Russia Advantage AnswersRussia---1NCNATO doesn’t cause Russian aggression---giving in only encourages further expansion

Nicholas Clairmont 16, Editorial Fellow at The Atlantic, “Is NATO Redundant? We'd Better Hope So”, The Atlantic – Reporter’s Notebook, 8/25/2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/08/false-equivalence-is-alive-and-well/497438/

The idea that the blame for the situation in eastern Ukraine rests at the feet of the West is dubious. Who is more responsible for the current chaos and death? Washington, for its tepid support for the Poroshenko-Yatsenyuk government, voted in months after Russia’s unmarked brigades had already seized swathes of Ukraine? Or Russia, for invading its Western neighbor and lying about it, after its attempts to persuade the neighbor’s kleptocratic ruler to back away from a popular pro-Western deal led to his ouster? An Atlantic reader provides a nice reality check:

Nobody forced Putin to invade Ukraine and no one is forcing him to start military competition. Any backing off will simply encourage him to try to rebuild the Russian empire, which is no one’s interest, not even the Russians’. We have no more reason to respect the former Russian empire than we have to respect the former British empire. Russia is a declining power with a GDP about the size of Canada's. It will decline further, and the oligarch-dominated government will neither stop the population decline nor reinvigorate the economy.

Here’s one more paragraph from Tayler’s piece:

As a starting point, the debate should assess whether NATO’s relentless expansion—begun during the 1990s and proceeding in waves, with Montenegro’s eventual accession, once-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia having been promised membership, and even historically neutral Finland and Sweden now pondering participation—played a role in Russia’s increasingly aggressive posturing toward the West. As the world’s most powerful military alliance slid up to Russia’s borders, the West couldn’t have expected Putin to sit idle.

Whatever the merits of NATO expansion, has it been truly “relentless”? Or is it more accurate to say that the 28 members joined on seven distinct occasions over 67 years? Tayler suggests that Putin was clearly provoked by the alliance’s growth, and could not simply leave independent countries alone. Under that logic, challenging Georgia, annexing Abkhazia and South Ossetia, stirring a crisis in eastern Ukraine that has now claimed almost 10,000 lives, and playing the victim while ducking responsibility, was a reasonable response on Putin’s part. These, I would submit, are far from reasonable responses to NATO’s growth.

Yet, in Tayler’s piece, there are more instances of taking Putin’s logic at face value. We are told, for example, that “NATO’s continued European expansion through the decades, like its bombing campaigns in the former Yugoslavia to coerce an end to internecine wars tearing the region apart, demonstrated a willingness to use force in Russia’s backyard against one of its historical allies." It takes some mental gerrymandering to accept this claim: Kosovo is 1,893 kilometers from Moscow. By contrast, it is 697 kilometers from Rome, 567 from Athens, 717 from Vienna, 1,238 from Geneva, and 1,043 from Ankara.

In his analysis, Tayler evaded the fact that Putin’s foreign policy involves invading neighbors, threatening to nuke Danish ships in the Baltic, and conducting assassinations in places like London and Washington. Putin is attempting to morally blackmail the remaining true world powers into treating Russia like one of them, in an effort to maintain his grip on power by way of nationalist appeal. Giving into this blackmail is not a sound strategy.

There are legitimate complaints Russia can and does make against America. Washington has far too close a relationship with the democracy-promoting “quasi-NGOs” or “QUANGOs” in Russia that constitute some of the U.S. support for regime change. (It is, however, worth remembering why an organization that seeks to give a country’s people a say in their own government is inherently inimical to the Putin regime.)

Tayler does not address why it’s the West that should make all the concessions necessary to improve relations with Moscow. It’s especially strange that he does not explore whether Russia might itself help bring this détente, 2.0, nearer by compromising on some of its desires. That seems the better option, since the Russian leader deemed the end of the Soviet empire, under which half of Europe was enslaved, “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.

The most confounding idea in Tayler’s original post is this: “Détente 2.0 would entail the renunciation, in writing, of NATO’s plans to invite Ukraine and Georgia, coupled with Moscow’s recognition that both countries retain the right to join whatever economic or political union they desire.” Tayler asks us to accept a world that effectively offers the countries Russia believes reside within its sphere of influence the choice of any alliance they want, so long as it isn’t NATO—and any geopolitics they like, so long as it adheres to Moscow’s revisionism.

Tayler’s piece, in the end, offers us a choice between letting Russia have its way with eastern Europe and risking war that may well be nuclear. There is every reason to think that this is a false binary. If it isn’t, NATO is more relevant than ever.

There’s no risk of Russia miscalc or accidents

Dr. Steven Pinker 18. Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. “Chapter 19 Existential Threats.” Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

The first is to stop telling everyone they’re doomed. The fundamental fact of the nuclear age is that no atomic weapon has been used since Nagasaki. If the hands of a clock point to a few minutes to midnight for seventy-two years, something is wrong with the clock. Now, maybe the world has been blessed with a miraculous run of good luck—no one will ever know—but before resigning ourselves to that scientifically disreputable conclusion, we should at least consider the possibility that systematic features of the international system have worked against their use. Many antinuclear activists hate this way of thinking because it seems to take the heat off countries to disarm. But since the nine nuclear states won’t be scuppering their weapons tomorrow, it behooves us in the meantime to figure out what has gone right, so we can do more of whatever it is. Foremost is a historical discovery summarized by the political scientist Robert Jervis: “The Soviet archives have yet to reveal any serious plans for unprovoked aggression against Western Europe, not to mention a first strike against the United States.”89 That means that the intricate weaponry and strategic doctrines for nuclear deterrence during the Cold War—what one political scientist called “nuclear metaphysics”—were deterring an attack that the Soviets had no interest in launching in the first place.90 When the Cold War ended, the fear of massive invasions and preemptive nuclear strikes faded with it, and (as we shall see) both sides felt relaxed enough to slash their weapon stockpiles without even bothering with formal negotiations.91 Contrary to a theory of technological determinism in which nuclear weapons start a war all by themselves, the risk very much depends on the state of international relations. Much of the credit for the absence of nuclear war between great powers must go to the forces behind the decline of war between great powers (chapter 11). Anything that reduces the risk of war reduces the risk of nuclear war. The close calls, too, may not depend on a supernatural streak of good luck. Several political scientists and historians who have analyzed documents from the Cuban Missile Crisis, particularly transcripts of John F. Kennedy’s meetings with his security advisors, have argued that despite the participants’ recollections about having pulled the world back from the brink of Armageddon, “the odds that the Americans would have gone to war were next to zero.”92 The records show that Khrushchev and Kennedy remained in firm control of their governments, and that each sought a peaceful end to the crisis, ignoring provocations and leaving themselves several options for backing down. The hair-raising false alarms and brushes with accidental launches also need not imply that the gods smiled on us again and again. They might instead show that the human and technological links in the chain were predisposed to prevent catastrophes, and were strengthened after each mishap.93 In their report on nuclear close calls, the Union of Concerned Scientists summarizes the history with refreshing judiciousness: “The fact that such a launch has not occurred so far suggests that safety measures work well enough to make the chance of such an incident small. But it is not zero.”94 Thinking about our predicament in this way allows us to avoid both panic and complacency. Suppose that the chance of a catastrophic nuclear war breaking out in a single year is one percent. (This is a generous estimate: the probability must be less than that of an accidental launch, because escalation from a single accident to a full-scale war is far from automatic, and in seventytwo years the number of accidental launches has been zero.)95 That would surely be an unacceptable risk, because a little algebra shows that the probability of our going a century without such a catastrophe is less than 37 percent. But if we can reduce the annual chance of nuclear war to a tenth of a percent, the world’s odds of a catastrophe-free century increase to 90 percent; at a hundredth of a percent, the chance rises to 99 percent, and so on.

The risk of NATO/Russia war is low because force levels are stable

Aleksandr Khramchikhin 18, Deputy Director of the Institute for Political and Military Analysis in Moscow, 1/25/2018, “Rethinking the Danger of Escalation: The Russia-NATO Military Balance”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/01/25/rethinking-danger-of-escalation-russia-nato-military-balance-pub-75346

In an atmosphere of crisis permeated by mutual recriminations and suspicions, both sides—NATO and Russia—have engaged in a series of military activities along the line of contact. These maneuvers in turn have triggered multiple warnings from both sides of a sharp deterioration in European security, a growing threat of a military confrontation between Russia and NATO, and an urgent need to deescalate the situation in order to avoid a catastrophic war with disastrous consequences for all. An emerging conventional wisdom maintains that the new Cold War in Europe, if allowed to continue unchecked, runs the risk of escalating into a hot war unless steps to reduce tensions are taken swiftly.

