As Russia flexes its muscles in the region, building up the far from robust defence infrastructure on NATO's 'Eastern Flank' is vital – and will complete the region's integration into the alliance.
Two decades after NATO expanded into Eastern Europe, the greatest shortcoming to the world's most successful military alliance is in developing a robust defence infrastructure to provide common security.
The increase in Russia's hybrid warfare, from cyberattacks to disinformation campaigns over the past few years, has highlighted that vulnerability. Fortunately, there are signs that NATO members are becoming aware of the challenge, and the alliance could take several paths to close the gap quicker.
To recall, after 1997, when NATO enlarged eastwards to bring in former Warsaw Pact members, the trans-atlantic alliance at first faced only mild opposition from Russia. In turn, NATO enlargement was handled with care to protect Russia's feelings, with any disagreements managed under the NATO-Russia Council.
Thus, the first and second waves of enlargement were considered more of a political integration of Eastern Europe into the West, with NATO reluctant to build military infrastructure and refraining from stationing additional, substantial combat forces in the new member states on a permanent basis.
In effect, Eastern Europe was a sort of cordon sanitaire within NATO, where Russia had a droit de regard over any investment in defence infrastructure.
Fast forward to today and recent events, such as Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, its aggression against Ukraine, its massive military exercises and ongoing hybrid wars and interference in Western elections reveal two things about its policy.
First, President Vladimir Putin is unhappy with the outcome of the Cold War and, second, he has taken the initiative to restore Russian power and influence in Eastern Europe. The West's geopolitical holiday is over and the collective defence missions based on Article 5 of the Washington Treaty are back in the forefront of attention of NATO planners.
Two decades after NATO expanded into Eastern Europe, the greatest shortcoming to the world's most successful military alliance is in developing a robust defence infrastructure to provide common security.
The increase in Russia's hybrid warfare, from cyberattacks to disinformation campaigns over the past few years, has highlighted that vulnerability. Fortunately, there are signs that NATO members are becoming aware of the challenge, and the alliance could take several paths to close the gap quicker.
To recall, after 1997, when NATO enlarged eastwards to bring in former Warsaw Pact members, the trans-atlantic alliance at first faced only mild opposition from Russia. In turn, NATO enlargement was handled with care to protect Russia's feelings, with any disagreements managed under the NATO-Russia Council.
Thus, the first and second waves of enlargement were considered more of a political integration of Eastern Europe into the West, with NATO reluctant to build military infrastructure and refraining from stationing additional, substantial combat forces in the new member states on a permanent basis.
In effect, Eastern Europe was a sort of cordon sanitaire within NATO, where Russia had a droit de regard over any investment in defence infrastructure.
Fast forward to today and recent events, such as Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, its aggression against Ukraine, its massive military exercises and ongoing hybrid wars and interference in Western elections reveal two things about its policy.
First, President Vladimir Putin is unhappy with the outcome of the Cold War and, second, he has taken the initiative to restore Russian power and influence in Eastern Europe. The West's geopolitical holiday is over and the collective defence missions based on Article 5 of the Washington Treaty are back in the forefront of attention of NATO planners.
Complete integration remains unfinished business
It is also clear that the integration of Eastern Europe is an unfinished business. Two decades after enlargement, defence infrastructure in the region – from roads and bridges, to pipelines and power installations – is not properly developed for a collective defence mission, much less for the new era of hybrid warfare. And that has profound implications for civil society and economic development in the region as well.
Dr Thomas-Durell Young published a very critical book on post-Communist military reforms Anatomy of Post-Communist European Defense Institutions, which sounded the alarm about the interoperability and readiness of NATO members.
"Whatever was the reason to enlarge NATO and invite new members … it is time to get rid of false compliments and to admit that the context has changed, particularly after Russian aggression against Ukraine," he wrote.
However, events in the last few years, and lessons learned from desk-assessments or military war games, have raised awareness about the state of defence infrastructure in Eastern Europe. The NATO Summit in Warsaw in 2016 made a commitment to enhance resilience and put civilian infrastructure on the same page as military infrastructure for defence.
