President Joe Biden is seemingly anxious to signal to his Nato allies that the United States has no plans of sending troops to Ukraine even as President Vladimir Putin has been threatening an invasion. It thus comes about that 3,000 additional American troops will be sent to eastern Europe, notably Poland and Romania, not to forget the 1,000 troops already stationed in Germany.
The American President has made it clear that Nato allies will be protected from any Russian aggression. “It is important that we send a strong signal to Putin and the world that Nato matters,” is the message of the Pentagon. “We are making it clear that we are going to be prepared to defend our Nato allies if it comes to that.” President Biden’s decision comes days after the Pentagon stated that his Russian counterpart had deployed the troops and military hardware to conduct an invasion of Ukraine.
Senior defence officials said that the “tense standoff” was leading the United States, its Nato allies and Russia into what the Pentagon calls “uncharted territory”. The number of Russian troops on Ukraine’s borders has crossed 100,000; indeed, the Pentagon has for the first time confirmed what intelligence analysts have described for the past several weeks.
Close to 2,000 of the American troops will be proceeding towards Poland. While many of those troops are said to be paratroopers, the Pentagon has virtually ruled out the deployment of the “airborne troops” in a “tactical operation” and thus provoke Russia even more. The troops being deployed in Romania will complement the French troops deployed there.
The administration has not ruled out sending additional troops to Europe. It still has 8,500 American troops on “high alert” for possible deployment to a Nato rapid response force. As regards Ukraine, there will be no change in the relatively small number of American troops there. More than 150 US military advisers are currently in Ukraine.
The present group includes Special Operations forces, mainly Army Green Berets, as well as National Guard trainers from Florida’s 53rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team. “It’s a big, unambiguous signal,” was the response to the build-up by Jim Townsend, a former top Pentagon official. At this uncertain juncture, Russia is threatening Ukraine, and neither Poland nor Romania. But both countries share borders with Ukraine and members of Nato, to which Mr Putin has been explicit in his opposition. And no less vehemently to the post-Cold War cartographical change of the map of Europe, which posits the former Soviet republics and the satellite countries in the West’s foremost military alliance at his doorstep, so to speak.
More basically, the White House initiative to send US troops to Poland and Romania is intended to neutralize the Russian military presence on the border with Ukraine. The saga of messaging thus continues, even as diplomats struggle to find a way out of the impasse.