Former Marine/former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, in an op-ed published in RT yesterday, argues that while the “message” of US Army-led Defender Europe 21 exercise is “deterrence,” in reality, “it is just another demonstration of military impotence.”
“While one should not predict failure before it occurs, the reality is [that] Steadfast Defender,” a training event focused on trans-Atlantic reinforcement of NATO that is a component of Defender Europe, “will be fighting an uphill battle just to get forces to the designated training areas and sustain the planned operations,” Ritter writes. The exercise, Ritter reports, is designed to operate on a “crawl-walk-run basis, where the participants learn their respective roles, and then gradually perfect them over time,” but because of the “neophyte nature” of the NATO members involved in the western Balkans, “the participants will be lucky to get out of the ‘crawl’ phase unscathed.”
“If Steadfast Defender were an actual deployment of NATO rapid-response forces in time of crisis, the result would be the total loss of combat effectiveness before there was any engagement with the enemy – the simple act of trying to project military force into the western Balkans under duress would overwhelm NATO,” Ritter maintains.