Some of that new awareness is reflected in rising defence spending by the 11 East European NATO allies starting in 2018, since when a greater percentage of GDP has been allocated to defence infrastructure, such as new facilities for tailored presence, rotational forces, or investments in new bases.
Almost all of the East European allies have increased their spending on defence infrastructure in the last two years. Two outliers – Estonia and Latvia – have reduced that share. But that can be explained by historical legacy: while former Warsaw Pact countries like Romania and Bulgaria inherited personnel and infrastructure, the Baltic states had to start building defence institutions essentially from scratch. Moreover, NATO's initial agreements with Russia to protect Russia's feelings contributed to the lack of attention paid to defence infrastructure.
There is still a lot of ground to cover. A recent report by the IMF highlighted the size of the infrastructure gap of East European countries in general. Benchmarked against the EU15, the report estimates that, "closing 50 per cent of the current gaps relative to the EU15 in terms of infrastructure quantity by 2030 could cost between 3 and 8 per cent of GDP annually." That's well above the current rates of expenditure.
In the meantime, ongoing wargames and military exercises reveal the obstacles and shortcomings to collective defence operations posed by the inadequate infrastructure on NATO's Eastern Flank.
Earlier this year, for example, a report by CEPA, the Center for European Policy Analysis, coordinated by retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, concluded: "Shortcomings in the physical capacity of infrastructure − for example weight limits on roads and bridges and traffic volume limitations for rail transport − alongside a range of constraints related to the procedural and contractual arrangements that enable the use of civilian infrastructure for military movement would pose substantial challenges to large-scale deployments."
And yet another recent report by the Atlantic Council Task Force on Military Mobility in Europe, co-chaired by retired General Scaparrotti and former US Ambassador to Hungary Colleen B Bell, observed that the issue of military mobility lacks an overall sense of urgency, robust resourcing and coordination. It proposed, among other things, that: "Infrastructure funding from the EU's Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) should be prioritized to support military mobility requirements."
On the energy critical infrastructure the gap is larger, pipelines such as Central Europe Pipeline System, CEPS, built at the peak of the Cold War being a "bridge too far" for the Eastern Flank. In a Policy Brief for the NATO Defense College, NDC , Dominik Jankowski brought several arguments why the NATO Pipeline System matters and should be extended to Eastern Flank of NATO.
With an eye to the near future, NATO's Science & Technology Organisation has just commissioned a two-year project to assess the vulnerabilities to energy infrastructure from hybrid warfare. The study, Energy Security in the Era of Hybrid Warfare, is expected to mainly focus on Eastern Europe, an at-risk region as was clearly demonstrated by the cyberattack on Ukraine's energy grid in late 2015.
So what's to be done? The solution to improving defence infrastructure in the years ahead lies in exploring three avenues.
A NATO Security Investment Programme as well as national defence budgets should be the principal funder of building up and fostering the defence infrastructure of East European NATO Partners.
The European Commission's proposed financial allocation for military mobility under the Connecting Europe Facility, CEF, as part of the 2021-2027 multiannual financial framework, MFF, as well as PESCO could be a second avenue for building dual-use infrastructure in Eastern Europe.
Regional cooperation formats, such as B9 or the Three Seas Initiative, can fund infrastructure. The Three Seas's virtual Estonia Summit in October 2020 set up a goal of a future initiative to fund cross-border infrastructure projects and assist digitalization of the energy and transport sector. In February 2020, at the Munich Security Conference, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promised $1 billion to finance infrastructure projects.
The final step, therefore, in NATO's eastern enlargement – the final frontier in the integration of the East European Allies – lies in the building up the region's defence infrastructure. It remains the Alliance's greatest vulnerability. And it is long over-due.
It is also clear that the integration of Eastern Europe is an unfinished business. Two decades after enlargement, defence infrastructure in the region – from roads and bridges, to pipelines and power installations – is not properly developed for a collective defence mission, much less for the new era of hybrid warfare. And that has profound implications for civil society and economic development in the region as well.
Dr Thomas-Durell Young published a very critical book on post-Communist military reforms Anatomy of Post-Communist European Defense Institutions, which sounded the alarm about the interoperability and readiness of NATO members.
