BY ROBERT BATEMAN
Operation Atlantic Resolve started in 2015, billed as an "ongoing response" to Russian aggression in Ukraine. Designed to reassure our NATO allies, particularly those closest to the Russian bear, the exercise occurs in cycles. In each, different U.S. Army units deploy from their home stations in the United States for months at a time, first into Germany and then eastward, making visits and conducting joint training operations with some of the eastern member-states of NATO. In particular, much of their time is spent in Poland and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
In the past couple of days, the latest iteration rolled off the transport ships in the German port of Bremerhaven, onto cargo trains, and then linked up with American combat troops who flew in via strategic airlift from their base in the US. In total, about 4,000 Army personnel are involved in this iteration—a single mechanized brigade of U.S. soldiers. In this case, it is the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division who are doing the moving and shaking. I do not doubt that these soldiers, one and all, will do a helluva job. But to these older eyes, this whole operation leaves a little bit to be desired. You see, it seems difficult to reconcile this version of deterrence with what we used to do.
The very first "REFORGER" exercise was in 1969. REFORGER stood for "REturn of FORces to GERmany." On the surface, it was couched in much the same terms as the current Atlantic Resolve—in other words, as a reassurance that the U.S. would not abandon its NATO allies. In 1969, of course, we were hip deep in Vietnam, and the Johnson Administration, feeling the manpower and budgetary strain, had just announced the withdrawal of two entire Army divisions from Europe. But there was also an internal thing going on in the Army, as the Vietnam War was nearly as unpopular among professional military members as it was among the general population, albeit for vastly different reasons. Even so, that very first REFORGER saw a full division shipped from the U.S. to Germany for a large joint exercise.
(As a reminder, a brigade is about 4,000. 2-4 brigades = 1 division, which is about 17-22K soldiers when you add in the HQs and the extras. 2-4 divisions = 1 corps, or anywhere from 50-120K troops. Save this for future reference.)
Over time, both as Vietnam wound down and the Cold War refocused again in Europe, REFORGER got bigger and bigger. Later, the Air Force joined in as well, while the Navy fully embraced the exercise at sea by practicing defense of the sea-borne deployment of Army gear against hypothetical Russian attempts to block the same. I was in my first years of wearing a uniform when these annual deployments reached their peak in 1987.
REFORGER '87 did not involve 4,000 troops, as Atlantic Resolve does this year. It involved more than 30 times that number. We shipped over some 125,000 soldiers and Marines to practice coalition warfare in massive, swirling, largely free-play simulated combat beside around 200,000 servicemen from other NATO nations. Overall, there was a grand total of well over a quarter million men (it was almost exclusively men, then) tromping across the countryside, sending a message to the East. And that does not even count the Air Force and Navy elements, which probably totaled another 100,000 servicemen in support of the whole endeavor.
It was an annual, massive, and decades-long middle-finger pointed at the Russians, on a scale that even they acknowledged.
Times, they change. Once, right or wrong, we sent messages to Russia with hundreds of thousands. There is a debunked quote often attributed to Stalin or Lenin, among others, which states, "Quantity has a quality all its own." The quote is fiction, but the concept is not. I prefer shows of force over the use of force.
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