Moving weapons around Europe fast is crucial for deterring Russia

The biggest NATO NATO NATO NATO exercise has held since the end of the cold war, Steadfast Defender 24, began on January 24th and will run to the end of May. Involving some 90,000 personnel from the armed forces of 31 allies plus Sweden, whose membership should be completed shortly, it is aimed at showing how can rapidly deploy forces from North America and from across Europe to repel an attack by a “near-peer adversary”—ie, Russia.Since last year’s summit in Vilnius, the alliance has been working both to ensure that 300,000 troops are kept in a state of high readiness and on establishing the force structures to deal with an attack wherever it may come from. As well as having many more members than during the cold war, also has a much longer border to defend. A key finding of the exercise will be what more needs to be done to enable frictionless movement of much larger forces across national boundaries in the event of a real crisis or pre-crisis.