An American F-16 fighter jet takes off from Souda Air Base, Greece, August 18, 2014 (USAF/Daryl Knee)
Election results in Greece and Turkey create a dilemma for the United States in navigating relations between its two Eastern Mediterranean allies.
The overlapping tenures of Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have been marked by tensions between the United States and Turkey and deepening ties between the United States and Greece.
The reelection of both men reinforces a trend in which American-Greek defense cooperation risks undermining Turkish security.
To avoid a destabilizing balance of power in the region, Washington could slow-walk the sale of F-35s to Greece and use the time to rebuild confidence in Ankara. (more…)
Dutch self-propelled Panzerhaubitze 2000 takes part in a military exercise in Sweden, October 2018 (Ministerie van Defensie)
For the first time since the Russian invasion in February, European countries did not pledge additional weapons to Ukraine in July.
The German Kiel Institute, which keeps track of countries’ humanitarian as well as military assistance to Ukraine, reports that the United States is providing €25 billion in weapons, in addition to €20 billion in humanitarian and financial support. European countries, including the UK, are giving less than €10 billion in arms.
Christoph Trebesch, who leads the team in Kiel that compiles the data, calls it “surprisingly little considering what is at stake.” He compares the €10 billion for Ukraine to the €750 billion Europe, excluding the UK, spent to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.
I have a story in the Netherlands’ Wynia’s Week about Europe’s waning support for Ukraine. I’ll translate the highlights. (more…)
Dutch soldiers fire a mortar round during an exercise near Oldebroek, May 8, 2014 (Ministerie van Defensie)
The Dutch government is raising defense spending to nearly €20 billion in order to meet NATO’s 2-percent target.
The ruling four-party coalition (which includes my own liberal party) increased military spending from €12 to €14 billion prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is adding another €15 billion over the next three years, which should be enough to reach 2 percent of GDP by the time of the next election in 2025.
Per capita, this would make the Netherlands the largest military spender in the EU. In Europe, only the British spend more.
It is a turnaround for a country that only ten years ago sold almost all its artillery, frigates and tanks. (more…)
French president Emmanuel Macron arrives in Berlin, Germany, January 25 (Elysée/Soazig de la Moissonniere)
European leaders agreed in Versailles last week to step up military cooperation in the EU. They asked the European Commission to prepare concrete proposals by May, which would be discussed at another leaders’ summit in June.
I looked into what closer defense union would mean for the Netherlands’ Wynia’s Week. Dutch readers can click here. What follows is a summary in English. (more…)
Italian Air Force jets create the country’s tricolor with green, white and red smoke trails over Varenna, September 29, 2019 (Wikimedia Commons/Achille Ballerini)
Pre-Trump America is not coming back. If last week’s announcement of a trilateral defense pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States (“AUKUS”) doesn’t convince the last Atlanticists that Europe needs to take matters into its own hands, I don’t know what will.
The new alliance excludes Europe. It snatches a deal to build nuclear submarines from France, the EU’s top military power. And it was negotiated in secret. The three English-speaking leaders didn’t even bother to give their European allies a head’s up!
The French, who would lose a €56 billion contract to build submarines for Australia, have called the snub “a breach of trust” and “a stab in the back.” French ambassadors have been recalled from Canberra and Washington DC for the first time ever.
Other Europeans are frustrated too, with officials calling the Australian about-face “unacceptable.”
Inevitably, it has been dubbed a “wake-up call” by everyone from Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign-policy coordinator, to Michael Roth, Germany’s European affairs ministers. But canceling an Australia-EU trade deal, which the European Commission had hoped to finalize this year, or postponing transatlantic talks about technology cooperation, which are scheduled for next week, won’t make Europe safer. What Europe needs to do is take its own defense seriously. (more…)
American F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, April 4, 2013 (USAF/Brett Clashman)
Major Akinori Hosomi vanished on a cool evening in April 2019 while flying one of the world’s most modern and deadliest aircraft — the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter.
When the 41 year-old pilot took off from Misawa Air Base in northern Japan on the night of April 19, there was little sign of trouble. An experienced pilot with sixty hours on the F-35A, the multirole jet he was flying was state-of-the-art and the mission profile was to be another routine night-training exercise. Yet his plane fell into the Pacific Ocean without so much as a distress call on the part of the pilot.
Akinori Hosomi’s remains were recovered from the seabed months later leaving behind a mystery about the first fatal crash for the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons system. (more…)
NATO troops participate in a military exercise on the German-Polish border, June 18, 2015 (NATO)
French president Emmanuel Macron called for a European army in 2018, arguing the EU needed to defend itself from “China, Russia and even the United States of America.”
Two years later, the argument for a common European defense is even stronger.
