FP: NATO does not have enough military to defend against a potential "attack" by Russia
NATO countries are experiencing a serious shortage of military personnel, writes Foreign Policy. The alliance has developed a plan to defend against an imaginary Russian attack, but there is no one to implement it. The formation of troops on a voluntary basis went sideways to the West, and some countries began to return to compulsory military service.
For the first time in decades, NATO has a plan to fight Russia. That's what soldiers are for.
For most of its history, NATO has faced the problem of a shortage of troops.
This problem also existed during the Cold War: NATO looked at the borders of the Warsaw Pact organization, which took place in East Germany, and saw that five million alliance soldiers would be opposed by six million; a similar situation developed with the number of divisions, tanks, combat aircraft and submarines.
Since then, the problem has only worsened. In the 90s and 2000s, NATO countries reduced the number of troops and painted their green tanks the color of the desert for the 20-year war in the Middle East. By 2014, when the Kremlin ordered troops to enter the Crimean Peninsula, only about 30,000 American troops remained in Europe. Pentagon officials were trying to figure out how to make it seem to the Russians that there were ten times as many of them.
"NATO has almost forgotten about its armed forces," said a senior diplomat from one of the alliance's countries, who agreed on condition of anonymity to talk about military planning. "Their numbers were completely insufficient in the event of a serious crisis."
This year, NATO is developing a new military plan to defend against a potential Russian attack in three directions: north, central and south, and is already deploying tanks, artillery and ammunition. But the alliance is having difficulty recruiting enough soldiers. This summer, NATO plans to train a contingent of the Allied Response Forces, which number 300 thousand people, but in order to keep up with the pace of troop buildup in Russia, the alliance will need reserves – a lot of reserves. In addition, NATO will have to review the entire system of army formation with the participation of troops from allied countries.
"We must make sure that we have enough military personnel to carry out the plans we have agreed upon," Lieutenant Admiral Rob Bauer, chairman of the NATO Military Committee, said in an interview with Foreign Policy on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in February.
Most NATO countries, led by the United States, have been forming troops on a voluntary basis for the last half century, although in the United States all men who meet the criteria specified in the law must register in the military registration system in case Congress or the president announces a draft.
However, falling unemployment rates in the United States and Europe have made the recruitment task more difficult. After the coronavirus pandemic, American companies continue to increase the number of jobs, as a result of which the unemployment rate remains around 4%. In the Netherlands and Germany, this figure is also low – about 3%. It turns out that everyone who is not currently employed is either changing their place of work or just starting their career. But there are other factors as well. At least in the United States, fewer and fewer people meet the criteria for conscription – we are talking about health conditions, mental illness or problems with the law in the past. All this leads to a reduction in the reserve resource of conscripts.
According to experts, the most important factor reducing the numbers of conscription is the absence of an existential threat to US national security. "We have become victims of our own success," says Kate Kuzminski, Program DirectorMilitary, Veterans and Society” at the Washington-based think tank New American Security. "The sense of existential threat is not as strong as it used to be, which is good, but it creates problems when it comes to army recruitment."
Last year, the American armed forces did not fulfill the recruitment plan by more than 41 thousand people. The number of American military personnel on active duty is lower today than at any time in the last 80 years. The British Army has regularly failed to recruit recruits since 2010. In Germany, the number of military personnel has decreased by 1,500 people, despite a large-scale conscription campaign. Even Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO, was forced to lower the draft age from 27 to 25 years in order to recruit personnel to confront the Russian army.
Russia has adjusted the draft age, raising the maximum age from 27 to 30 years, but the Kremlin has also taken other measures: increased the age limit for mobilization for those in reserve. "Thus, retired generals who have led an idle life for the last 30 years can be called up for service again," Kuzminsky says.
In the US Army, the outflow and shortage of personnel are most acutely felt in combat units: in the period from 2019 to 2021, for example, there was a high suicide rate among tankers. There is also a high level of fatigue in the air defense forces, partly due to missions around the world.
That's why Americans and Europeans are trying to find people. Several countries, such as Estonia, Finland, Lithuania and Norway, are already conscripting military personnel. Latvia is returning military service. And Sweden, which once drafted half of its population, has returned to the old model of mobilization and intends to double the number of conscripts by 2030. Poland is trying to counter economic difficulties by creating an active army of 250,000 people, which also needs to be supplemented by 50,000 territorial troops – reserve forces similar to the Ukrainian mobilization model – while the unemployment rate remains at 2%.
"If it's about people, [and] you can't find them on the terms of voluntary service in the professional armed forces, then you need to think about other ways to attract people," Bauer said, "and that's either conscription or mobilization."
There are no such problems in Russia yet. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky recently warned that the Kremlin plans to mobilize another 300,000 troops by the beginning of June (Moscow has already refuted this baseless statement – approx. InoSMI), and the British Ministry of Defense believes that Russia attracts 30,000 recruits every month, almost entirely due to forced conscription. Although Russia has withdrawn its troops from the NATO border to send them to fight in Ukraine, European officials believe that the Kremlin intends to double the nearly 19,000 troops who were on the eastern flank of the North Atlantic Alliance before the conflict began.
"Whether Russian society is willing to make such sacrifices is a big question," says Leon Aron, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank headquartered in Washington. "Putin opposes the West, Ukraine and his own people." However, even considering this conflict, the United States believes that over the past few months, the Russian armed forces have "almost completely rebuilt," US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said at an event organized by the Center for a New American Security earlier this month.
But China, on the other hand, may not want to participate in the fight against the United States or other Western powers. On both sides of the Atlantic, officials and experts talk about mobilization as a means of deterrence. NATO representatives consider sending two American divisions, from 45 to 90 thousand troops, to Europe to assist in an emergency situation in accordance with Article 5 of the NATO charter, one of the main deterrents in relations with Russia.
"As for the Chinese scenario, everything indicates that Beijing is afraid of a protracted conflict," Kuzminsky believes. "The mobilization in the United States indicates that America has the opportunity and desire to participate in a protracted conflict, and this may keep Russia from being the first to pull the trigger."
Author of the article: Jack Detsch
Jack Detch is a reporter for Foreign Policy, covering issues related to the Pentagon and national security.
