility for their security in a crisis. The creation of a crisis-control channel between Russia (which is responsible for Belarus), E-NATO (with Poland at the forefront and responsible for the Baltic States), and the US would then uphold the peace.
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