But conventional wisdom is often wrong, and so it is this time. The hysteria that has engulfed public commentary throughout Europe about this ostensibly dire military situation on the brink of getting out of hand has little, if any, basis in fact. Both sides in the standoff exaggerate the tensions and the danger of escalation, and the risks of the military moves—their own and their adversary’s—supposedly driving these tensions.

In reality, the military balance between Russia and NATO is stable, the danger of escalation is hardly approaching critical levels, and little needs to be done militarily to defuse the current tensions. The true cause of the tensions is not military, but political and diplomatic. Until those causes are resolved, tensions between Russia and the West will remain high. The likelihood of a military confrontation will remain low, however, because neither side’s posture points to a heightened state of readiness or intention to go on the offensive. Until that changes, political and diplomatic tensions will remain mere tensions.

THE BALANCE, THEN AND NOW

The best evidence that the military situation in Europe is stable and that the continent is not on the brink of World War III is in the forces that each side has available for conducting military operations. Even a brief comparison of the present-day arsenals of Russia and NATO to those of the Soviet Union and NATO during the height of the Cold War should allay fears of military conflict (see table 1). This comparison should also take into account critically important political and psychological factors. Russia’s and NATO’s present-day forces do not measure up well against their predecessors of a generation ago.

One remarkable feature of the present situation is that even though the number of NATO member states has nearly doubled since the end of the Cold War, the alliance’s order of battle across many classes of weaponry has decreased since 1982, when East-West tensions were high. Over the past quarter century, military technology has developed rapidly, new weaponry has come online, and many advances in warfare have taken place. However, the arsenals of most European countries have had minimal qualitative improvements that do not begin to compensate for the major reductions in their military capabilities. Major acquisitions of military hardware have been limited mostly to wheeled armored personnel carriers (APCs) to be employed in expeditionary warfare.

The size of the U.S. military presence in Europe has decreased to an even greater degree since the end of the Cold War. At the beginning of 2016, the U.S. military had deployed ten brigades in Germany, but only two of these (the 2nd cavalry regiment and 12th combat aviation brigade) were actual fighting elements; the remaining eight were purely support units.1 One American airborne brigade is deployed in Italy.2 In 2017, the U.S. Air Force component deployed in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom had nine wings, but these are primarily support units, and there are only six fighting squadrons.

These cuts in military hardware are consistent with a general tendency in the West (to a greater extent in Europe than in the United States) to embrace ideas of hedonism, pacifism, postmodernism, tolerance, and political correctness. A 2016 Pew survey found that Europeans overall, with the exception of the Poles and Dutch, do not support increasing defence spending. Many Europeans are reluctant to support the use of hard power in international affairs. A 2017 Pew survey found that Europeans are also divided in terms of their willingness to come to a NATO ally’s defense against Russia, with Germany, the UK, and Spain demonstrating the least support. Along with the falling birth rates experienced in these countries, this shift in defense dynamics makes it virtually impossible to conduct a war that would result in major loss of life.

As a result of these shifts in attitudes and ideological trends, NATO troops may be unlikely to demonstrate heroism and willingness to make sacrifices, elements that are absolutely essential in wartime. Almost all NATO countries have transitioned to an all-volunteer military force, which has further decreased the motivation of their military personnel, or at least suggests that they are motivated more by money than by patriotism. The transition to an all-volunteer force has also resulted in increased defense spending, for reasons that deserve further consideration.

Like those of its NATO rivals, Russia’s modern-day military capabilities do not compare favorably with the combined military machine of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies (see table 2). Even a cursory comparison of Soviet and Eastern European militaries at the height of the Cold War—in 1982—and now makes clear that Russia is not poised for offensive action in the European theater.

THE HIGH COST OF WAR

NATO forces are highly sensitive to the risk of incurring casualties, and this heightened sensitivity was one of the reasons many Western countries chose to develop a concept of noncontact network-centric warfare heavily reliant on precision-guided munitions (PGM). However, this approach requires extremely expensive weaponry, equipment, ammunition, and supplies. Shrinking NATO military forces and arsenals mean that significant losses of lives or hardware have become unacceptable: losing even a few tanks and aircraft is now almost a catastrophe, comparable to losing a battleship or an armored division.

A high-intensity war that calls for large stocks of ammunition is also becoming prohibitively expensive—a trend illustrated by the evolution of wars that NATO countries have waged over the last quarter century. In 1991, NATO countries, with significant support from both Egypt and Syria, roundly defeated Iraq’s large and well-equipped army in Operation Desert Storm. The coalition against Iraq used PGMs only against high-value targets in the Desert Storm campaign.

Russia---NATO Not Key---2NCRussia would be upset and aggressive regardless of NATO

Dr. Hal Brands 19, Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, PhD in History from Yale University, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, “If NATO Expansion Was a Mistake, Why Hasn’t Putin Invaded?”, Bloomberg News, 5/14/2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-14/nato-expansion-if-it-was-a-mistake-why-hasn-t-putin-invaded

As for the critique that it was NATO expansion that provoked Russian revisionism, this argument has always been flimsy. Yes, the expansion angered Russian officials, during Yeltsin’s time as well as Putin’s. It was undoubtedly humiliating for the fallen superpower. But the idea that NATO expansion caused Russian aggression rests on an implicit counterfactual argument that, absent NATO expansion, Russia would not have behaved in a domineering fashion toward countries on its border. There is simply nothing in Russian history — and nothing in Vladimir Putin’s personality — that supports this argument.

Russia---Concessions Bad---2NCConcessions do nothing to build relations because Russia’s only driven by inferiority and grievance---scaling back NATO only emboldens them

Dr. Daniel Gouré 18, Senior Vice President with the Lexington Institute, Masters and Ph.D. Degrees in International Relations and Russian Studies from Johns Hopkins University and B.A. in Government and History from Pomona College, “A Competitive Strategy to Counter Russian Aggression Against NATO”, Lexington Institute Report, May 2018, https://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/5.14.18-A-Competitive-Strategy-To-Counter-Russian-Aggression-Against-NATO.pdf

The Russian Threat to NATO and Europe

What does President Vladimir Putin want? This question has bedeviled Western government officials, intelligence officers and academics for almost twenty years. Previous American administrations constructed their policies towards Russia and relations with Putin based on the assumption that fundamentally, they were dealing with a normal state and leader. Washington’s Russian policy was driven largely by the belief that Moscow was motivated by the same set of interests and concerns as most other nations: security and prosperity at home, a recognized place in the global order and freedom to conduct its domestic politics as its government saw fit.

There was some slight recognition that the Russian experience since the end of the Cold War colored the Kremlin’s views of Western intentions, the value of the existing international order and the applicability of liberal notions of domestic governance to the Russian condition. Also, there was some reluctance to totally embrace Vladimir Putin given his KGB background and how he rose to power. Overall, however, it was an article of faith in virtually every Western capital that Russia was a country with whom common interests could be found and that Putin was a leader driven by the usual and conventional set of motives.

What the West never recognized, what its leaders really could not fathom, was the fact that Russian foreign and security policies were driven by an overwhelming sense of inferiority and grievance. All that the West could offer Moscow -- economic development, access to technology, membership in the G-8, arms control agreements or a special status with respect to the NATO Alliance -- were insufficient to reassure Russia that it was both safe and an equal. It turns out that the Kremlin could only feel secure if its military position was unassailable and the West was vulnerable at the same time. Security for Moscow was and remains a zero-sum calculation.

