By Jim Geraghty
Monday, February 17, 2025
Kraków, Poland — The big theme of last week’s
Munich Security Conference was about how the attending representatives of the
Trump administration — Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete
Hegseth — allegedly tore apart the longstanding U.S.-European relationship. Politico
called Vance “a wrecking ball.” NPR said Vance “scorched” European
allies, “lecturing them about democracy.” Axios’s Mike Allen subtly and calmly reported,
“Trump stunned, strangled, and humiliated Europe.”
But the Trump administration has a pretty simple message
to most European NATO members. Why can’t you guys be more like Poland?
Here in Kraków, the Poles are savoring Hegseth
calling them “a model NATO ally—leading on defense
spending, deterrence, and readiness. This is what leadership looks like.”
Late last week, Hegseth met with Polish Deputy Prime
Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz and President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw.
“It’s quite intentional that our first European bilateral
is right here in Poland,” Hegseth said during a joint appearance with Kosiniak-Kamysz. “We see
Poland as the model ally on the continent, willing to invest not just in their
defense, but in our shared defense and the defense of the continent. . . .
Words are cheap, but in deed and in actions. Poland leads by example, on a lot
of things, including defense spending, building up Polish military readiness.”
As of last year, the NATO member country with the largest expenditure as a share of
GDP was Poland at 4.12 percent — comfortably ahead of
Estonia at 3.43 percent and the U.S. at 3.38 percent. (The lowest was Spain at
1.28 percent.) The Polish Armed Forces “now comprise
198,000 soldiers, including 130,000 professional soldiers,” which makes it the
third-largest land force in NATO and the largest in the European Union.
Additionally, Poland hosts approximately 16,000 troops from Allied nations,
roughly half of them from the United States.
The Polish Armed Forces are also ´getting a lot more advanced, and quickly; in 2024, new
contracts included “JASSM-ER air-launched cruise missiles, AH-64 Apache attack
helicopters, multi-role and support helicopters, F-16 aircraft modernization,
additional K2 tanks with ammunition, Pilica air defense systems, unmanned
reconnaissance and strike systems, satellite terminals, light reconnaissance
transporters under the Kleszcz program, and light radios.”
And Hegseth says that for those U.S. troops stationed in
this country, Poland is a model host and partner:
We ran
the streets of Warsaw this morning in the snow. I’m
from Minnesota, so I was used to it. It was about 25 to 30 US Soldiers and
Marines, had a chance to talk to them while we ran and did push-ups. And I
asked them about their experience here in Poland and some worked directly with
troops, others worked in military sales.
Some work in POW and MIA remains
recovery still. Each one of them had nothing but gushing compliments for the
Polish people, for the Polish military, for the amount of support that they
receive, for the true partnership, for the eagerness with which Polish troops
work alongside American troops.
Before Hegseth arrived in Poland, he attended a meeting
of NATO defense ministers in Brussels, Belgium. His message was blunt but accurate:
We can talk all we want about
values. Values are important. But you can’t shoot values. You can’t shoot flags
and you can’t shoot strong speeches. There is no replacement for hard power. As
much as we may not want to like the world we live in, in some cases, there’s
nothing like hard power. It should be obvious that increasing allied European
defense spending is critical as the president of the United States has said.
You can make the argument that Russia is already at war
with NATO, just not via military force.
In one of those stories that really ought to have gotten
a lot more attention and discussion in the United States, last month, NATO
Deputy Assistant Secretary General James Appathurai confirmed that Russia had plotted to kill
Armin Papperger, the head of German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall.
“We have seen incidents of sabotage taking place across
NATO countries over a period of the last couple of years, by which I mean
derailment of trains, acts of arson, attacks on politicians’ property, plots to
assassinate industry leaders, like publicly the head of Rheinmetall, but there
were other plots as well,” Appathurai said.
Last December, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte spoke
with remarkable candor about how Russia’s spy networks, hackers, and saboteurs
were targeting NATO members and executing attacks.
“I’ll be honest: the security situation does not look
good. It’s undoubtedly the worst in my lifetime,” Rutte warned. “And I suspect
in yours too.”
Russia is preparing for long-term
confrontation — with Ukraine, and with us.
Hostile actions against Allied
countries are real and accelerating. Malicious cyber-attacks on both sides of
the Atlantic. Assassination attempts on British and German soil. Explosions at
an ammunition warehouse in Czechia.
The weaponization of migrants
crossing illegally into Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland. Jamming to
disrupt civil aviation in the Baltic region.
These attacks are not just
isolated incidents. They are the result of a coordinated campaign to
destabilize our societies and discourage us from supporting Ukraine. They
circumvent our deterrence and bring the front line to our front doors. Even
into our homes.
Putin believes that ‘a serious,
irreconcilable struggle is unfolding for the formation of a new world order.’
These are his own words. Others share his belief. Not least China.
That’s sounding the alarm about as loudly and clearly as
any NATO head can.
