NATO prepares to face Russia—and problems of its own
Troops from member countries train for shoulder-to-shoulder fighting, while disputes over spending and additional members plague the alliance
NATO troops from 14 nations amassed last month in a wooded area here to take part in the alliance’s biggest military exercise since the Cold War. Once again, the focus was Russia.
The drill began in the early morning darkness with a warning: Enemy forces had crossed Latvia’s border with Russia and were closing on the capital. Communicating in various languages over different kinds of radios, the troops raced to push the mock invaders toward wetlands that would bog down their tanks.
“What’s most important is to demonstrate readiness to act quickly and deploy to defend Latvian and NATO borders,” said Latvian Army Col. Oskars Kudlis, who was commanding a brigade of heavy armored vehicles from a position in the forest. The response required troops from as far away as Canada and Albania to work out kinks in communications, absorb one another’s battlefield practices and coordinate disparate weapons systems.
Ever since Moscow seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has had its eye on Europe’s border with Russia. This year’s exercise, called Steadfast Defender 2024, aims to send a message to Moscow: The alliance stands ready to defend its members— especially those near Russia’s border, including Latvia.
After the Cold War, differences in language, communications systems and weaponry within NATO mattered little because its troops rarely fought shoulder-to-shoulder. Instead, many rotated through short-term deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, planned long in advance. Equipment needs were clear and each ally handled its own provisioning.
Now, preparing for coalition warfare is once again NATO’s priority, and troops have to know how to work together on the battlefield.
“The integration of all the countries is a challenge,” said Canadian Army Lt. Col. Jonathan Cox, who helped lead Exercise Crystal Arrow, the Latvian portion of the NATO maneuvers, which include air, land and sea drills across the alliance.
NATO, which marked its 75th anniversary on April 4, is getting stronger in some ways. Finland and Sweden have joined after decades of shunning membership. NATO’s European members are spending more on defense than they have since the Cold War. This year, for the first time in decades, the European members, on an aggregate basis, will meet their financial commitment to the alliance, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said recently.
But the alliance is plagued by other disputes. Leaders disagree on whether Ukraine and other aspiring members should be allowed to join. The contest to succeed Stoltenberg later this year has sparked acrimony between longtime members and newer ones from the former Eastern bloc.
And many NATO countries, including six of its 12 founding members, remain far from hitting the military budgeting levels they pledged to achieve a decade ago. That low spending has made them the target of attacks from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, sparking doubts about the alliance’s future if he wins in November.
Throughout history, many military alliances—including those that defeated Napoleon and won World War II—involved allied armies operating separately under common command. NATO’s objective is to prepare allies to fight sideby-side.
This year’s exercises, the largest since 1988, are being staged over four months through May, at locations stretching from the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea. They involve roughly 90,000 troops, 1,100 combat vehicles, 80 aircraft and 50 naval vessels.
The operation in Latvia was one of several staged near Europe’s border with Russia. In 2016, after Moscow
had seized the Crimean Peninsula and helped foment rebellion in Ukraine’s east, NATO members agreed to rotate troops constantly through its vulnerable eastern members, specifying which member nation would take the lead in defending each country.
The U.S. took the lead in Poland, Germany did so with Lithuania, the U.K. with Estonia and Canada with Latvia. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, NATO beefed up its forces in those countries and added partnerships in Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
The partnerships have interwoven allies more closely than at any time since the Cold War, when the U.S., Britain and France kept troops permanently stationed in West Germany.
The Latvian exercise, staged near the capital, Riga, was one of NATO’s most international this year. Eleven member nations that already had troops deployed in Latvia, including Canada, were joined by forces from the U.S., Iceland, and Latvia’s neighbor, Estonia.
Canadian forces stationed in Latvia constitute Ottawa’s largest current overseas troop deployment. For many of those Canadians, defending against Russia is personal because they previously were stationed at a base in western Ukraine, training local forces in the years before Russia’s 2022 invasion. Two years ago, Moscow hit that base with missiles, destroying the barracks where Canadians had lived.
Canadian Army Lt. Col. Dan Richel, deputy commander of the Latvian operation led by Col. Kudlis, was posted with his family from Quebec to Latvia last August to help expand Canada’s presence. Most of his colleagues in the local headquarters are Latvian. He has started to learn the language, though most routine business is conducted in English, he said.
NATO countries agreed in 2014 that by this year each would spend at least 2% of gross domestic product on defense.