None of our diplomats and intelligence officers were able to see that Putin was a man driven by overweening ambition and personal malice. His desire to be the leader of a great power, whose views and interests had to be considered by the global community and a military power to be feared took precedence over concerns for the economic well-being or political rights of his own people. Consider the magnitude of the nationalistic grandiosity behind his statement, made in 2005, that “the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the twentieth century.”9

Giving ‘concessions’ on NATO emboldens Russia and increases tensions---their fundamental motive is conflictual

Robert Kagan 18, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, formerly in the State Department, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled Order, Knopf, First Edition

It was in this context that the United States and the West came to be viewed as a threat: not to Russia’s security but to Russian ambition and Russian pride. Many Russians, led by Putin, have pointed to NATO enlargement as proof of the West’s hostile intent—and many American critics of the decision have agreed. But as Russian generals and strategic thinkers admitted in candid moments, NATO’s expansion did not increase the alliance’s overall military capabilities or the threat to Russian security. The two decades after the Cold War saw steady decreases in the numbers of U.S. troops in Europe and, even by Russian estimates, an overall reduction of the “joint military potential of its members.”140 Putin certainly had much less reason to worry about the U.S. or NATO threat when Barack Obama was in the White House than Gorbachev did in the era of the Reagan defense buildup. More than Russia’s security, NATO’s enlargement threatened Russia’s ability to reassert its regional sphere of interest, to reclaim its position as a dominant power in Eastern and Central Europe and its standing on the world stage as an equal of the United States. This may not have been strictly rational, but feelings of pride and honor are often more potent than rational calculations of interest. They shaped the policies of Germany and Japan, the self-described “have-not” nations of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the result was to create self-fulfilling prophecies. Germany’s arms buildup accompanied by a bullying diplomacy produced the very predicament German leaders claimed to fear: the encirclement by hostile neighbors. Russia’s actions have had the same effect. By the end of the Obama administration, Putin’s attempts to restore Russian influence and military involvement from Northern Europe to the Middle East sufficiently unnerved its neighbors that the United States felt compelled to increase its military role in a region from which it had been steadily pulling away. Last year American forces in Eastern Europe increased for the first time in three decades. Many in the West have seen this as a “security dilemma” and sought ways to solve what they regard as an unfortunate misunderstanding. Such was the theory behind the Obama administration effort to “reset” relations with Russia back in 2009. That effort failed, however, and in large part because it misdiagnosed Russians’ feelings and motives. In the classic security dilemma as imagined by international relations theorists, insecurity rises on both sides despite the fact that both sides are trying to reduce their insecurity. Tensions rise even as both sides seek to reduce tensions. Yet reducing tensions has never been Putin’s objective. He has wanted to increase tensions, and insecurity, on both sides. And he has had sound reasons for wanting to do so. The problem Russia has faced since the end of the Cold War is that the greatness Putin and many Russians seek cannot be achieved in a world that is secure and stable, in which the liberal order remains coherent and cohesive, especially in Europe, and in which the United States remains willing and able to continue providing the basic guarantees that make the liberal order possible. Russia’s economy today is the size of Spain’s. Its military, except for its nuclear force, is no longer that of a superpower. Its demographic trends suggest a nation in decline. The present world order affords Russia the chance to be more secure than at any time in its history. But in this world order Russia cannot be a superpower. To achieve greatness on the world stage, Russia must bring the world back to a past when neither Russians nor anyone else enjoyed security. To return Russia to its historical influence on the world stage, the liberal order must be weakened and toppled, and international strategic competition must be returned to its normal historical state. Such a world not only offers the best chance of restoring Russian greatness. It also serves Putin’s personal ambitions. It justifies and even requires a strong leader. Like the tsars of the past, Putin tells the Russian people that to defend a “vast territory” and to occupy “a major place in world affairs” require “enormous sacrifices and privations on the part of our people.”141 Stalin said much the same, and indeed Putin’s repeated comparisons of the United States with Nazi Germany and his claim that opponents in Ukraine and elsewhere are Nazis, evokes not only the Great Patriotic War and past Russian glory but also the need for a strong leader like Stalin. Putin’s hostility to the liberal world is also personal. Ever since he consolidated power, he has worried that the external forces of liberalism would work to undermine his authoritarian rule at home. Behind every democratic revolution on former Soviet territory, in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, he saw the hand of the West, and particularly the United States, even though the role of outsiders was not the decisive factor in the toppling of the authoritarian regimes in those countries. His objection to the expansion of NATO has less to do with the eastward advance of the alliance’s military power than the presence of democracies closer to Russia’s borders. Putin is at least as worried about the eastward advance of the European Union as he is about NATO. It was after Ukraine negotiated a trade agreement with the EU that he invaded and seized Crimea. It is hard to see what concessions the United States and the West could offer to address the complex mix of feelings and motives whose sources are more internal than external, more psychological than strategic. Obama’s “reset,” his decision to trim back missile defenses in Poland in response to Russian objections, his tepid response to the attack on Ukraine, and his acceptance of a Russian military role in Syria and the broader Middle East did nothing to cure Russians’ sense of grievance or tame Putin’s ambitions. They only emboldened Putin to press for more. The election of Trump, who throughout his campaign expressed a desire for improved relations with Moscow, did not affect Putin’s approach to the world. Those who suggest we should recognize a Russian sphere of interest in its region should recall that Russia’s historical sphere of interest does not end in Ukraine; it begins in Ukraine. It includes the Baltic states, and it includes Poland. That is a dangerous path to head down, as history has shown. Even if we sacrificed Ukrainian independence or Georgian independence or Baltic independence in the hope of calming Russian anxieties and sating Russians’ ambitions, such concessions would not solve the problem, any more than feeding Manchuria to Japan and Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany solved those problems. The peace established after World War II and which endures almost seventy-five years later was not based on accommodating Japanese and German anxieties, even though those nations suffered infinitely greater horrors at the hands of the Allies than anything Russians suffered at the end of the Cold War. Among the liberal order’s greatest contributions to international peace has been the discrediting and denial of great-power spheres of interest. To begin acknowledging and accepting such spheres again would be a big step back to old patterns of history and to the conflicts and instability that characterize the international system “as it is.”

Russia---AT: US/Russia RelationsStrong US/Russian relations are impossible---their fundamentally strategy is irreconcilable with the U.S. and no policy change can alter that

Thomas Graham 19, Managing Director at Kissinger Associates, Senior Russia Expert on the National Security Council Staff During the George W. Bush Administration, “Let Russia Be Russia: The Case for a More Pragmatic Approach to Moscow”, Foreign Affairs, November-December 2019, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2019-10-15/let-russia-be-russia

Since the end of the Cold War, every U.S. president has come into office promising to build better relations with Russia—and each one has watched that vision evaporate. The first three—Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—set out to integrate Russia into the Euro-Atlantic community and make it a partner in building a global liberal order. Each left office with relations in worse shape than he found them, and with Russia growing ever more distant.

President Donald Trump pledged to establish a close partnership with Vladimir Putin. Yet his administration has only toughened the more confrontational approach that the Obama administration adopted after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014. Russia remains entrenched in Ukraine, is opposing the United States in Europe and the Middle East with increasing brazenness, and continues to interfere in U.S. elections. As relations have soured, the risk of a military conflict has grown.

U.S. policy across four administrations has failed because, whether conciliatory or confrontational, it has rested on a persistent illusion: that the right U.S. strategy could fundamentally change Russia’s sense of its own interests and basic worldview. It was misguided to ground U.S. policy in the assumption that Russia would join the community of liberal democratic nations, but it was also misguided to imagine that a more aggressive approach could compel Russia to abandon its vital interests.

A better approach must start from the recognition that relations between Washington and Moscow have been fundamentally competitive from the moment the United States emerged as a global power at the end of the nineteenth century, and they remain so today. The two countries espouse profoundly different concepts of world order. They pursue opposing goals in regional conflicts such as those in Syria and Ukraine. The republican, democratic tradition of the United States stands in stark contrast to Russia’s long history of autocratic rule. In both practical and ideological terms, a close partnership between the two states is unsustainable.

Cooperation is structural and locked-in and there’s no impact---allies fill-in

Andrei A. Sushentsov 19, Director of the Institute for International Studies at MGIMO University, and Maxim A. Sushkov, Senior Research Fellow at the Laboratory of International Trends Analysis at MGIMO University, “The Nature of the Modern Crisis in U.S.-Russia Relations”, Russia in Global Affairs, 1/17/2019, https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/The-Nature-of-the-Modern-Crisis-in-US-Russia-Relations-19914

Over the past four years there has been plenty of discussion about the nature and character of the degradation taking place in Russian-U.S. relations. Many analysts compare the current situation with the Cold War, when the world was divided into two opposing camps seeking to expand their influence at each other’s expense. The two superpowers were irreconcilable, balanced on the verge of war, and had complete control of the information space in their respective spheres of interest. Those were ideal conditions for confrontation.

