Brian M Downing
As the Russian presence in Georgia continues, the countries of Eastern Europe should be deeply concerned over their security situation vis-à-vis their former occupier and imperial ruler. They should not only be alarmed by a resurgent Russia flush with oil wealth and restored military prestige, but also by the less than reassuring response from the United States, Western Europe, and NATO, which many Eastern European countries (though not yet Georgia) now belong to. A cautious assessment of their strategic situation will conclude that they cannot rely on NATO and so must look to themselves to form their own collective security arrangement.
The expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, including into many former republics of the USSR, has been going on since shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Thus far, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovenia have placed their national security under the seemingly impressive but unreliable wing of NATO. Others are planning to join; some are perhaps now rethinking plans to join.
However, it should be increasingly clear to Eastern European nations that joining NATO has not increased their security, it has in fact decreased it. NATO expansion has triggered alarms in Russia, not only in security-oriented bureaus of the Kremlin whose outlooks are unduly shaped by militaristic beliefs and senses of national honor, but also among ordinary Russians whose outlooks are understandably shaped by national experience and family lore of devastating invasions – two of them from the West in the last century.
Eastern Europe must recognize that the United States – by far the principal NATO power – will probably be preoccupied with the Middle East for the foreseeable future. (Would Russia have intervened in Georgia had the US not been tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan?) And though the US’s naval and air assets are not as extended as are its ground forces, naval and air power are of only limited use against ground forces such as the Russians wield in the region.
The other Western European components of NATO, though once the most militaristic and vainglory nations in the world, cannot be relied upon – with or without US ground forces and leadership – to come to Eastern Europe’s aid. France, Britain, and Germany warred with great enthusiasm for many centuries, but in the course of their regular paeans to Mars, their martial ardor fell away. Bled white in their two catastrophic world wars and quite comfortable in their postwar prosperity, they might have ably responded to a Soviet attack on them, but they are unlikely to mobilize for an open-ended war to defend countries that have not been closely tied to the West in recent memory. Ties based on trade and investment are only beginning; ties based on common religion and heritage are only words.
Eastern Europe, then, must rely on its own resources for its security and form its own mutual defense pact. This Eastern European treaty organization should be based on two types of military organization: conventional and guerrilla forces. Conventional forces, which could be judiciously equipped by manufacturers in and out of NATO, would be organized and trained not to defeat a powerful invader – that would be unlikely – but only to inflict sharp casualties on the invader.
Furthermore, inasmuch as aggression against <i>all</i> Eastern European countries is unlikely, these conventional forces would be called upon to cross into Russian territory from allied countries that had not been invaded. Their purpose would of course not be to drive deeply into Russian territory (one would hope that history, in the fading form of bold but foolhardy French and German leaders, has disabused the world of any such undertaking!), only to require Russia to maintain sizable forces along its immense, barrier-less western periphery stretching from the Ukraine to the Baltic.
Inasmuch as Russian forces will likely be superior to Eastern European counterparts in both quantity and quality, it is important that the latter have a second, though not necessarily secondary, form of military organization – guerrilla forces. Such troops, perhaps structured as local militias, would be charged with attacking an enemy’s supply lines and command centers. They would further be tasked with crossing into enemy territory to wreak havoc on similar targets there.
Combined, these conventional and guerrilla forces would constitute a sobering deterrent to any Russian effort to reacquire former Soviet territories or to intervene in the name of defending ethnic Russian enclaves. Guerrilla forces will confer the advantage of being less expensive than conventional ones, thereby constituting less of a burden on developing economies, yet they might well be far more effective as a deterrent. Eastern Europe should build both forms of military – modern forces modeled after Russian and NATO forces, and complementary guerrilla forces modeled after WW2 partisans and Middle Eastern mujahideen.
An Eastern European treaty organization would yield benefits beyond regional security. In the absence of a negotiated neutralization of Eastern Europe (a possible Russian goal of its invasion and semi-occupation of Georgia), such an arrangement would greatly reduce Russian-American antagonisms, which now are degenerating into a second cold war that would be a dismal reprise of a conflict that led to internecine proxy wars around the world, warped militaristic cultures in the two principal belligerents, and an institutional complex that despite the warnings of a venerable American general perpetuates itself to this day.
The economic and political benefits to Europe – and to most of the rest of the world as well – are obvious and wide-ranging. Easing tensions would also weaken the populist militarism that constitutes one of the bases of Russia’s newest form of authoritarianism, as Russia would no longer see Eastern Europe as a NATO staging area but as a non-threatening neutral region. An Eastern Europe that is independent of NATO would be more secure and more conducive to regional stability and economic growth.
Military service will have beneficial effects on political development in the young and inchoate democracies of Eastern Europe. This is especially so if the militaries are based on national conscription and not on professional armies. (Indeed, professional armies might well be harmful to young democracies, as generals may offer tempting options to political crises that new political systems must face.) Citizen armies reinforce the ideas of citizenship and attendant rights and duties – valuable beliefs that need to be instilled in parts of Europe that have not had long or recent acquaintance with them.
Citizen armies were critical in the development of western democracies. They can be the same in the new democracies of Eastern Europe – paradoxically at a time when citizen armies are disappearing in the West.
~ ©2008 Brian M. Downing