NATO looks north as it scrambles to prepare for ‘cold war’

Bloomberg

The enemy had destroyed the bridge. Near the village of Telneset in central Norway, German and Norwegian troops arrived too late to save the strategic crossing. Stuck on the banks of the Glomma river, military engineers worked to assemble a mobile ferry instead. If truly at war, they may have moved more quickly. But as it was, the atmosphere on the morning of October 31 seemed relaxed for soldiers supposedly beating back an invasion.
“Trident Juncture,” a major NATO military exercise centred on Norway, imagined an attack in which the western alliance was forced to respond with thousands of troops, ships, armor and airpower—fighting to stop an unnamed adversary intent on occupation or even annexation.
All over central Norway, fighter jets and helicopters roared overhead as combat vehicles trundled by picture-perfect fjords. Thousands of troops from Europe and the US trudged through snow and rain or squeezed into armored carriers bristling with electronic equipment, a grim rehearsal for a future war one expert says would be equal parts sci-fi and trench warfare—assuming nuclear weapons weren’t used.
Although NATO officials used every opportunity to say the war games weren’t aimed at any one country in particular, the potential invader was clear.
“If we discount the martians, there is no one else who can attack Norway apart from Russia,” says Aleksandr Golts, a Russian military analyst who observed the NATO exercise, which ended earlier this month. “The scenario and the sheer number of troops involved in both this and similar Russian exercises show that we are back to the Cold War-time military confrontation.”
With 50,000 soldiers from 31 countries using 10,000 military vehicles, 250 aircraft and 65 ships, the exercise was likely smaller than recent drills held by Russia, including one in September that included Chinese forces.
Since Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine and annexed Crimea, the prospect of war has become more real, says Professor Katarzyna Zysk, director of research at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS). “Before, it was completely unthinkable,” Zysk says. But the continuing conflict in eastern Ukraine, Putin’s support of the Assad regime in Syria, threats faced by NATO members in the Baltics and his broader nuclear saber-rattling are making the unthinkable slightly more plausible.
“Trident Juncture is a purely defensive exercise,” says Audun Halvorsen, the state secretary at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But he adds that the security environment in Europe has become unpredictable.
“We have a Russia that is more assertive and aggressive—including militarily—toward its neighbors,” Halvorsen says. “That necessitated a long-term adaptation and reform
of NATO.”
Hermann Schwab, 20, is a private in the German army. At the ferry crossing near Telneset, he stood by, shouldering a grenade launcher. Though German, he was born in Kemerovo, a city in western Siberia. His ethnic German parents eventually moved with him back
to Bavaria.