The present situation is much more complex. Indeed, a large part of the international agenda is still affected by U.S.-Russian relations. The standoff between the two countries also increases tension in the international system, while the absence of any visible solutions to the current crisis adds to the feeling of “general confusion.” But relations between Moscow and Washington no longer determine the dynamics of modern international relations as much as they did during the Cold War. The common space of confrontation—informational, economic, political—creates a high degree of interdependence when antagonisms are superimposed on the areas of cooperation. It is no longer a duel between superpowers. Many more key players are now involved in international processes (Lukin, 2016; Nikitin, 2016). Allies and opponents are becoming increasingly situational, and competition in such strategic industries as energy, communications, transport, arms trade, and information is emerging as a key international process.

The current confrontation can hardly be rationalized. On the one hand, there is no complete understanding of the nature of the changes taking place: the Trump phenomenon, Brexit, conflicts in the Middle East, and the like. The opposing parties do not believe a big war is possible and allow themselves to walk on the edge. They understand the historical perspective—where exactly the world is going—differently.

Russia and the United States speak increasingly different languages and use different definitions of the same notions. In this situation not only diplomacy and political expertise often fail their missions, but even intelligence services prove helpless.

However, all this does not mean that the world has become as black-and-white as before or that there are only us and our conflict and nothing else. There are increasing signs of an emerging polycentric world. Bloc discipline is slackening not only between Russia and its allies, but also within the West. Many EU countries have expelled Russian diplomats, but it is much more important to look at which countries have not done so and why.

The current developments in Russian-U.S. relations are not a new Cold War (Safranchuk, 2018; Legvold, 2016). Yet the exchange of political and military signals is becoming increasingly harsh: provocations, sabotage, and compromising information campaigns have become more acrid, as evidenced by events in Aleppo and Idlib, alleged chemical attacks in Syria, the Skripal provocation, attempts to derail the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline project, and the situation in Ukraine.

European Unity Advantage AnswersEU Unity---1NCStatus quo solves EU defense integration---they’re incrementally shifting to improve capabilities

Dr. John R. Deni 20, Research Professor of Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental, and Multinational (JIIM) Security Studies at the Strategic Studies Institute, Ph.D. in International Affairs from George Washington University, “The United States and the Transatlantic Relationship”, Parameters, Volume 50, Number 2, Summer 2020, p. 20

Improved Security Situation

In some respects, Europe has entered a security stasis over the last two years particularly in contrast to the 2014–16 period and especially with regard to the most acute security threats confronting Europe— namely, Russian aggression and international terrorism. This security stasis was mostly the result of two key factors. First, most North Atlantic Treaty Organization member states implemented a series of budgetary, force posture, readiness, and modernization initiatives intended both to reverse years of steadily declining defense budgets, on average, and to begin correcting the deficit of territorial defense capability and capacity across Europe.1

Second, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, and others improved their homeland security postures. Since the mid-2010s, European states have significantly enhanced intelligence collection and sharing, tightened counterterrorism laws and border controls, strengthened communitybased monitoring and reporting networks, and devoted more funding to domestic law enforcement and for other counterterrorism capabilities.2

Any more is impossible because it confronts obstacles that are too engrained for U.S. withdrawal to change

Andrea Gilli 17, Senior Researcher in Military Affairs at the NATO Defense College in Rome and an Affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation of Stanford University, “The Trump Administration Wants Europe To Pay More To Defend Itself. It’s Not That Easy.”, Washington Post, 2/3/2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/02/03/europe-may-not-be-able-to-expand-its-defenses-like-president-trump-wants/

3) Implementing defense cooperation in Europe won’t be easy — Some analysts think that by promoting cooperation among NATO allies, any U.S. retrenchment from Europe would help address existing problems, but there are strong reasons to be skeptical.

With Europe’s limited funds to spend on defense, large cooperative projects will be difficult to launch. In the past, countries in Europe abandoned cooperative projects because of their negative domestic implications for jobs, technological know-how or military exports. In an age of austerity, amid a refugee crisis and high youth unemployment, this mind-set is unlikely to change anytime soon.

And some countries may have little interest in cooperation. They may operate in completely different environments — Mediterranean vs. North Sea, for example. Or they perceive a different strategic threat at home — think Russia vs. the Islamic State. Some countries may even have a strategic interest in leaving unaddressed some capability gaps — to compel proximate allies to come to their defense. This was Finland’s military strategy during the Cold War.

Can the European Union step in and mandate greater defense cooperation?

At the moment, anti-E.U. rhetoric complicates any additional transfer of power toward Brussels. Similarly, E.U. member states have different options to resist initiatives that do not fit their particular needs.

Two 2009 directives from the European Commission aimed at liberalizing the European defense market and thus at preventing member states from acquiring weapon systems from their national industry remain largely stalled. After almost a decade, their effects have been limited and it is not clear that the situation can change anytime soon.

And the E.U. has its own legal and budget constraints. For instance, the European Commission recently created a platform to fund defense research and got just under €90 million ($97 million) in contributions. Although the Commission expects to see this funding grow to €3 billion ($3.2 billion) through 2027, this sum still pales in comparison to the $70 billion in U.S. defense research funding.

So what changes can we expect to see?

Because of financial, budgetary and political constraints, European countries will not be able to generate a significantly higher defense output in the short and medium term, even if military expenditures or defense cooperation were to grow remarkably.

There may be some enhanced European capabilities, assuming some uptick in cross-border cooperation and a growing role for E.U. defense-related institutions. The more likely scenario is that, overall, these initiatives will not be able to alter the conventional balance in Europe.

The plan causes continental infighting---U.S. security commitments allow European unity and confidence

Dr. Jakub J. Grygiel 20, Associate Professor at the Catholic University of America and Fellow at The Institute for Human Ecology, Ph.D., M.A. and MPA from Princeton University, “Vladimir Putin’s Encirclement of Europe”, National Review, 3/19/2020, https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/04/06/vladimir-putins-encirclement-of-europe/

Such a situation creates a great leadership opportunity for the United States. Because Europe and its institutions cannot resolve the deep divisions on the Continent, the ability of the United States to shape European dynamics will only increase, if it chooses to exercise that ability. The only power capable of slowing the ongoing Russian encirclement of Europe is the U.S., in part through its leadership in NATO but in part on its own with a select group of interested allies. The United States can therefore limit some of the intra-European divisions by removing the source of insecurity, mitigating the effects of the geopolitical encirclement of Europe by Russia. This is the logic that characterized much of the transatlantic dynamics of the last century: U.S.-led protection allowed Europe to be confident and united. There is nothing to indicate that conditions have dramatically changed and that therefore this logic has become obsolete.

Broader EU unity is impossible post-COVID

Stefanie Babst 20, Senior Associate Fellow at the European Leadership Network, “The Coronavirus Pandemic Hits NATO: Five Potential Implications”, 4/14/2020, https://www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org/commentary/the-coronavirus-pandemic-hits-nato-five-potential-implications/

The post-coronavirus world, whenever it arrives, will likely be profoundly different from the one we knew before Covid-19 killed its first victim in Wuhan. While it seems too early to determine all the long-term consequences of this global health emergency, there should be little doubt that the strategic ramifications of the current crisis will be multi-faceted, profound and far-reaching.

Below are five potential implications of Covid-19 for NATO, which Secretary General Stoltenberg and his advisors may wish to consider.

No 1: Shrinking defence budgets

A few months after Covid-19 started to travel the world, it is clear that large parts of the global economy are bound to face a deep recession in the near-future whose scope and impact, according to the International Monetary Fund, may go far beyond the 2008/2009 global financial crisis. Due to the many unknowns related to how the pandemic will further evolve, economic forecasts range between a 5-10 % drop in global GDP. Once national lockdown restrictions are lifted, national governments will have to focus their political energies on reinvigorating economic productivity, encouraging public consumption, reducing mass unemployment and delivering on basic social and public services.

Depending on how long Covid-19 continues to ravage Europe, North America, Asia and other continents, economic recovery will take years, not months. Despite substantial financial support from the European Union’s financial institutions, the vast majority of European countries will be extremely reluctant to assign their limited financial resources to upgrade national defence capabilities and maintain costly procurement programmes. Making the case in favour of spending billions of euros on increased defence budgets – something that was agreed prior to the outbreak of the pandemic – will neither be acceptable to the public nor to policymakers, across Europe. Habitual finger-pointing exchanges across the Atlantic about security free-riders will not be helpful. Rather, NATO Allies will have to find smart ways to adjust defence capability requirements geared towards traditional security threats (nuclear, conventional, cyber and hybrid) and new challenges that stem from climate change, pandemics, mass migration or disruptive technologies. All this is bound to turn into difficult political discussions in Brussels.

