Will ‘distributed deterrence’ work? – Firstpost

The highlight of the recently concluded North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (Nato) Summit in the Hague, Netherlands, was the almost unanimous decision among its members to increase their defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP in the next decade, by 2035. This issue has been at the heart of US-Nato dynamics through different presidencies, cutting across Republicans and Democrats, but has become more tenuous during the Trump presidency with differences turning into public rants.

However, what was deemed unreasonable by the Nato members a few years back, has now become a stated goal to achieve in ten years. Well, European geopolitics and the Russia threat in the European neighbourhood has undergone a dramatic shift in the last three years since the Russia-Ukraine war started. The urgency of confronting Russian aggression has grown manifold, even as the European Union and major European powers were already training their strategic sights on the Indo-Pacific region.

The Nato summit declaration stated that “allies commit to invest 5 per cent of GDP annually on core defence requirements as well as defence-and-security-related spending by 2035” to meet the threats and challenges, particularly “posed by Russia to Euro-Atlantic security and the persistent threat of terrorism”. At least 3.5 per cent will be allocated to “resource core defence requirements, and to meet the Nato Capability Targets” and 1.5 per cent is projected to cover associated areas, such as to protect “critical infrastructure”, defend “networks”, ensure “civil preparedness and resilience”, “unleash innovation”, and strengthen Nato’s “defence industrial base”.

While the defence spending targets are now clearer, and in alignment with what the Trump administration has been demanding, is the strategic purpose of such a move clear or still ambiguous? Why are European powers being categorically told to pick up the slack in the European security theatre and stop free riding on America’s transatlantic security commitments. Washington currently views China as the only country with the ability and the intention to challenge US primacy in the international system and would want European allies to do more, in terms of deterring the Russia threat, so that America’s national power can be employed against China’s aggression and coercive activities.

Speaking to a Ukraine Defence Contact Group earlier this year in February, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth emphasised on, “prioritising deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing tradeoffs to ensure deterrence does not fail”. “As the United States prioritizes its attention to these threats, European allies must lead from the front,” he said. Looking at the battle lines drawn between Nato and Russia, one can be forgiven to assume that the history of this relationship saw no efforts towards any form of détente. However, history can be stranger than the present, and the post-Cold War era did see mutual efforts between the US, Russia and the Nato countries, such as creating the Permanent Joint Council (PJC) in 1997, to regularly consult on security issues.

However, just two years later in 1999, the Nato airstrikes in Kosovo significantly ruptured the budding thaw. However, efforts resumed in 2001 towards initiating cooperation, with the PJC being transformed into Nato-Russia Council (NRC) in 2002. Yet again, geopolitics of the post-Soviet space intervened in 2008 with the Georgian war, sprouting from the interest shown by Tbilisi and Kyiv to become Nato members during the 2008 Bucharest Summit.

Significantly, France and Germany showed discomfort with the move, with then German Chancellor Angela Merkel warning the Alliance that Russia would interpret any further eastward expansion of Nato as an existential threat. Merkel’s prophetic observation came true as Russia attacked Georgia and made South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent provinces.

Nato countered by freezing most of military and political cooperation with Moscow and the NRC was suspended. Informal meetings continued though to forge a strategic partnership, expecting quid-pro-quos of Russian troop’s withdrawal from Georgia and Russia’s integration into the Western community of states. However, with the Russian takeover of Crimea in 2014, the relationship went into a downward spiral and has never really recovered from there.

At the Warsaw Summit in July 2016, Nato leaders made clear that an improvement in the Alliance’s relations with Russia would be contingent on a clear and constructive change in Russia’s actions – one that demonstrates compliance with international law and Russia’s international commitments. Until then, Nato and Russia cannot return to “business as usual”. Nato’s membership expansion in Moscow’s eyes translates quite categorically into territorial expansion, and hence from a Russian worldview, an unrelenting intrusion into its sphere of influence. Amidst all these ups and downs, Nato also kept an active communication channel open with Ukraine.

Nato justifies its action of opening the membership to countries who are willing to join, including Ukraine and Georgia based on an ‘open-door’ policy. The ex-Soviet states such as Georgia and Ukraine clearly perceive Russia as an existential threat and Ukraine’s devastation in the last three years might doubly solidify these fears. With the Russia-Ukraine war turning into a war of attrition, Europe clearly views Russia as the clear and present danger while China for Europe is a distant power and an economic partner as well.

So, as Nato countries move towards a decade-long vision of rapidly increasing their defence spending and rewrite their rules of security engagement with the United States in the European security architecture, the dark clouds of mistrust and misperceptions seem to be looming large. Any cursory assessment of the regional security environment will lead to the conclusion that the increase in defence spending will not help in reducing the tension between the Nato and Russia rather the opposite might accrue, where Russia’s threat perception will simultaneously push it to accelerate its defence innovation and spending.

Moreover, as the Trump administration aims to “re-establish deterrence”, will the burden-sharing plan across work linearly and clinically, with Europeans willingly taking up the heavy lifting in Europe while automatically freeing up America’s strategic calendar for the Indo-Pacific?

Amidst this rearmament drive in Europe, is Trump administration also inadvertently pushing European partners to de-risk against undue dependence on the US for security of the European theatre? For long, Europe or more specifically, the European Union has been accused of short-sightedness for lacking a common defence and security policy, and lacking the teeth to facing geopolitical realities with its normative power.

So, is Europe witnessing the beginning of an uncertain path towards rearmament, and defence posturing that will not only change the nature of transatlantic US-Europe alliance, but also disrupt the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific region. The European Union and major European powers had started reorienting their strategic outlook to play a greater role in the Indo-Pacific region, and it will be naïve to expect that they will retrench and surrender the play of influence to the Americans.

Perhaps in a controlled war gaming and simulation room, this burden sharing and “distributed deterrence” might play out as planned but perhaps not in the badlands of geopolitics.

Monish Tourangbam is a Senior Research Consultant and Indrani Talukdar is a Fellow at the Chintan Research Foundation (CRF), New Delhi. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.