"Whatever was the reason to enlarge NATO and invite new members … it is time to get rid of false compliments and to admit that the context has changed, particularly after Russian aggression against Ukraine," he wrote.
However, events in the last few years, and lessons learned from desk-assessments or military war games, have raised awareness about the state of defence infrastructure in Eastern Europe. The NATO Summit in Warsaw in 2016 made a commitment to enhance resilience and put civilian infrastructure on the same page as military infrastructure for defence.
Some of that new awareness is reflected in rising defence spending by the 11 East European NATO allies starting in 2018, since when a greater percentage of GDP has been allocated to defence infrastructure, such as new facilities for tailored presence, rotational forces, or investments in new bases.
Almost all of the East European allies have increased their spending on defence infrastructure in the last two years. Two outliers – Estonia and Latvia – have reduced that share. But that can be explained by historical legacy: while former Warsaw Pact countries like Romania and Bulgaria inherited personnel and infrastructure, the Baltic states had to start building defence institutions essentially from scratch. Moreover, NATO's initial agreements with Russia to protect Russia's feelings contributed to the lack of attention paid to defence infrastructure.
There is still a lot of ground to cover. A recent report by the IMF highlighted the size of the infrastructure gap of East European countries in general. Benchmarked against the EU15, the report estimates that, "closing 50 per cent of the current gaps relative to the EU15 in terms of infrastructure quantity by 2030 could cost between 3 and 8 per cent of GDP annually." That's well above the current rates of expenditure.
In the meantime, ongoing wargames and military exercises reveal the obstacles and shortcomings to collective defence operations posed by the inadequate infrastructure on NATO's Eastern Flank.
Earlier this year, for example, a report by CEPA, the Center for European Policy Analysis, coordinated by retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, concluded: "Shortcomings in the physical capacity of infrastructure − for example weight limits on roads and bridges and traffic volume limitations for rail transport − alongside a range of constraints related to the procedural and contractual arrangements that enable the use of civilian infrastructure for military movement would pose substantial challenges to large-scale deployments."
And yet another recent report by the Atlantic Council Task Force on Military Mobility in Europe, co-chaired by retired General Scaparrotti and former US Ambassador to Hungary Colleen B Bell, observed that the issue of military mobility lacks an overall sense of urgency, robust resourcing and coordination. It proposed, among other things, that: "Infrastructure funding from the EU's Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) should be prioritized to support military mobility requirements."
On the energy critical infrastructure the gap is larger, pipelines such as Central Europe Pipeline System, CEPS, built at the peak of the Cold War being a "bridge too far" for the Eastern Flank. In a Policy Brief for the NATO Defense College, NDC , Dominik Jankowski brought several arguments why the NATO Pipeline System matters and should be extended to Eastern Flank of NATO.
With an eye to the near future, NATO's Science & Technology Organisation has just commissioned a two-year project to assess the vulnerabilities to energy infrastructure from hybrid warfare. The study, Energy Security in the Era of Hybrid Warfare, is expected to mainly focus on Eastern Europe, an at-risk region as was clearly demonstrated by the cyberattack on Ukraine's energy grid in late 2015.
So what's to be done? The solution to improving defence infrastructure in the years ahead lies in exploring three avenues.
A NATO Security Investment Programme as well as national defence budgets should be the principal funder of building up and fostering the defence infrastructure of East European NATO Partners.
The European Commission's proposed financial allocation for military mobility under the Connecting Europe Facility, CEF, as part of the 2021-2027 multiannual financial framework, MFF, as well as PESCO could be a second avenue for building dual-use infrastructure in Eastern Europe.
Regional cooperation formats, such as B9 or the Three Seas Initiative, can fund infrastructure. The Three Seas's virtual Estonia Summit in October 2020 set up a goal of a future initiative to fund cross-border infrastructure projects and assist digitalization of the energy and transport sector. In February 2020, at the Munich Security Conference, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promised $1 billion to finance infrastructure projects.
The final step, therefore, in NATO's eastern enlargement – the final frontier in the integration of the East European Allies – lies in the building up the region's defence infrastructure. It remains the Alliance's greatest vulnerability. And it is long over-due.