No 2: Leadership without leading

In recent years political relations between the two sides of the Atlantic have turned sour, due to US President Trump’s transactional policies and his erratic style. But transatlantic solidarity hit another low point since the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis. Instead of garnering political solidarity among America’s closest allies, providing practical support for Europeans in dire need (such as Italy and Spain) and leading a consolidated effort to mitigate the global health crisis, President Trump has made abundantly clear that he is solely eyeing his personal and political gains. More significantly, he continues to question the urgency of the threat. The prospect of building a US-led grand coalition to combat Covid-19, using, for example, NATO or a coalition of the willing, seems remote. Meanwhile, evidence is growing that the US is being dramatically affected by the pandemic; both in terms of the skyrocketing numbers of infected people and, more broadly, economically and politically. America’s economy seems to be on the verge of suffering a major blow with potential long-term consequences for its status as the world’s leading power.

Looking ahead, it may prove difficult for President Trump to survive the pandemic politically. If the November elections still take place as planned, plausible arguments can be made that either a Democrat or a surprise candidate could win the White House. Top leadership changes could eventually also occur in those NATO and EU countries where governments are gravely mishandling the coronavirus crisis, public health systems are severely stressed, and governments lack financial resources to relaunch the national economy. Whatever the long-term political fallout of the current health crisis for individual NATO member countries, America’s reputation as a global leader has already taken a heavy toll.

No 3: Intra-Alliance unity and cohesion

These two terms – that NATO ritually uses in its strategic messaging – are also bound to become even more strained than before. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, controversial issues ranged from Turkey’s intervention in Syria and burden sharing all the way to how to respond to security challenges on NATO’s southern borders. At the heart of these issues and related political disagreements, rests an extremely fragile consensus on NATO’s core threats and the way to respond to them. To be sure, these and other political disagreements will not go away in the future, but intra-European rivalry regarding access to financial funds and EU-sponsored modalities for economic recovery will strongly come to the fore once national lockdowns are lifted.

Disagreements between NATO allies must also be expected about their future relations with China. Prior to the outbreak of Covid-19, Washington pressed European capitals hard to ban Huawei G5 technologies from their markets. Under US pressure China was described as an “aggressive strategic competitor” in NATO documents. But will this view be as strongly held by all Allies now that Beijing has provided considerable medical support to Europe? Whilst China’s Communist leadership will not reconsider the country’s long-term strategic goals, in the absence of a credible US leadership role in this global emergency, a number of European allies may be tempted to look more at Beijing and somewhat less towards Washington as they absorb the many ramifications of the Covid-19 pandemic.

U.S. commitments stop intra-European conflict and arms racing---that escalates

Dr. Hal Brands 19, Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, PhD in History from Yale University, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, “The History American Alliance with Europe”, Hearing Before The Subcommittee On Europe, Eurasia, Energy, And The Environment Of The Committee On Foreign Affairs House Of Representatives, 3/26/2019, https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/109187/documents/HHRG-116-FA14-Transcript-20190326.pdf [typo corrected]

Similarly, NATO (and the U.S. role therein) have long tamped down international instability more broadly, by suppressing potential security competitions within Europe and making it nearly unthinkable that war could occur between the countries that make up NATO's membership. It is remarkable that no one worries today about a war between France and Germany or Gennany [Germany] and Poland, given the pre-1945 history of those relationships, and NATO has everything to do with this achievement. Given that wars in Europe repeatedly reached out and touched the United States prior to 1945, moreover, this achievement directly serves American security interests.

Finally, NATO acts as an impediment to dangerous geostrategic phenomena such as nuclear proliferation, by convincing historically insecure countries-such as Germany and Poland-that they can afford to forego possession of the world's absolute weapon. The guiding principle among the framers of the post-World War ll order was that massive instability, arms racing, and violence in key regions posed a threat that would ultimately imperil the United States. The U.S. alliance relationship with Europe has restrained precisely these phenomena.

EU Unity---Status Quo Solves---2NCNew management structures create a foundation for gradually strengthening joint defense

Erik Brattberg 19, Director of the Europe Program and Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, MA from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and Tomáš Valášek, Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe, MA in International Affairs from George Washington University, “EU Defense Cooperation: Progress Amid Transatlantic Concerns”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/11/21/eu-defense-cooperation-progress-amid-transatlantic-concerns-pub-80381

European defense cooperation has made unprecedented strides since 2014 and further progress is expected under the new European Commission. Driving these developments are a combination of internal and external factors. Among them is a more challenging security environment in Europe, the disruptive impact of the Brexit negotiations and the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, demands for deeper European Union (EU) integration in the wake of the 2009 eurozone debt crisis, and defense industrial rationales. As the 2016 European Global Strategy makes clear, the EU’s ambition is to become a more strategically autonomous security player capable of taking more independent action, especially in its own neighborhood. But this will require the decisionmaking structures that can act swiftly and autonomously in crises, the necessary civilian and operational capabilities to carry out these decisions, and the means to produce the necessary capabilities through a competitive high-tech European defense industrial base.

The evolving EU defense cooperation goes far beyond crisis management operations. At its core, it has the goal of leveraging EU tools to strengthen European security. In particular, new EU defense initiatives such as Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and the European Defense Fund (EDF), though still nascent, are potential game changers in this regard. PESCO operates as a platform for groups of member states to cooperate on defense capability projects. The EDF, as an internal market instrument backed up by European Commission co-funding, has the potential to spur and incentivize collaboration on the development and acquisition of new capabilities between member states. These initiatives lay a framework upon which stronger cooperation can gradually be structured. Nevertheless, these new European defense schemes will have to have the right level of ambition, be successfully implemented, and contribute to strengthening both European and transatlantic security.

Spending is rapidly increasing, it’s in key new equipment, and more is coming

John A. Tirpak 20, Editorial Director of Air Force Magazine, Written for Aviation Week & Space Technology, Aerospace Daily, and Jane’s, Recognized with Awards for Journalistic Excellence from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Aviation and Space Writer’s Association, the Association of Business Publications International, Recipient of the 2018 Gill Robb Wilson Award in Arts and Letters from the Air Force Association, Lectured at the National War College and did Postgraduate Research at the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum, “Who’s Paying Their Share in NATO?”, Air Force Magazine, 2/1/2020, https://www.airforcemag.com/article/whos-paying-their-share-in-nato/

By then, Europe and Canada had already begun to increase spending, driven by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014 and its ongoing “hybrid war” against the rest of that country. Though Ukraine is not a NATO member, nations that lived for decades under Russian domination in the former Soviet bloc, including the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, feared they might be next.

After Trump became president, his first Defense Secretary, retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, sought to reassure the world that NATO membership was the bedrock of American international power and influence, even as Trump continued to insist that other NATO members pick up more of the alliance’s financial burdens.

The tactic appears to have worked. NATO statistics released in November 2019, just ahead of the London Summit, shows Europeans and Canada increased their collective spending by a combined by 5.6 percent in the last five years. That includes a 1.7 percent in 2015, 3.0 percent in 2016, 5.7 percent in 2017, and about 4.5 percent each in 2018 and 2019.

From 2015 to 2019, non-US NATO countries increased defense outlays more than 20 percent to $302 billion, while US defense spending increased from $660 billion to $685 billion. In all, NATO members’ total defense investment could top $1 trillion in 2020. Today, while nine NATO-member countries meet or exceed the 2 percent target (including the US) seven are within 0.5 percent of the target, and all 28 have increased defense spending since 2014.

When it comes to investing in new equipment, the trends appear to be even better. NATO members have all agreed to invest 20 percent of their defense spending on new gear, and now, 16 NATO members are hitting the mark. Indeed, only Albania, the UK, and France have reduced their level of investment in weaponry since 2014. This separate accounting is useful because member states spend differently on pay, amenities and support for their troops, while the cost of equipment is largely equalized across the alliance.

At a lunch Trump hosted at the London meeting for the “2 percenters,” he lauded the progress in investment and took credit for spurring allies to spend more on defense. “Someday,” he said, “we’ll raise it to 3 percent and 4 percent, maybe.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg celebrated the achievement, saying the growing number of 2 percenters “demonstrates we are making real progress.” More is to come: Most other NATO members “have plans in place to meet the 2 percent guideline by 2024,” he said. The European allies and Canada have added $130 billion to their defense budgets since 2016, he said, “and this number will be $400 billion by 2024. … So this is making NATO stronger.”