Latvia, which was invaded by the Soviet Union in 1940 and didn’t win independence until 1991, will spend 2.4% of its GDP on defense this year, part of a plan to hit 3% in 2027. Canada allocates about 1.3% of its GDP to its military and has no plan to hit 2%.
NATO’s Stoltenberg and U.S. NATO Ambassador Julianne Smith chastised Canada this year for being among the only alliance countries not seeking to achieve the agreed target.
If Canada fails to meet its commitments, “how does that reflect on the coherence of the alliance?” said retired Vice Admiral Mark Norman, a former head of Canada’s navy who recently visited NATO headquarters in Brussels. Canada would probably increase defense spending only under duress “because the threat perception is just not there,” Norman said of the prevailing opinion inside Canada.
One of the alliance’s most fundamental divisions is a disparity in how member countries view threats. NATO lists terrorism and Russia as its main threats. Many officials in Turkey and other member nations along the Mediterranean Sea are more worried about regional conflicts, illegal migration and terrorism than about Russia.
Almost one-third of Latvia’s population of about 1.9 million people is Russian, a legacy of Soviet times. Tensions are high inside the country and along its borders with Russia and Belarus, an authoritarian state under Moscow’s sway.
NATO planners consider an outright Russian invasion of a neighboring member country unlikely in the near future, though recently some military officials in NATO countries said Moscow could be strong enough to attack in a few years. Over the shorter term, they worry that Moscow might spark conflict in nearby countries by agitating local Russians and using tensions as pretext to intercede, as the Kremlin did in eastern Ukraine a decade ago.
Latvia joined NATO in 2004, 13 years after it gained independence from the Soviet Union. Since then, the alliance’s requirements and standards have compelled Latvia’s armed forces to modernize. Western military vehicles have replaced old Soviet models.
During the Crystal Arrow exercise, a battalion led by Latvian Army Lieut. Col. Gaidis Landratovs operated alongside U.S. troops. They played forces invading from the fictional nation of Occacus, identified with red Xs on their equipment. NATO avoids using names of real adversaries in training.
Canadian Lt. Col. Cox, temporarily stationed in Latvia to oversee NATO’s international battle group there, was commander of the defending forces, which included troops from 11 nations. When the mock invasion began, his forces moved and took defensive positions, awaiting word on their attackers. Soldiers speaking different languages struggled to communicate. English and French are NATO’s official languages, but fluency varies.
Another problem, said Cox, was “radios that sometimes work together and most of the time don’t. But there’s always comms problems, no matter what happens.”
Operations succeed because of simple plans and integration, he said. “Every country has their own way of doing it, but the intent and the effect was the same across the battle group,” he said.
Uniformity has long been a challenge for NATO. In Crystal Arrow, allies deployed Canadian LAV-6 armored vehicles, American, German and Polish tanks, and Latvia’s
British-made CVR-T reconnaissance vehicles. Each requires different spare parts and maintenance.
Standardizing big gear is daunting because producing it is a lucrative business that few countries want to surrender. The U.S. has about three-dozen main military systems such as planes, ships and tanks. In Europe, where most countries protect their national arms producers and often compete for export orders, alliance members use 172 models, according to NATO’s most senior military official, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer.
Smaller equipment can be problematic, too. Planners have struggled for years to ensure that secure field radios from various countries are compatible, a challenge deepened by the need for digital encryption and measures to counter electronic warfare.
After the Cold War, such technical differences mattered little because NATO troops from different countries rarely fought alongside one another. Now, they need to be able to share equipment and know that one army’s cannons can fire another’s shells.
Alliance planners have set equipment norms and worked to ensure that gear operates interchangeably. But even for one of NATO’s most basic standards, 155-millimeter artillery shells, members produce 14 different models, Bauer said. Some shells can’t go into other launchers, while some may fit but not link to targeting software.
Many of the nearly 200 different weapons systems provided to Ukraine have come from NATO nations. The hodgepodge has created a maintenance nightmare for Ukraine, which has had to scrounged to obtain spare parts for many.
U.S. Army Capt. Malcolm Edgar, who commands Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles in Lithuania, said finding ways around differences is one benefit of multicountry exercises like Crystal Arrow.
“We’re not just saying we can do this together,” but showing it’s possible, said Edgar. “It’s all about getting the sets and reps in.”
Many NATO countries remain far from military budgeting levels they pledged to achieve a decade ago