Vladimir Putin’s new Cold War: Spooked NATO on the offensive

Sabre rattling on NATO’s eastern flank prompts a build-up of troops in the east.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

On a vast stretch of rolling meadow scattered with trees in northern Poland, a combined team of US Apache attack helicopters and Soviet-era Hind gunships is blasting a “Red” army force trapped in a valley below.

No one on the “Blue” army side, or among the watching politicians and NATO officials, will acknow­ledge that the “Red” force that has been cut off after invading from the north represents the Russians — but that’s clearly who it is.

Russia isn’t “red” any more but a succession of events in Europe has breathed new life into a Cold War most of the world thought was long dead.

Inquirer is in Poland to watch as 31,000 troops, most of them from NATO nations, take part in Exercise Anakonda 16, which is clearly designed to demonstrate to Moscow that the US and western and central European nations are willing to come to the aid of one-time Russian satellite nations monstered by the Kremlin.

With them are forces from non-NATO nations Sweden and Finland.

The exercise is driven by rising fears of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its willingness to use force to threaten, weaken and ultimately invade weaker nations on its borders. This includes regular reminders from Moscow that it has a nuclear arsenal.

For Europe, facing tensions in the centre and east of the continent, unity has never been more crucial. Britain’s vote on EU membership inevitably will be seen through this prism, although its membership of NATO will be unaffected.

Three of Australia’s most respected global affairs specialists tell Inquirer Australians need to take much more notice of what’s happening in eastern Europe.

Until December last year Kim Beazley was ambassador to the US; Peter Jennings heads the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank; and Michael Wesley, who heads the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University, has just returned from a study trip to the Russian Federation.

Beazley is concerned that if the Americans are obliged to deal with an increasing threat of conflict in Europe, they could be distracted from their pivot to the Asia-­Pacific, which is crucial to Australia’s security.

Jennings says Russia’s military posturing is dangerous because it runs the risk of miscalculation and accident. And Wesley has returned from Russia convinced that the country under Putin is, in many ways, the advance guard of how power and coercion will work in the new world order.

A NATO summit in Warsaw on July 8 and 9 is expected to approve the deployment of four battalions of alliance troops to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and ­Estonia, the nations on the ­alliance’s vulnerable eastern flank.

The four are former members of the Warsaw Pact who joined NATO after the collapse of the ­Soviet Union.

Putin’s bullyboy tactics, his threats and his unpredictability have these former allies, and the rest of Europe, badly spooked. Russia says it is merely reacting to NATO’s expansion eastwards and the installation of missile defence systems across nations that once were part of the Soviet bloc.

Many in Europe say they have no choice but to help small and isolated states over which Russia clearly wants to continue to exercise a strong measure of influence. Having a protective “moat” of acquiescent nations has long provided Russia with a measure of comfort. The previous NATO conference took place in Wales in 2014, when Russia’s neighbours were appalled by its forced annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, which had been part of Ukraine. With that success, Russia infiltrated thousands of its well-trained regular troops, the so-called “Green Men”, into the Donbass region of Ukraine. The war there has now reached a stalemate.

Australia has already shared Ukraine’s pain. There is little doubt Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down in July 2014 by a Russian-designed Buk-11 missile fired from Ukrainian territory by a Russian crew or by separatists trained by Russia.

All 283 passengers and 15 crew aboard the Boeing 777 were killed, including 39 Australians or Australian residents.

It is likely the operators of the mobile missile-launcher made a terrible mistake when they fired the missile at what they believed was a Ukrainian Antonov military transport aircraft. And that miscalculation was almost certainly a consequence of a decision made at a high level in the Russian government to provide a potent anti-aircraft capability to the rebels it was backing in eastern Ukraine.

The rebels already had used missiles believed to have been captured from Ukrainian bases to destroy Ukrainian strike aircraft attacking the separatist positions and transport planes flying in ­reinforcements and supplies to the defenders.

Defence specialist Paul Dibb says that while the Soviet-era missile is not the most modern in the Russian arsenal, it is sophisticated and relatively complicated to operate.

“Let’s not kid ourselves that this complex bit of equipment could be operated by a coalminer or a sunflower farmer out of Donetsk,” Dibb says.

