Sentry Staff
Tensions between strategic competitors, North Korea’s persistent nuclear weapons expansion and Russia’s attempts to shift Europe’s balance of power with its war against Ukraine have contributed to a coalescing among the United States and its Allies and Partners to modernize strategies that more effectively combat 21st century security threats. Geopolitical changes, particularly in the Indo-Pacific and European regions, threaten to upend decades of peace and stability. Alliances like NATO have met these challenges by more closely linking defense plans that span the globe and battlespace domains.
“Never before have NATO and defense plans been so closely interlinked,” Royal Netherlands Navy Adm. Rob Bauer, chairman of the NATO Military Committee, said after a chiefs of defense meeting in January 2024. “Allies are now actively working to maximize the executability of these new defense plans. NATO is stronger and readier than it has ever been. Together, we have made immense strides in our collective defense.”
A “record amount” of violence and conflict has emerged globally, Bauer said. Decades of cooperation and military exchanges, however, will aid Allies and Partners in developing the military advances needed to educate, train and equip warfighters who must now defend against attacks in cyberspace and outer space in addition to those by land, air and sea. “All security is connected. And that made it all the more valuable to talk to our Partners face to face on developments that concern us all,” Bauer said. “Meeting with our Partners reminds us that none of us stand alone in the face of challenges or threats. As long as you have partners, you have better solutions.”
NATO ‘Fit’ for Collective Defense
For the first time in 30 years, NATO has deterrence and defense strategy plans to make the Alliance “fit for the purpose of collective territorial defense,” U.S. Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli, Commander of U.S. Europe Command and NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe, said following the January 2024 NATO chiefs of defense meeting.
Making those plans work requires force commitments and command and control arrangements. It also requires rigorous training and exercises like the 2024 iteration of Steadfast Defender. The largest NATO exercise in decades, Steadfast Defender comprised 90,000 forces from 32 NATO nations.
Split into two overlapping parts from January through May 2024, Steadfast Defender exercises included a range of drills hosted by different countries. Part 1 focused on trans-Atlantic reinforcement which included the strategic deployment of North American forces across the Atlantic and Europe and live maritime exercises and amphibious assault training. Part 2 focused on multidomain exercises across Europe that demonstrated NATO, national and multinational capabilities while testing the rapid deployment of troops and equipment across borders within the Alliance.
Steadfast Defender underscored “a clear demonstration of our unity, strength and determination to protect each other, our values and the rules based international order,” Gen. Cavoli said.
Despite the success of current collaborative military transformations, more progress must occur to keep pace with ever-evolving threats, according to German Air Force Gen. Chris Badia, NATO deputy supreme allied commander.
“We, as an Alliance with all its nations, need to be sure to be more agile and be more flexible,” Badia said after the January 2024 NATO defense chiefs meeting. “As the warfighting of tomorrow becomes more complex in a multi domain [environment], we need to ensure that we are in every aspect faster and better than our competitors. This goes with nations transformation, and this is a perpetuous journey and not a one-time event. Our war transformation journey pushes boundaries, forging a collective edge in order to become better every day.”
Allies and Partners improve through multidomain integrated operations, working to seamlessly deploy across all domains. “We are identifying the capabilities we need individually and collectively, with speed and strength,” Badia said. “And capabilities are the foundation, because without capabilities, we can’t put anything against it.”
During a May 2024 NATO Military Committee defense chiefs meeting, Bauer outlined ways the allied armed forces can make NATO’s new defense plans fully executable by:
- Putting more troops on higher readiness
- Building and developing capabilities
- Adapting NATO’s command and control structures
- Creating and sustaining more enablement, including logistics, host nation support, maintenance, military mobility and replenishment and prepositioning of stocks
- Increasing collective defense exercises and trainings
“As exercise Steadfast Defender has recently shown, NATO is stronger and readier than it has ever been, and it’s growing stronger by the day,” Bauer said. “We have it within ourselves to build on the groundbreaking work that has already been done.”
Safeguarding Freedom and Security
Deterrence and defense are at the core of NATO, which deters aggression by maintaining a credible military posture based on a mix of nuclear, conventional and missile defense capabilities, complemented by space and cyber defense. Russia’s war in Ukraine poses the “gravest threat” to Euro-Atlantic security in decades, shattering peace in the region and reinforcing the need for NATO to ensure a strong force posture, according to the Alliance.
“NATO faces the most complex security environment since the end of the Cold War. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is jeopardizing European security, and terrorism continues to represent a global security challenge and a threat to stability,” NATO said in a news release on deterrence and defense. “At the same time, China’s stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge the Alliance’s interests, security and values. Growing global uncertainty, more sophisticated and disruptive cyber and hybrid threats, the increasing prominence of nuclear weapons in potential adversaries’ strategies and exponential technological change are having a substantial impact on the Alliance.”
At the heart of NATO’s founding treaty is Article 5, binding members of the Alliance and committing them to protecting each other and fostering a spirit of solidarity. The primary aim of NATO at its inception was to create a pact of mutual assistance to counter the risk of a then-Soviet Union extending control into Eastern Europe and other parts of the continent. Through Article 5, if a NATO Ally falls victim to an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider that act of violence as an armed attack against all members and take necessary actions.
Still, deterrence remains the ultimate goal, with NATO’s core overall strategy to prevent conflict and war, protect Allies, maintain freedom of decision and action and uphold the principles and values it stands for — individual liberty, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
Further evidence of the growing strength in the Alliance and its capabilities to safeguard freedom and security is the unprecedented increase in NATO defense spending across European countries and Canada. In 2024, NATO Allies in Europe will invest a combined $380 billion in defense, amounting to 2% of their combined GDP for the first time, then-NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced in February 2024. “We are making real progress,” he said.
