NEWPORT, Wales — NATO’s creation of a rapid-reaction “spearhead” force to protect Eastern Europe from Russian bullying reflects a cool-eyed calculation that Vladimir Putin and his generals won’t risk head-to-head confrontation with the U.S. and its nuclear-capable Western European allies.
The new force will be small, with just a few thousand troops, but it’s a powerful message from major powers that they’re willing to follow through on NATO’s eastward expansion with their own metal — and blood.
“Why would this be enough?” said Gen. Sir Adrian Bradshaw, NATO’s deputy supreme European commander. “Well, precisely because in becoming embroiled in a conflict with capable combat forces from across the alliance, a potential aggressor recognizes that they are taking on the whole of NATO and all that implies.”
“I don’t think that anyone believes that Russia wants a strategic conflict with NATO,” the British army general said. “Anybody would be insane to wish that.”
The force was ordered into life Friday by President Barack Obama and other NATO leaders at a summit meeting in Wales to deter Putin and make NATO’s most vulnerable members, such as Poland, Romania and the Baltic republics, feel safer from Russia’s million-strong armed forces in light of Moscow’s military involvement in Ukraine.
Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine earlier this year, and all signs indicate the Kremlin has been funneling troops, tanks and artillery to the pro-Moscow separatists who have been fighting government forces in eastern Ukraine over the past five months.