Bigger battle groups, more reinforcements: What overhauling NATO means to Canada
CBC
Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, likely didn't set out to steal anyone's thunder — but it was hard for anyone at the G7 Summit in Germany to ignore the man on Monday.
Affable, seemingly awkward sometimes, the former prime minister of Norway has been a steady, usually unflappable presence on the international stage, especially during the years when Donald Trump was U.S. president.
In typical understated fashion, he peeled back the curtain on anticipated decisions by NATO leaders later this week in Madrid, Spain
When one says 300,000 Western troops, drawn from 30 countries, will be put on a higher state of readiness; it's fair to say people would sit up and take notice, especially with the horrors of Ukraine on full display and Russia's waving around of nuclear missiles last spring.
The announcement is almost an eight-fold increase in the size of the NATO response force, up from the existing 40,000 troops, aircrew and sailors.
Separately, but in tandem, the Western military alliance plans to turn its eight battalion-sized battle-groups already in Eastern Europe on Russia's border — including the one led by Canadians in Latvia — into full combat brigades, effectively doubling their size, depending on the contingent and their composition.
Stocks of extra military equipment will be sprinkled at pre-positioned points across Europe and taken up by tens of thousands of reinforcements that would be rushed to the continent's eastern flank with Russia in the event of a crisis.
"Together, this constitutes the biggest overhaul of our collective deterrence and defence since the Cold War," Stoltenberg said at NATO headquarters on Monday.
All of it will have profound implications, especially for Canada.
Both Britain and Germany, which lead the multinational battle-groups in the other two Baltic states — Lithuania and Estonia — have already signaled they intend to beef up their presence in the countries where they have troops.
Canada has been silent.
Originally conceived as a reassuring presence for Eastern European allies unnerved by Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, the battle groups have been described somewhat pejoratively as "trip wires" for NATO; big enough to buy time, but only that.
Since the invasion of Ukraine, Baltic leaders have demanded something more substantive.
Canada and Spain had been the two biggest troop contributors to Latvia for almost five years, but following the full-on invasion of Ukraine, Denmark dispatched several hundred reinforcements to the country.
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