Starting this week and lasting several months, NATO is launching the largest military exercise organized since the end of the Cold War. Large-scale maneuvers intended to prepare the Alliance for a high-intensity conflict and to dissuade the Kremlin, in the midst of a conflict with Ukraine, from rubbing against its eastern flank.
Ninety thousand soldiers mobilized, including American reinforcements from North America, 50 warships, 80 planes and more than 1,100 combat vehicles, including 133 tanks deployed for several months: NATO saw the big things for its Steadfast Defender 2024, the most important military exercise organized by the Atlantic Alliance in decades.
For comparison, the last edition of the exercise, organized in 2021, only mobilized 9,000 soldiers. In the recent past, only the “Trident Juncture” operation, in 2018, could have claimed to reach a comparable scale of magnitude with its 50,000 participants.
“This will be a clear demonstration of our unity, our strength and our determination to protect each other,” argued the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (Saceur), American General Christopher Cavoli, on January 18. during a press conference in Brussels, where the Alliance HQ is located.
“This is a record in terms of the number of soldiers,” insisted during the same press conference Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, head of the NATO military committee, which brings together heads of state. major of the armies of the member countries of the organization.
To carry out this large-scale exercise, the 31 countries of the Alliance will provide troops as well as Sweden, which hopes to soon join NATO after the green light from Turkey.
The main European contributor, the United Kingdom alone will deploy 20,000 soldiers as part of these maneuvers, announced Monday January 21 its Minister of Defense Grant Shapps.
The challenge of conflict in five dimensions
To find such a demonstration of force on the part of NATO, we must go back to the “Reforger” exercise of 1988, which deployed 120,000 soldiers in Europe in the midst of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the Atlantic Alliance. .
“We have lost the habit of it but, during the Cold War, this type of exercise was NATO’s daily bread and took place every two years. Then, from the 1990s, the so-called “dividends of peace”, it was considered that war was no longer possible in Europe. Here we are returning to the fundamentals 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 the scenario of aggression from an “adversary of comparable size” to that of the Alliance which will 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 prepared for at least two years,” estimates Olivier Kempf, director of the La Vigie firm and associated researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research. “It is then possible that, in the context of the war in Ukraine, the Allies wanted to increase the size of the exercise to benefit from better feedback,” adds the expert.
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If NATO organizes “war games” throughout the year, Steadfast Defender also stands out for its ambition to make all the components of the allied armies work 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 an entire radio system on a fairly restricted area. It’s extremely complicated when you add coordination with the navy and the air force,” notes Olivier Kempf.
“Especially since 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 the military expert, part of Steadfast Defender 2024 should take place in the Baltic countries, “the sensitive point of NATO” which has a maritime facade and where Alliance soldiers have already been deployed since 2014. date of the 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 notably created four additional multinational battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, bringing to eight the number of these NATO units which operate jointly with the national forces of each country.
The prospect of this exceptional mobilization of NATO forces quickly provoked a reaction in Moscow which, for years, has perceived the Eastern enlargement of the Alliance as an existential threat.
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“These exercises are another element of the hybrid war unleashed by the West against Russia,” Russia’s deputy foreign minister told the state news agency RIA, in comments published on Sunday.
“An exercise of this magnitude (…) marks NATO’s definitive and irrevocable return to Cold War patterns, when the military planning process, resources and infrastructure were prepared for confrontation with Russia.” , added Alexandre Groushko.
If the Russian narrative seeks to present this military exercise as an escalation fomented by the West, the objective pursued by NATO is indeed dissuasive, recalls General Dominique Trinquand.
“Armies are made to prepare for the worst-case scenario while hoping that it will not happen. Here, it is a question of telling the Russians not to go any further and showing them that we are prepared if by chance they didn’t really understand the message,” explains the former head of the French military mission to the UN in New York.
“Paradoxically, we must see this as something rather reassuring,” adds Olivier Kempf. “To be clear: this is not a signal of escalation. It is a signal of conventional deterrence intended to maintain the peace.”