Speaking alongside the NATO secretary general, Biden listed new troop movements, equipment shipments and military installations meant to demonstrate the importance of security in the face of Moscow’s aggression.
“The United States and our allies, we are going to step up — we are stepping up. We’re proving that NATO is more needed now than it ever has been and is as important as it ever has been,” Biden said.
He said the US would establish a permanent headquarters for the Fifth Army Corps in Poland, maintain an extra rotational brigade of 3,000 troops in Romania, enhance rotational deployments to the Baltic states, send two more F-35 fighter jet squadrons to the United Kingdom and station additional air defense and other capabilities in Germany and Italy.
“Together with our allies, we are going to make sure that NATO is ready to meet threats from all directions — across every domain, land, air and the sea,” Biden said.
An enhanced American military presence in Eastern Europe and two new NATO members — one which shares an 800-mile border with Russia — is exactly the outcome Russian President Vladimir Putin was hoping to fend off when he invaded Ukraine more than four months ago.
“I said Putin’s looking for the Finlandization of Europe. He’s going to get the NATOization of Europe. And that is exactly what he didn’t want, but exactly what needs to be done to guarantee security for Europe. And I think it’s necessary,” Biden said.
Yet even if Putin’s aims have backfired and the conflict grinds on, momentum is favoring Russia at the moment. That has left Biden and fellow western leaders this week searching for ways to alter the trajectory of the war.
In Madrid, leaders plan to agree on major new security commitments the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Cold War. On Tuesday, Biden said he was sending two additional destroyers to the Rota Naval Station in Spain, intended to bolster the American maritime presence in the region.
He’ll make additional announcements Wednesday on force increases on “land, sea and air,” according to his top national security aide, who said US forces along NATO’s eastern edge would move “in a steady state” to the region.
“By the end of the summit what you will see is a more robust, more effective, more combat credible, more capable and more determined force posture to take account of a more acute and aggravated Russian threat,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.
Already this week, the US and European nations have slapped new rounds of sanctions on Moscow, banned new imports of its gold and agreed to limit the price of its oil. New rounds of security assistance, including a US-provided missile defense system, have been added to the queue of artillery and ammunition flowing in Ukraine.
Whether any of that is enough to fundamentally alter the way the war is going remains to be seen. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who will address the NATO meeting this week, told leaders attending the G7 summit in Germany he wanted their help staging a major initiative to win the war by the end of the year.
Leaders worry the growing cost of the war, seen in rising gas and food prices, could lead to diminished support for Ukraine in the months ahead. A few have warned that fatigue is setting in, adding to the growing concerns that the alliance could fracture.
“When we agreed we were going to respond, we acknowledged there was going to be some costs to our people, our imposition of sanctions on Russia. But our people have stood together. They’ve stood up and they’ve stood strong,” Biden said Tuesday when he was meeting with King Felipe VI at the Royal Palace in Madrid.
In order to get the deal struck before the summit, Biden dangled the prospect of a formal bilateral meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a phone call on Tuesday morning. The leaders will meet Wednesday to discuss the myriad issues that have caused the relationship between Washington and Ankara to sour over the past several years.
Biden also plans to meet jointly with Japan’s Prime Minister and South Korea’s President to focus on the threat from North Korea. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and President Yoon Suk Yeol are invited guests of the NATO summit, but their countries’ ties have deteriorated recently amid disputes over wartime histories, making the joint meeting with Biden a rarity.