EU Unity---Link Turns---2NCThe plan goes too far and creates confusion and disunity---now’s key because a united front is needed against Russian probing

Hans Binnendijk 18, Senior Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University, Former Senior Director for Defense Policy and Director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Security Council, “What NATO’s Burden-Sharing History Teaches Us”, Defense News, 7/9/2018, https://www.defensenews.com/smr/nato-priorities/2018/07/09/what-natos-burden-sharing-history-teaches-us/

How should President Trump maximize his efforts at the summit to deal with those whom he calls “free riders”? He has actually set the stage to declare a victory. But if he pushes too hard and disrupts the unity and cohesion that summit planners seek to attain, it will backfire. NATO can not afford a broken summit as happened at the recent G-7 meeting.

Trump’s best tactic is to recognize that burden-sharing is not only a trans-Atlantic problem. It is also a European problem. About half of the allies plan to live up to their spending pledge, while the other half does not. The half will let down not just the U.S. but its own European neighbors. That should be Trump’s message.

If handled with some dexterity, the factors now at work should yield results similar to those of the 1970s. Overreaching will just create confusion and disunity at a time when the alliance needs to show strength in the face of tough challenges from the east and south.

EU Unity---Alt Causes---2NCDebt, populism, and the Euro crisis will splinter Europe, regardless of U.S. commitment to NATO

Max Bergmann 20, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and Ben Judah, Author of Fragile Empire and This Is London, “The United States Needs a Euro Policy”, The American Interest, 5/28/2020, https://www.the-american-interest.com/2020/05/28/the-united-states-needs-a-euro-policy/

Talk of the latest “eurocrisis” can trigger eye-rolls in Washington. Von der Leyen’s proposal should not. The intense negotiations that led to the breakthrough Franco-German proposal, which permitted the Commission to launch the European Recovery Package, had been marked by deep fissures appearing in the Union, which should alarm this generation of U.S. foreign policy hands.

Washington needs to take stock. The real significance of the plan is not economic but political. These proposed new resources are to be made available thanks to unprecedented massive borrowing by Brussels. It also opens up the possibility for the European Commission to raise its own resources through taxes down the line. This clearly opens the door to an eventual European treasury, greatly strengthening the federal powers of Brussels. But is it enough, now?

This is significant ammunition to fight Europe’s immediate crisis. The European Recovery Package, armed with roughly €450 billion in new grants and transfers, buttresses the Union against the upfront impact of the coronavirus. New resources equivalent to roughly 2 percent of European GDP are being made available this way.

Still, it probably is not big enough. Even this injection still pales in comparison to the likely jump in the debt-to-GDP ratio in most member states by 2021—estimated to get up to roughly 20 percent in the most affected countries. By this calculation, as little as 10 percent of the costs of fighting the crisis will be mutualized. The plan is thus far from enough to avoid a second decade of depression and austerity in Europe’s south.

Europe’s populists have little reason to fret about their future political prospects. With French, Italian, Spanish, and other weaker member states’ debt levels set to soar, and with the ECB’s critical bond-buying program running into legal difficulty in Germany’s constitutional court in Karlsrühe, the EU’s coronavirus generation’s grand compromise can still fail.

And what is more, this compromise plan cannot solve Europe’s deeper crisis: the growing economic chasm between north and south, which has been greatly exacerbated by this crisis. The single currency, without either mutualized debt or a single fiscal authority, has become a device pushing EU states apart and engendering conflict, not cooperation. To put it even more bluntly, the euro, in its current form, is the biggest threat to the European Union.

Americans would be wrong that this internal European dispute is none of their business. Its outcome is critical to the future of Europe, and, as a result, to the health of the Transatlantic alliance. It has direct implications on the renewed geopolitical contest with China and Russia. For too long, the current generation of Washington policymakers have been aloof to developments in the EU and have failed to see the link between European economic crises and the kind of political instability on the continent that makes member states weak allies.

Washington has its work set out for it. Reviving and sustaining the Transatlantic alliance after Trump will require more than just restoring diplomatic norms with Europe and recommitting to NATO. It will require a sustained and far-sighted euro policy. And in order to achieve this, America needs to rediscover its own “European” foreign policy heritage, from a previous generation, whilst working consistently to promote the necessary policies to fix the Eurozone and relaunch the European economy. Above all, the United States needs to support Europe taking on a share of its members’ debt. In a word: The U.S. should back the creation of Eurobonds.

EU Unity---European War Turns---2NCCommitments create a pacifier that suppress arms racing and war, moderates allied aggression, and allows regional economic integration

Dr. Hal Brands 15, Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, PhD in History from Yale University, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, “The Limits Of Offshore Balancing”, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 9/1/2015, https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep11785

The relative international stability of the postwar period has an equally intimate relationship with America’s global posture. As even some advocates of retrenchment concede, the fact that historically warprone regions like Europe have remained comparatively peaceful in recent decades is not primarily a function of any dramatic advance in human enlightenment. Rather, that phenomenon has owed largely to the way that the “American pacifier” has soothed just those destabilizing impulses that previously caused upheaval and war. In key strategic regions, the U.S. presence has suppressed arms races and geopolitical competitions by affording the security that permits other countries effectively to underbuild their armed forces. Likewise, it has eased long-standing historical antagonisms by providing the atmosphere of reassurance in which powerful nations like Japan and Germany could be reinvigorated economically and reintegrated into functioning regional orders. Finally, the U.S. presence has been a force for moderation in the conduct of both allies and adversaries, deterring outright aggression and discouraging other forms of disruptive behavior. America “effectively acts as a night watchman,” Mearsheimer acknowledges, a geopolitical “Leviathan” that brings order and stability to an otherwise anarchical realm.97 “The contribution that the United States makes” to preventing the febrile international instability of earlier eras, another prominent political scientist observes, “is similar to the services that governments provide within sovereign states.”98

Withdrawal causes war in Eastern Europe---draws the U.S. back in

Branislav Micko 19, PhD candidate in political science at Charles University, and Marcel Plichta, Independent Analyst based in Washington, DC, Previously Written on Security Topics for Defense One, World Politics Review, and Small Wars Journal, “The Case For NATO: Why The Alliance’s Post–Cold War Expansion Is Vital To European Security And American Interests”, Modern War Institute at West Point, 4/5/2019, https://mwi.usma.edu/case-nato-alliances-post-cold-war-expansion-vital-european-security-american-interests/

Above these material and expertise contributions, joining NATO ensures that these countries will take steps to solve their disputes peacefully, which is a value in itself. Issues that could have escalated into armed conflicts—such as disputes between Hungary and Slovakia or Croatia and Slovenia—have been limited to negotiations, in no small part because both sides were either members of or eyeing membership in the alliance and the European Union. Based on the experience of NATO in the Balkans, it is obvious that had any of these disputes led to armed conflict, the resources expended to ensure stability on the continent would be much higher than the costs that NATO shoulders today. It is incumbent on current and future policy makers to articulate NATO’s importance to American interests, while pushing for fair burden sharing, rather than falling into a pattern of lazy attacks that undermine the public’s confidence in the most successful alliance in history.

Deterrence DA1NCThe perception of backing away from Article 5 causes Russian aggression in Eastern Europe

Lindsay Lloyd 19, Bradford M. Freeman Director of the Human Freedom Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute, Graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, “NATO: Still Relevant in a Dangerous World”, The Catalyst, Summer 2019, Issue 15, https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/global-challenges/lloyd-nato-still-relevant-in-a-dangerous-world.html

This year, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization marks its 70th anniversary. In the world of international statecraft, such long-lasting alliances are exceedingly rare. NATO’s longevity is due in part to the fact that it combines national interest, which can be fleeting, with national values, which are hopefully more lasting.

The initial alliance between the United States, Canada, and 10 European nations founded in 1949 has grown to encompass 29 countries. Once ratified by all current members, North Macedonia will join as NATO’s 30th member.

Some, though, most notably the president of the United States, have questioned whether NATO membership is still in the U.S. national interest. While the White House avers that the U.S. commitment to NATO remains solid, even the perception of a breach between Europe and America would foster Russia’s longstanding desire to rupture the alliance.

