US troops head to Europe

The US will deploy thousands more troops to Europe to bolster NATO’s eastern flank, as Joe Biden vowed to strengthen the alliance “in all directions across every domain – land, air and sea.”

Speaking at the NATO summit in Madrid, the President said two more squadrons of F-35 fighter jets will be deployed to the UK, two US battleships will be sent to Spain, and Germany and Italy will receive new air defence systems.

Biden also announced the creation of the first permanent US base in Poland – for the US Fifth Army Corps – while a rotational brigade of troops will be stationed in Romania.

The pledges of troops and hardware came as Sweden and Finland were formally invited to join NATO by Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary-general. Their addition will more than double NATO’s border with Russia and shore-up its presence in the Baltics, often seen as the alliance’s Achilles’ heel. It’s a direct blow to Russia’s stated ambition of rolling back NATO’s frontiers.

The invitation followed Turkey lifting its veto on the Scandinavian nations’ bid to join, ending a weeks-long stand-off.

It took four hours of talks on Tuesday for the three countries hash out a deal. In the “trilateral memorandum”, Helsinki and Stockholm agreed to “prevent activities of the PKK”, a Kurdish militant group which Turkey deems a terrorist organisation, and to take “concrete steps on the extradition of terrorist criminals”. The two countries also agreed “not to impose embargo restrictions in the field of defence industry” on Turkey.

Ankara hailed the concessions as a triumph and Erdogan’s office said that Turkey had “got what it wanted”.

While the compromise resolved one of NATO’s big stumbling blocks, the fact Erdogan’s gambit paid off may be problematic in the longer term.

Turkey is a valued NATO ally. It boasts the second-biggest military in the alliance despite not spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence, and its control of the Bosphorus is a crucial strategic asset.  

Yet the stand-off over Sweden and Finland’s membership has reinforced the idea that it pays for Ankara to be a disruptive force. NATO founders didn’t introduce a mechanism to remove members, and Turkey is making the most of it.

But even if Turkey remains a thorn in NATO’s side, the big commitments from Biden and the ramping up of NATO’s high-alert force to 300,000 troops, means lofty rhetoric is being matched by concrete action.

An alliance that Emmanuel Macron declared “brain-dead” just a few years ago seems to have found a renewed sense of purpose.