Biden and NATO to beef up force posture amid Russian aggression

President Joe Biden opened his threeday visit to a NATO summit Tuesday by pledging to beef up the American military presence in Europe as he denounced Russia’s Vladimir Putin for trying to “wipe out” Ukrainian culture in the ongoing war in eastern Europe.

Biden, in talks with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, detailed plans to increase the number of Navy destroyers based in Rota, Spain, from four to six. Biden said the move was one of multiple announcements that he and NATO allies would make during the summit to help bolster the alliance in the region.

Biden arrived in Spain for the summit amid an intense barrage of Russian fire across Ukraine— including a horrific missile attack on a shopping mall in Kyiv on Monday — and growing weariness over the grinding war that is battering the global economy.

“Sometimes I think Putin’s objective is just to literally change the entire culture — wipe out the culture of Ukraine (with) the kinds of actions he’s taking,” Biden said after meeting with Sánchez.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the destroyers’ move “will help increase the United States’ and NATO’s maritime presence.”

“The president said before the war started that if Putin invaded Ukraine, the United States and NATO would enhance the force posture on the eastern flank, not just for the duration of the crisis, but to address the change in the strategic reality that that would present,” Sullivan added.

Biden is looking to use this week’s NATO summit to shore up allies amid signs of fractures in the western alliance. After heaping an avalanche of sanctions on the Russian economy and funneling billions of dollars of weaponry into Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression, NATO partners are showing signs of strain as the cost of energy and other goods has skyrocketed.

As the U.S. president departed for the NATO meeting from the German Alps, where he met this week with leaders of the Group of Seven leading economies, French President Emmanuel Macron said that the prices are putting European economies in an “untenable” situation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who addressed the G-7, has worried that the West has become fatigued by the cost of the war.

The U.S. has been building up its presence since shortly before the Russian invasion in late February, adding about 20,000 troops to the 80,000 who were previously in Europe. And the U.S. has signaled that the Russian invasion will have reverberations on its and NATO allies’ defense posture for years to come.