The Trump administration’s concern over burden sharing is by no means a new issue – it has been an off-and-on irritant over much of the alliance’s history. In the 1970s, Europe was spending approximately 45 percent of what the United States was spending on defense. The Center for Transatlantic Relations notes that three factors combined to address the disparity: Moscow was becoming more belligerent, America was preoccupied in a longstanding conflict in Vietnam, and Europe was enjoying a period of relative prosperity. By the end of the Cold War, Europe was spending approximately 78 percent of U.S. levels.

Today’s situation is somewhat analogous: Moscow is becoming more belligerent, America is engaged in a 17-year war in Afghanistan (side-by-side with our NATO allies), and Europe is enjoying relative prosperity. And European defense spending is beginning to rise. As Daniel Fried, the assistant secretary of state for Europe from 2005 to 2009, put it, “By all means, America should push for greater allied defense spending. But today (and everyday) let’s also remember — and respect — the sacrifice that others have made for us.”

Why NATO was created

The values that bind the alliance have remained constant, but NATO has not been static. In fact, its durability is linked to its flexibility – changing and modernizing as threats have grown and receded. It’s important to recognize that NATO succeeded in its core historical mission – deterring an aggressive rival and keeping the West strong and free.

It’s important to recognize that NATO succeeded in its core historical mission – deterring an aggressive rival and keeping the West strong and free.

Established in the first phase of the Cold War, NATO was one response to the vacuum created after World War I, when America sought to disengage from Europe’s power struggles and conflicts. In contrast to the Senate’s refusal to approve the treaty establishing the League of Nations, America sought after World War II to fashion a new and lasting international architecture. That included the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (the forerunner of the World Trade Organization), and a host of security agreements and alliances, most notably NATO.

Beginning with President Harry S. Truman and continuing through the Cold War, presidents and Congresses of both parties embraced this American-made architecture that helped the United States realize historic prosperity, saw freedom expand across the globe, and prevented a devastating nuclear war with an aggressive and expansionist Soviet Union.

While regional conflicts were frequent and often bloody, the theory of mutually assured destruction (MAD) contained the 50-year standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. The uneasy peace was costly and often tense – the Cuban Missile Crisis, conflict in the Middle East, Vietnam – but a cataclysmic third world war was avoided. Western resolve, expressed in the alliance, prevented Soviet aggression and victory.

The reduced tensions of détente largely fell apart after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, awakening Americans and Europeans alike to the fact that the Soviets still posed an existential threat. The decision to deploy a new class of missiles in Europe spawned the nuclear freeze movement and severely strained the alliance. But the fact that NATO held together was a key moment in the Soviet Union’s defeat.

Western resolve placed unsustainable pressure on the Soviets and their allies. The system collapsed in the 1980s and 1990s, as a new Soviet leader found it impossible to compete. The rise of the independent labor union Solidarity in Poland led to free elections, as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev refused to intervene. The fall of the Berlin Wall and a series of mostly bloodless revolutions rolled out across Central and Eastern Europe. And long suppressed nationalism within the Soviet Union – in Lithuania, Ukraine, and elsewhere – led to the dissolution of the USSR itself on December 26, 1991.

The map of Europe was remade. Fifteen states emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union. Most of them, including Russia, sought a democratic and free market future. Many declared their ambition to join the European Union and NATO. Over the next two decades, 13 post-communist nations took their rightful places as full members of the North Atlantic Alliance.

But the question arose – what was the purpose of NATO when its main foe was no longer a threat (or even existed)?

After the Cold War

Since the fall of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, NATO has reinvented itself. The alliance built to face down the Soviets has taken on new challenges and missions, proving it remains the most important U.S. alliance.

NATO’s current mission was laid out in 2010. The alliance remains a mutual defense pact – each member commits to defend the others against attack, including against “new threats to the safety of our citizens.”

It also maps out the importance of conflict management – preventing and managing conflicts and stabilizing post-conflict situations. NATO is committed to working with partners around the globe, to working toward a world without nuclear weapons, and to allow European democracies that meet the standards for membership to join the alliance.

One of the first major tests for the post-Soviet NATO occurred after Yugoslavia’s dissolution. NATO took the leading role in ending the fighting and bringing stability to Bosnia and Herzegovina. From 1999 on, NATO has played a similar role in Kosovo. Ending the bloodshed was a key U.S. political priority during the Clinton administration. While the United States could have addressed these crises alone, our NATO partners worked with us and carried some of the load.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, NATO’s Article V was activated for the first and only time in the alliance’s history. Article V of the NATO Treaty commits each member to defend the others when under attack. For America’s NATO partners, the attacks on Washington and New York were just the same as an attack on Rome, Berlin, Toronto, or Oslo.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, NATO’s Article V was activated for the first and only time in the alliance’s history. ... For America’s NATO partners, the attacks on Washington and New York were just the same as an attack on Rome, Berlin, Toronto, or Oslo.

Invoking Article V was more than just a rhetorical expression of solidarity – our NATO allies, along with other partners like Australia, have fought with the United States in Afghanistan. More than 1,000 soldiers from NATO partners have been killed.

While you may disagree on the merits of American involvement in Bosnia, Kosovo, or Afghanistan – they were national security priorities of the U.S. government. In each conflict, America’s NATO partners took up arms in American-led engagements. Having allied support lessened the burden and furthered the security priorities of the United States.

Sadly, the original rationale for NATO has returned in new, insidious ways. The Russian experiment with democracy that begin in the late 1980s has been all but extinguished. Vladimir Putin’s Russia has moved away from liberalism and democracy toward a state now best characterized by authoritarianism, crony capitalism, and corruption. Most importantly, Putin has acted aggressively to restore power and land lost when the Soviet Empire imploded.

In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, on the south of Ukraine.

Moscow has sought to encourage separatist movements in several former Soviet republics. In 2014, Russia stepped up its longstanding military interference in Ukraine by annexing Crimea. And in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia has pursued aggressive policies, aimed at restoring its influence. Countries across the region have faced new kinds of threats, as Moscow works to manipulate and discredit democratic institutions.

Moscow has also sought to silence critics and boost its influence in longstanding democracies. In 2006, former intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated in the United Kingdom. Cyberattacks have been detected in Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and elsewhere. And in the United States, Russia undertook an unprecedented campaign to stoke divisions and influence the 2016 election campaign.

While the immediate threat of military conflict between Russia and the United States is low, Russia and other states pose a serious and changing threat to America and its allies. NATO is an essential first line of defense.

An alliance and a community of values

NATO’s mission remains first as a military alliance, but from the earliest days, it was also a community of values. And while at times NATO has chosen to look the other way, promoting democracy among its members has always been a consideration.

Article 10 of the NATO Charter states that by unanimous agreement, any other European state that can further the principles of the alliance and contribute to its security may be asked to join. Greece and Turkey joined the alliance in 1952, even though both countries underwent long periods of military rule. Even today, with rising concerns about democratic backsliding in countries like Hungary and Turkey, both countries remain active members of the alliance.

But NATO’s commitment to values became much more explicit as the former communist nations began jockeying for inclusion. Would-be members must demonstrate they are market economies and stable democracies based on a respect for human rights and the rule of law. Aspirants must live in peace with their neighbors, peacefully resolving disputes. And joining NATO requires civilian and democratic control over the military.

Meeting today’s challenges

Seventy years on, NATO remains a vital partnership and resource for the United States. It has contributed blood and treasure to the two most recent major conflicts – Iraq and Afghanistan. It has adapted in response to the new threats emanating from Moscow, shoring up defenses in the Baltic region, partnering with states in Russia’s crosshairs like Ukraine and Georgia, and providing important communications and coordination to defend against the ongoing cyberwarfare.

Baltic grabs escalate to full-scale nuclear war

Josh Cohen 16, Former USAID Project Officer Involved in Managing Economic Reform Projects in the former Soviet Union, Columnist at Reuters, “Commentary: The Number One Reason To Fix U.S.-Russia Relations”, Reuters, 11/10/2016, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-nuclear-commentary-idUSKBN1351SD

The danger from the erosion in nuclear arms control is exacerbated by the fact that the American and Russian militaries are no longer in regular contact. Without proper communication channels, even a small military incident in a place like the Baltic Sea or Syria could rapidly escalate into a full-scale conflict between the two sides – with the threat of a nuclear exchange lurking in the background. The possibility of accidental nuclear exchanges should not be discounted, either. Substantial numbers of American and Russian nuclear missiles remain on so-called "hair trigger alert," a security posture adopted by both sides during the Cold War to allow the launch of nuclear warheads within 15 minutes or less in order to show the other side that no advantage could be gained by a surprise first strike. The problem with a hair trigger alert policy is that it increases the risk of mistakes. Many incidents involving nuclear near-misses related to technical or human error occurred during the Cold War – and this threat still exists. In 1995 Russian radar operators interpreted the launch of a Norwegian science rocket as a possible nuclear strike on Russia from an American Trident submarine, and in response Russian President Boris Yeltsin actually activated the keys on his "nuclear briefcase.” Likewise, in 2010 an American launch control center in Wyoming lost contact with 50 Minuteman III ICBMs under its control for nearly an hour.