The Russian-made mobile launcher had to be placed appropriately, the radar switched on, the fast-moving target located, tracked and “illuminated”, and the radar locked on to it. Then the missile had to be fired.

As with everything else bad that happens in the region, Russia not only denied any involvement but it has created a thin counter-narrative as part of the information war that is a key part of its strategy. Moscow claims a Ukrainian fighter pilot shot down MH17 believing it was a Russian aircraft carrying Putin.

But the evidence found by the crash investigators indicates the missile that destroyed the airliner had a proximity fuse that set off the explosion just ahead of the air­liner, tearing its cockpit apart. An air-to-air missile fired by a jet fighter would most likely have hit one of the aircraft’s engines.

After MH17 was shot down, pictures emerged of a mobile missile-launcher crossing back into Russia with one of its four missiles missing.

Russia’s use of language is as quaint and chilling as its approach to nuclear weapons. It has been suggested that as part of a “de-escalation strategy” in the event of a conflict such as the one outlined over former Soviet Union satellite states, Russian military chiefs could order the use of a tactical ­nuclear weapon — a relatively small and low-yield device that could be fired by artillery or launched on a missile.

The intention would be to leave NATO nations with the option of using a similar bomb and embarking on a nuclear war or pulling back their forces to avoid their possible annihilation.

Those few NATO countries that have nuclear weapons would be reluctant to use them.

A senior Polish official tells ­Inquirer he doubts Russia would go through with such a threat. But leaving such a possibility dangling is designed to create fear and uncertainty among Allied ­nations and weaken their resolve to act.

The willingness to create that fear is a dangerous weapon in ­itself, the official says. Indeed, elsewhere in the Anakonda exercise area, special forces clear buildings of “invading troops” and special units clean up after the supposed detonation of a “dirty” bomb — a mass of radioactive material wrapped around conventional explosive designed to scatter low to mid-level radiation over a large area.

In a museum dedicated to those who fought, and mostly died, in the 1944 Warsaw uprising against ­Poland’s Nazi occupiers, a guide describes how the nation hoped in vain for help to arrive from France and Britain after the German invasion, which started World War II in September 1939.

The Poles are aware that they fought alone then, and they don’t want to do it again. At the 2014 Cardiff conference, the NATO ­nations worked on plans to get a powerful reaction force across regional borders and into action quickly on the alliance’s eastern flank in the event of direct Russian intervention in one of the Baltic states.

At this stage, there appears to be abundant resolve in Europe to stand up to the Russians.

Poland’s Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz tells Inquirer the threat from Russia worries him less now that his nation is assured of support from other NATO countries, and from the US. “We are prepared for the worst,” Macierewicz says. “But this worst thing will not happen because the American presence here in Poland will serve as a deterrent.”

NATO troops to be based in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and ­Estonia will be there to deter ­attack and to fight if those countries are invaded, Macierewicz tells Inquirer.

“These will be fighting forces which are able to engage in battle if necessary to delay the progress of the enemy and wait for the main forces of NATO to come,” he says.

And if a neighbour such as Ukraine is threatened by Russia, then Poland will keep its promise to help restore its territorial integrity, Macierewicz says.

NATO will act only in defence of its member nations and will never be the aggressor, he says.

But the Defence Minister believes Poland and its neighbours face in Russia a nation that could use nuclear weapons.

“Unfortun­ately, in the war doctrine of the Russian Federation the use of nuclear weapons is taken into consideration, so we also have to take it into consideration,” Macierewicz says. “NATO should be prepared for that should such a situation happen.”

Poland plans to increase the size of its own army significantly. Macierewicz says NATO forces could help defend the area known as the Suwalki Gap along ­Poland’s border with Lithuania. This is the 100km-long strip of land between the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and close Russian ally Belarus.

Some Polish commentators say there is concern among Polish and alliance planners that if NATO forces were to advance into Lithuania through that gap to help one of the Baltic nations, Russia could set off a nuclear blast just inside its own territory of Kaliningrad to stop or discourage the Allied advance.

Mariusz Kordowski of the National Centre for Strategic Studies in Warsaw tells Inquirer Moscow could then apologise and claim the explosion was an accident and stress that it occurred on its own terrain and “sorry about that”.