Just this past weekend, the Wall Street Journal published an exposé about a new Russian unit known as the Department of Special
Tasks, or its initials in Russian, “SSD.”
Western intelligence officials
said [Maj. Yuri] Sizov, who is an officer in Senezh, now part of the SSD,
coordinated another operation days later to set a mall in the Polish capital of
Warsaw ablaze. He has since been sanctioned by the E.U. for his role in the
plots.
Then, in July, similar incendiary
devices that were sent via DHL ignited in transit hubs in Leipzig, Germany, and
Birmingham, England. If one of the devices had ignited while on a flight, it
could have taken down the plane, the former head of Germany’s internal
intelligence agency, Thomas Haldenwang, told lawmakers in October. That didn’t
happen only because a connecting flight was late, and the device went off while
at the airport, he said.
Security officials said the
incendiary devices that ignited in July appeared to be part of a test run for putting similar devices on
planes bound for North America. Warnings were quietly sent in August to major
shipping companies, airlines and airports, and some of them enhanced security
screenings, according to officials and industry representatives familiar with
the procedures.
There are some signs that other high-level European
officials get it; European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at the Munich Security Conference Friday
that she wanted to trigger an emergency clause that would allow member
governments greater leeway so that military expenditure would not be counted in
their tightly controlled budget deficit limits. Under European Union rules, member state governments must keep
national budget deficits at less than 3 percent of the size of the economy and
public debt at no more than 60 percent.
(For perspective, the U.S. deficit as a share of GDP in
2024 was
6.28 percent.)
One last point about Hegseth’s visit to European allies.
In a media availability in Stuttgart, Germany, Hegseth was asked, “Would you be
open to sending U.S. troops into Ukraine to track weapons shipments?” and he
answered bluntly, “We are not sending U.S. troops to Ukraine.”
In his appearance in Warsaw, Hegseth backtracked a bit,
leaving a little wiggle room: “The reality of U.S. troops in Ukraine is
unlikely.”
Some people seemed to assume that if the U.S. is not
participating in a post-war peacekeeping force on Ukrainian soil, then that
force isn’t going to come to fruition. It’s still early, but plans for a European-only post-war peacekeeping force are
starting to take shape:
A group of European countries has
been quietly working on a plan to send troops into Ukraine to help enforce any
future peace settlement with Russia.
Britain and France are at the
forefront of the effort, though details remain scarce. The countries involved
in the discussions are reluctant to tip their hand and give Russian President
Vladimir Putin an edge should he agree to negotiate an end
to the war he launched three years ago.
In December, after Trump was
elected but before he took office, a group of leaders and ministers huddled
with Zelenskyy at NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s residence in Brussels.
They came from Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and
Poland. Top European Union officials attended too.
“We are in a very early stage,”
Hanno Pevklur, Estonia’s defense minister told The Associated Press on the
sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
It’s an early stage, but it feels like the pace of events
is quickening considerably. Sunday, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced in an op-ed in the Daily Telegraph that he’s willing to deploy U.K.
forces in Ukraine once a cease-fire is declared.
The UK is ready to play a leading
role in accelerating work on security guarantees for Ukraine. This includes
further support for Ukraine’s military, where the UK has already committed £3
billion a year until at least 2030. But it also means being ready and willing
to contribute to security guarantees to Ukraine by putting our own troops on the ground if
necessary.
I do not say that lightly. I feel
very deeply the responsibility that comes with potentially putting British
servicemen and women in harm’s way. But any role in helping to guarantee Ukraine’s security is helping to
guarantee the security of our continent, and the security of this country. The
end of this war, when it comes, cannot merely become a temporary pause before Putin attacks again.
Today (Monday), the French government is hosting an
emergency meeting, joined by the U.K., Germany, Britain, Italy, Poland, Spain,
the Netherlands, and Denmark, as well as the NATO secretary general and the
presidents of the European Council and the European Commission.
Starmer wrote, “I am heading to Paris with a very clear
message for our European friends. We have got to show we are truly serious
about our own defense and bearing our own burden. We have talked about it for
too long — and President Trump is right to demand that we get on with it.”
ADDENDUM: A revealing exchange between new Arizona Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego and Lulu
Garcia-Navarro of the New York Times.
Garcia-Navarro: Should
migrants be sent to Guantánamo or to prisons in El Salvador?
Senator Gallego: Not
migrants that have their due process, and especially not ones that aren’t
dangerous, but certainly ones that are severely dangerous, like people that
have committed crimes, but we can’t legally hold them here. I think there’s
something to be said about that.
Garcia-Navarro: I’m
surprised.
Senator Gallego: For gang
members? Criminals? Why would we want to keep gang members and criminals that
don’t even have a legal right to be here, and Venezuela won’t take them back? .
. . If there is a hard-core criminal that has gone through our judicial system,
but we can’t actually deport, what are we going to do? I’m not saying we do
this for everybody, but there has to be some logical security that we should be
thinking about, because they’re going to end up being criminals again,
especially in these very, very vulnerable communities.
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