Deterrence---U---Yes DeterrenceRussia’s avoiding grabs because NATO’s strong

Dr. Michael E. O’Hanlon 19, Senior Fellow and Director of Research in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, Ph.D. degree in Public and International Affairs from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, and Sean Zeigler, Fellow in the Washington Semester Program at Carnegie Mellon University, “No, We Aren’t On The Brink Of A New Cold War With Russia And China”, Brookings Institution Blog, 7/13/2019, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/07/13/no-we-arent-on-the-brink-of-a-new-cold-war-with-russia-and-china/

Third, for all the debate about NATO’s lack of adequate seriousness when it comes to defense burden-sharing, the alliance remains impressive. Although only 7 countries meet the official goal of spending at least 2 percent of GDP on their armed forces, NATO collectively accounts for more than half of all world military spending. Most members have significantly increased their defense budgets since the Crimea crisis of 2014. NATO has also deployed enhanced forward presence battalions to the Baltic states and Poland. They do not constitute a robust defensive perimeter, but they at least represent a stronger tripwire than before. NATO would do well to make its reinforcement capabilities for this region more robust, but it is hard to see Mr. Putin really believing he could get away with an all-out invasion, even today. So far, he has cautiously avoided any military excursions into NATO countries.

Deterrence---U---Yes ResolveThe U.S. position is firm---we’ve stopped appeasing Russia, but they’ll pocket the plan’s concession and increase aggression

Benjamin Haddad 18, Director, Future Europe Initiative - Atlantic Council. Alina Polyakova Director, Project on Global Democracy and Emerging Technology Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe. Don’t rehabilitate Obama on Russia. 3/5/2018. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/03/05/dont-rehabilitate-obama-on-russia/

Obama’s much-ballyhooed “Reset” with Russia, launched in 2009, was in keeping with optimistic attempts by every post-Cold War American administration to improve relations with Moscow out of the gate. Seizing on the supposed change of leadership in Russia, with Dmitry Medvedev temporarily taking over the presidency from Vladimir Putin, Obama’s team quickly turned a blind eye to Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia, which in retrospect was Putin’s opening move in destabilizing the European order. Like George W. Bush before him, Obama vastly overestimated the extent to which a personal relationship with a Russian leader could affect the bilateral relationship. U.S.-Russia disagreements were not the result of misunderstandings, but rather the product of long-festering grievances. Russia saw itself as a great power that deserved equal standing with the U.S. What Obama saw as gestures of good will—such as the 2009 decision to scrap missile defense plans for Poland and the Czech Republic—Russia interpreted as a U.S. retreat from the European continent. Moscow pocketed the concessions and increasingly inserted itself in European affairs. The Kremlin was both exploiting an easy opportunity and reasserting what it thought was its historic prerogative.

Though Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 was the final nail in the coffin of the Reset, President Obama remained reluctant to view Moscow as anything more than a local spoiler, and thought the whole mess was best handled by Europeans. France and Germany spearheaded the Minsk ceasefire process in 2014-2015, with U.S. support but without Washington at the table. The Obama administration did coordinate a far-ranging sanctions policy with the European Union—an important diplomatic achievement, to be sure. But to date, the sanctions have only had a middling effect on the Russian economy as a whole (oil and gas prices have hurt much more). And given that sanctions cut both ways—potential value is destroyed on both sides when economic activity is systematically prohibited—most of the sacrifice was (and continues to be) born by European economies, which have longstanding ties to Russia. In contrast, the costs of a robust sanctions policy have been comparatively minor in the United States; Obama spent little political capital to push them through at home. The Obama administration also sought to shore up NATO’s eastern flank through the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI), which stationed rotating troops in Poland and the Baltics while increasing the budget for U.S. support. Nevertheless, the president resisted calls from Congress, foreign policy experts, and his own cabinet to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine that would have raised the costs on Russia and helped Kyiv defend itself against Russian military incursion into the Donbas. As Obama told Jeffrey Goldberg, he viewed any deterrent moves by the United States as fundamentally not credible, because Russia’s interests clearly trumped our own; it was clear to him they would go to war much more readily that the United States ever would, and thus they had escalatory dominance. Doing more simply made no sense to Obama. This timid realpolitik was mixed up with a healthy dose of disdain. Obama dismissed Russia as a “regional power” that was acting out of weakness in Ukraine. “The fact that Russia felt it had to go in militarily and lay bare these violations of international law indicates less influence, not more,” Obama said at the G7 meeting in 2014. This line has not aged well. Obama’s attitudes on Russia reflected his administration’s broadly teleological, progressive outlook on history. Russia’s territorial conquest “belonged in the 19th century.” The advance of globalization, technological innovation, and trade rendered such aggression both self-defeating and anachronistic. The biggest mistake for America would be to overreact to such petty, parochial challenges. The 2015 National Security Strategy favored “strategic patience”. But was it patience… or passivity? As its actions in 2016 proved, Russia is very much a 21st century power that understands how to avail itself of the modern tools available to it, often much better than we do ourselves. The same intellectual tendencies that shaped Obama’s timid approach to Ukraine were reflected in his administration’s restrained response as evidence of Russian electoral interference began to emerge in the summer of 2016. Starting in June, intelligence agencies began reporting that Russian-linked groups hacked into DNC servers, gained access to emails from senior Clinton campaign operatives, and were working in coordination with WikiLeaks and a front site called DCLeaks to strategically release this information throughout the campaign cycle. By August, Obama had received a highly classified file from the CIA detailing Putin’s personal involvement in covert influence operations to discredit the Clinton campaign and disrupt the U.S. presidential elections in favor of her opponent, Donald Trump. That fall through to his departure from the White House, the president and his key advisers struggled to find an appropriate response to the crime of the century. But out of all the possible options, which included a cyber offensive on Russia and ratcheted up sanctions, the policy that was adopted in the final months of Obama’s term was, characteristically, cautious. Obama approved additional narrow sanctions against Russian targets, expelled 35 Russian diplomats, and shut down two Russian government compounds. It’s true that Obama faced a difficult political environment that constrained his ability to take tougher measures. Republican opponents would have surely decried any loud protests as a form of election meddling on Hillary Clinton’s behalf. Donald Trump was already flogging the narrative that the elections were rigged against him. And anyway, Clinton seemed destined to win; she would tend to the Russians in her own time, the thinking went. But just as with the decision to not provide weapons to Ukraine, the Obama administration also fretted about provoking Russia into taking even more drastic steps, such as hacking the voting systems or a cyber attack on critical infrastructure. In the end, the administration’s worries proved to be paralyzing. “I feel like we sort of choked,” one Obama administration official told the Washington Post. Much ink has been spilled over President Trump’s effusive praise for Putin and his brutal regime. “You think our country’s so innocent?” candidate Trump famously replied to an interviewer listing the many human rights abuses of Putin’s Russia, including the harassment and murder of journalists. Obama, on the other hand, never had any ideological or psychological sympathy for Putin or Putinism. By the end of his second term, the two men were barely on speaking terms, the iciness of their encounters in full public view. For most of Obama’s two terms, however, this personal animosity did not translate into tougher policies. Has the Trump administration been tougher on Russia than Obama, as the president claims? Trump’s own boasting feels like a stretch, especially given how he seems to have gone out of his way to both disparage NATO and praise Putin during the course of his first year in office. Still, many of his administration’s good policies have been obscured by the politics of the Mueller investigation and the incessant furor kicked up by the president’s tweets. As Tom Wright has noted, the Trump administration seems to pursue two policy tracks at the same time: the narrow nationalism of the president’s inflammatory rhetoric openly clashing with the seriousness of his administration’s official policy decisions.

These tensions are real, but all too often they become the story. Glossed over is the fact that President Trump has appointed a string of competent and widely respected figures to manage Russia policy—from National S