Obama Announces $1 Billion Plan To Flex Military Muscle in Europe

President Barack Obama today announced in Poland
a billion-dollar plan to boost NATO’s presence in Eastern European
member states in response to a perceived threat from Russia.

The White House
highlights its intentions for the “European Reassurance
Initiative”:

• Increase exercises, training, and rotational presence across
  Europe but especially on the territory of our newer allies.
   Many of the U.S. air and ground forces participating in these
  activities would rotate from the United States.
• As we have done in Poland, deploy detachments of U.S. planners
  to augment the capability of our allies to design and host a broad
  range of training and exercise opportunities.
• Increase the responsiveness of U.S. forces to reinforce NATO by
  exploring initiatives such as the prepositioning of equipment and
  improvements to other reception facilities and infrastructure in
  Europe.
• Increase participation by the U.S. Navy in NATO naval force
  deployments, including more persistent deployments to the Black and
  Baltic seas.
• Build the partner capacity of close friends such as Georgia,
  Moldova, and Ukraine so they can better work alongside the United
  States and NATO, as well as provide for their own defense.

The proposal will go before Congress for consideration.

The U.S. is already the
largest supplier of both military personnel and funding for
NATO and already has 67,000 troops in Europe. The Obama
administration already sent 600 troops to Poland and the Baltic
states earlier this year to conduct exercises with allies and
deployed warships in the Baltic and Black seas after Russia invaded
and annexed Crimea from Ukraine. 

NATO itself is hosting a two-day meeting in Brussels to discuss
“an action readiness plan, a stepped-up schedule for military
exercises and the possibility of additional deployments,”
according to the Associated Press. 

Does Russia pose really pose a threat to NATO to justify Obama’s
latest military muscle-flexing? Although Russia’s “unorthodox
tactics” are threatening to tear apart Ukraine (not a NATO
member) and could potentially trigger unpredictable instability
elsewhere, Vladimir Putin likely could not afford to tread further
west into NATO territory. His nation’s economy is in the tank and
it’s
not getting any better since taking on the burden of an
even-poorer Crimea.