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Twenty-five years of relative calm and predictability in relations between Russia and the West enabled European governments largely to neglect their military capabilities for territorial defense and dramatically redraw Northern Europe’s multilateral, regional, and bilateral boundaries, stimulating new institutional and cooperative developments and arrangements. These cooperative patterns of behavior occurred amid a benign security environment, a situation that no longer obtains. Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its military incursion into eastern Ukraine, its substantial military modernization efforts, heightened undersea activity in the North Atlantic and Baltic Sea, and its repeated air violations, the region’s security environment has dramatically worsened. The Baltic Sea and North Atlantic region have returned as a geostrategic focal point. It is vital, therefore, that the United States rethink its security approach to the region—what the authors describe as an Enhanced Northern Presence.
This study presents the outcome of a Track II dialogue among civil society leaders, security experts, academics, and government representatives from across the Baltic States, Poland, and the United States who came together to discuss the shared threats and challenges facing NATO’s eastern flank in light of Russia’s aggressive behavior toward its neighbors. The objective of the study was to enhance scholarship on the challenges stemming from the Ukraine crisis and to inform public discussions on the evolving nature and future of security and defense relations among the United States, the Baltic States, and Poland.
The partnership between the United States and Europe has been an anchor of the world’s economic, political and security order for more than seven decades, but we should not take it for granted. The transatlantic relationship faces many dangers. However, the issues that bring the two sides together ultimately carry much greater weight than those that might divide them.
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The transatlantic security alliance rests on three pillars: common interests and values; political cohesion; and a sharing of the burden for collective defense. The stresses in U.S.-European relations are creating fissures in the architecture of our shared security and raising doubts about the stability of long-established structures of transatlantic cooperation. In these circumstances it is vital to renew our understanding of our alliance and examine the integrity of its supports. Transatlantic burden sharing is a crucial element that deserves scrutiny. The NATO spending question has created tensions on both sides of the Atlantic. Although the transatlantic security community actively debates the merits of the 2 percent measure, it has not identified an alternative measure or set of measures to adopt instead. This report seeks to catalyze that political and analytical discussion of alternatives by widening the aperture for assessing and comparing the security contributions of NATO allies and key European partners.