China’s authoritarianism can no longer be denied. It has effectively revoked the autonomy of Hong Kong, is carrying out a cultural genocide against the Uighurs in west China, threatening its neighbors around the South China Sea and extending its reach as far west as Europe and as far north as the Arctic.
Russia continues to abrogate international norms. It still supports Bashar Assad in Syria, who is responsible for driving millions of his compatriots from their homes, many of them fleeing to Europe; it still occupies the Crimea and still supports an insurgency in southeastern Ukraine.
The United States are led by an impetuous president, who has accused the EU of “taking advantage” of America, called NATO “obsolete” and withdrawn 9,500 soldiers from Germany, but expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin and doubts that he ordered the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a defector, and Alexei Navalny, an opposition leader. (more…)
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attends a Victory Day ceremony in Ankara, August 30 (Presidency of the Republic of Turkey)
Tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean show no sign of easing.
Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused the EU of “modern-day colonialism” for supporting Greek claims in the region.
His government has accused the United States of violating the “spirit” of the NATO alliance by lifting an arms embargo on Cyprus.
Greece and Turkey are both in NATO, but they have a history of antagonism and overlapping maritime border claims. Those long-standing disputes have been rekindled by the discovery of national gas in waters around Cyprus, the northern half of which Turkey recognizes as an independent republic. (more…)
France is boosting its military presence in the Eastern Mediterranean to reinforce Cypriot and Greek claims in the area and protect the activities of its energy giant Total.
The helicopter carrier Tonnerre, which is taking aid to Lebanon following the fertilizer explosion in Beirut, and the frigate La Fayette, which is training with the Greek navy, will remain in the area.
Two French Rafale warplanes will be based in Crete.
The deployments come after the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier patrolled the region earlier this year, and in response to the appearance of Turkish drill ships and frigates in disputed waters.
Turkish warships have in the past blocked Western drilling rigs in waters around Cyprus. (more…)
Yerevan, Armenia at night (Unsplash/Levon Vardanyan)
In what have been some of the worst clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan in years, sixteen soldiers and one civilian were killed in the last two weeks. Armenia has threatened to bomb an Azerbaijani reservoir. Azerbaijan has threatened to destroy an Armenian nuclear plant. These may be empty threats, but they speak to the level of tension between the two countries.
What exactly happened, why, and what is the likely outcome? (more…)
Two American C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft fly in formation over Germany, May 27, 2014 (USAF/Jordan Castelan)
Donald Trump has done his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, another favor by withdrawing almost 12,000 American troops from Germany, a third of the current deployment.
Fewer than half — 5,600 — are sent to other NATO countries, including Poland. Most will be pulled out of Europe altogether. An F-16 fighter squadron will be rebased in Italy.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper claims the decision is the outcome of long-term strategic planning and will somehow enhance “deterrence of Russia”.
President Trump revealed the real reason on Twitter:
Germany pays Russia billions of dollars a year for Energy, and we are supposed to protect Germany from Russia. What’s that all about? Also, Germany is very delinquent in their 2% fee to NATO. We are therefore moving some troops out of Germany!
This is nonsense. There is no NATO “fee”. Germany has for decades underinvested in its defense, relying on American protection, but until recently neither the United States nor Germany’s neighbors objected to the lack of German remilitarization. In 1990, the Western Allies and Russia conditioned their support for German reunification on the country keeping its defense force under 370,000 men. That ceiling remains in place. (more…)
French jets fly in formation over the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle (Marine nationale)
France and Germany are calling for closer EU defense cooperation in a policy paper seen by Bloomberg News and supported by Italy, Spain and other nations.
The ambition isn’t new. Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel called for a “true European army” in 2018.
But the timing is conspicuous, coming days after President Donald Trump said he would pull 9,500 American troops out of Germany, bringing the total to a post-Cold War low of 25,000.
Will this finally convince Europeans to get serious about their own defense? (more…)
American president Donald Trump and his defense secretary, James Mattis, arrive for a NATO summit in Brussels, July 12, 2018 (NATO)
American president Donald Trump has called on NATO to get more involved in the Middle East.
Speaking a day after Iran retaliated for the assassination of its top general, Qasem Soleimani, in Iraq by attacking American military bases in the country, Trump pointed out that the United States are no longer dependent on Middle Eastern oil.
He didn’t elaborate, but I can think of at least four problems with the idea. (more…)
Russia sent Turkey a seventh batch of components for the S-400 missile defense system over the weekend. According to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, all S-400 missiles will be deployed by April 2020.
Erdoğan has also said he is planning to send specialists to Russia for training on how to operate the S-400s.
The deal has met stiff resistance from NATO allies, who are threatening to kick Turkey out of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. So why is it going ahead with the purchase? (more…)