Russia could resort to a nuclear weapon if it is losing a conventional conflict, Kordowski says, and the NATO nations are unlikely to retaliate with a nuclear strike.

Marek Magierowski, chief spokesman for Polish President Andrzej Duda, says the stronger European nations have “forgotten how to wage war” and the future of NATO and united European defence is at stake if they do not stand up to Russia.

Magierowski says he cannot recall NATO asking itself if Russia would be stupid enough to use a nuclear weapon in a conflict.

“But now we should ask ourselves this question. Are we prepared for that scenario? And is NATO prepared to retaliate for such an attack?

“In Poland, we are aware, and we are determined to persuade other partners, that if there is an attack on Latvia, Estonia or Lithuania or Poland, god forbid, and if there is no response or if there is a response which can be perceived as very weak, if there is only some sabre-rattling, NATO is over, there is no NATO any more.

“I think the Germans, the French, the British, the Italians, the Spanish have to understand this,” Magierowski adds.

“It’s very easy to tell your voters that ‘OK, we are in NATO but we are not going to send our troops to Lithuania because it’s too risky and we don’t want to aggravate our relations with Russia so maybe it’s more comfortable for us to leave the Lithuanians alone and to lose Lithuania, to lose Latvia, to Russia.’

“But they’ve got to realise that if we lose Latvia we lose NATO as well as an organisation, as the best tool to defend Europe from any threat. If we lose Latvia, NATO ceases to exist in the very same moment.”

Those Polish concerns may well be valid.

Within hours of Exercise Anakonda ending, Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned in a media interview that such exercises could worsen tensions with Russia.

“What we shouldn’t do now is to inflame the situation by loud sabre-rattling and shrill war cries,” Steinmeier said.

“Whoever believes that symbolic tank parades on the alliance’s eastern border will bring more security is mistaken.

“We are well-advised not to create pretexts to renew an old confrontation.”

Much, as always, depends on the Americans.

Chris Waters, commander of the US Army’s 12th Combat Aviation Brigade, says his men are in Poland to help ensure peace.

“The best way to ensure it never turns into a crisis is if we constantly practise like this and we show that we’re ready,” Waters says.

The plan is to have four NATO battalions into the region — one each in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

“That was a NATO decision,” Waters says. “Twenty-eight ­nations agreed that we needed to transition from assurance to deterrence.”

To achieve what it wants in eastern Europe, Moscow has engaged in a multifaceted strategy some in the West have tagged “hybrid warfare”.

That works best in a country on Russia’s borders where there is already some political instability or ethnic tension.

Russia builds up opposition to the status quo, ideally by working with an ethnic Russian minority, triggering demonstrations and targeting people such as journalists who raise the alarm to put them out of work by damaging their reputations and swamping their email systems to shut them down.

When the situation is destabilised, regular Russian troops can be sent in to train and stiffen violent opposition groups and destabilise, disorientate and weaken the country. The next step is to make the opponent look like the aggressor so there’s an excuse to send in forces who look as if they are defending legitimate interests.

But a comprehensive analysis produced for London’s Chatham House says this “hybrid warfare” is not new or substantially different from past Russian and Soviet doctrine. It is just the Russian way of achieving its policy objectives and waging war using a range of weapons, some of them non-military.

The report says there has been a very great improvement in the capabilities of Russia’s forces and in their morale and equipment.

Australia is not a member of NATO but after fighting alongside the alliance for long years in ­Afghanistan it is classified, with others, as a partner nation, which gives it some say in decision-making.

Macierewicz says he understands that Australia needs to focus on problems in its own region. “This is also a contribution to NATO’s security.”

He says Poland values Australia as a NATO partner. “We know you have a lot of military experience and we would like to tap into this experience.”

Australia has a key role to play helping to protect commerce and shipping lanes, which are also crucial to Europe, he says. “Your relationship with China is very interesting. Which country other than Australia has the most experience dealing with China?”

Asked at a media conference after the exercise if Russia is still a threat to Poland, the minister says: “Yes it is.”

Brendan Nicholson travelled to Europe as a guest of the Polish government.