The stakes to maintaining peace and stability are high, and alliances such as NATO stand ready to fulfill their promises. Bauer highlighted that fact during his speech at NATO’s 75th anniversary celebration in April 2024, noting that the “sacred pledge” that allied forces have taken protects “much more than physical safety.”
“We are collectively defending freedom and democracy,” Bauer said. “Across Europe and North America, 3.5 million men and women in uniform are upholding a shield against aggression. We deter and defend against any adversary, at any time, in any place. In a world where authoritarian regimes are desperately trying to portray an image of strength, and brutal tyranny strives to take away the sovereign rights of peoples and nations, we need that shield more than ever. We need to show the world that democracy is worth fighting for.”
Avoiding Major Conflict
Amid rising concerns about the ability to deter rising Chinese aggression and maintain a stable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. and Australia have advanced a strategy of collective deterrence that sees Australia playing a greater regional role in bolstering the U.S. forward military presence, according to a September 2023 report titled “Collective deterrence and the prospect of major conflict” published by the United States Studies Centre (USSC), a joint venture between the American Australian Association — dedicated to broadening, strengthening and developing ties between the U.S. and Indo-Pacific — and the University of Sydney that builds awareness on the dynamics shaping the U.S., their implications for Australia and solutions for the alliance.
“In the past few years, alarm over China’s fast-growing military heft and coercive efforts to remake the Indo-Pacific order in its image has set the U.S.-Australia alliance on an unprecedented trajectory,” the USSC report said. “Strengthening independent and collective efforts to deter Chinese aggression is now the organizing principle of strategic policy in both Canberra and Washington.”
Both nations have changed their strategic approach to defense. The U.S., for example, depicts Allies and Partners as “the center of gravity” in its 2022 National Defense Strategy, and the 2022 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review calls out Australia for the first time in the context of leveraging Allies and Partners’ non-nuclear capabilities that can support the nuclear deterrence mission, USSC reported. For its part, Australia lists collective security at the heart of its regional defense strategy and articulated the need for greater focus on deterrence by denial in its 2023 Defence Strategic Review.
Elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific, bilateral partnerships have modernized and expanded. They include like-minded nations to protect the vision for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific amid Chinese Communist Party (CCP) military expansion and North Korea’s continued expansion of its missiles program, defying U.N. Security Council sanctions that prohibit it.
Leaders of Australia and Japan recently held talks to continue close communication on shared strategic challenges and have for more than a decade had in place an agreement on military cooperation between the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the Australian Defence Forces. At the start of 2024, the two countries signed a research agreement for undersea warfare as they build out strategic capabilities in undersea communication and interoperability. “Maintaining a technological edge in our rapidly changing strategic environment is vital,” according to a January 2024 Australian Defence Force news release on the agreement. The collaboration “illustrates the increasingly strong defense science and technology relationship shared by Australia and Japan. By partnering, we deliver science and technology outcomes that we cannot achieve alone.”
The USSC report also noted that a network of key defense partners has developed among nations with overlapping visions to achieve strategic deterrence, including coordination among India, Japan and South Korea; and Japan and South Korea.
“All these initiatives are designed to better compete with, deter, and, if necessary, defend against adversaries determined to rewrite the regional order in ways that align with their interests,” the USSC report stated.
Among key concerns for Allies and Partners are the CCP’s nuclear buildup and North Korea’s missiles program. “Both developments are taking place rapidly and without transparency,” the USSC report said. “It is nonetheless clear that Beijing and Pyongyang are expanding their arsenals and diversifying their forces, thereby strengthening their capacity to issue nuclear threats both quantitatively and qualitatively. Many Americans and Australians fear [CCP General Secretary] Xi Jinping and [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un might have drawn the wrong lessons from [Russian President] Vladimir Putin’s use of explicit nuclear threats against NATO states in the context of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine (i.e., concluding that nuclear sabre-rattling worked to deter direct Western intervention and that they, too, could exploit this strategy to advance their interests in the Indo-Pacific).”
The April 2023 Washington Declaration sought to allay such fears, with U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol marking the 70th anniversary of their nations’ alliance by committing to develop “an ever-stronger mutual defense relationship” and “affirming in the strongest words possible their commitment to the combined defense posture under the U.S.-ROK [Republic of Korea] Mutual Defense Treaty,” a White House statement read.
“The ROK has full confidence in U.S. extended deterrence commitments and recognizes the importance, necessity and benefit of its enduring reliance on the U.S. nuclear deterrent,” the White House said. “The United States commits to make every effort to consult with the ROK on any possible nuclear weapons employment on the Korean Peninsula, consistent with the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review’s declaratory policy, and the alliance will maintain robust communication infrastructure to facilitate these consultations.”
The U.S.-ROK alliance committed to engaging in deeper, cooperative decision-making on nuclear deterrence, including enhanced dialogue and informed sharing regarding growing nuclear threats. To aid in that mission, the two presidents announced a new Nuclear Consultative Group to strengthen strategic deterrence, discuss nuclear and strategic planning, and manage threats.
“Korea rose from the ashes of war and has become one of the leading countries in the international community. Now, the ROK-U.S. alliance is not only the linchpin of peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula but also across the globe,” Yoon said during his April 2023 meeting with President Biden. “Our alliance is an alliance of values based on our shared universal values of freedom and democracy. It is not a contractual relationship of convenience only seeking for interest. Guided by our shared values, our alliance is an everlasting partnership.”
Yoon concluded his remarks by calling the alliance resilient. “Together, we can resolve any issues between us through close consultations,” he said.