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Obama to Discuss New NATO Forces in Eastern Europe U.S. and NATO May Deploy Additional Forces in Eastern Europe
(about 3 hours later)
BRUSSELS — President Obama and the leadership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Wednesday plan to discuss the deployment of additional military forces to Eastern Europe to guard against Russian aggression as the United States and Europe continue to pressure Moscow to back down in its confrontation with Ukraine, officials said. BRUSSELS — President Obama offered a sustained and forceful rejoinder against Russia on Wednesday, denouncing the “brute force” it has used to intimidate neighbors like Ukraine and vowing that the United States “will never waver” in standing up for its NATO allies against aggression by Moscow.
As he continued his travels in Europe, Mr. Obama planned to sit down with Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary general of NATO, to discuss ways of reassuring Poland and the Baltic states, fellow alliance members that remain acutely nervous about Russia’s actions in the region. The United States has already sent additional planes to patrol the Baltic region and an aviation detachment to Poland. In a speech meant as a capstone to his spring trip to Europe in the midst of an East-West confrontation with Russia, Mr. Obama addressed Moscow’s justifications for its intervention in Ukraine point by point, dismissing them as “absurd” or unmerited. He even defended the Iraq war, which he opposed, as a stark contrast to the way Russia has seized the Crimean Peninsula away from Ukraine.
Mr. Obama vowed on Wednesday to live up to NATO obligations to defend alliance members. “We have to make sure that we have put together very real contingency plans for every one of these members, including those who came in out of Central and Eastern Europe,” he said at a news conference. “And over the last several years we have worked up a number of these contingency plans.” He said alliance ministers next month would discuss doing more to ensure a “regular NATO presence among some of these states that feel vulnerable.” “America and the world and Europe has an interest in a strong and responsible Russia, not a weak one,” Mr. Obama told an audience of leading figures here in the capital of the European Union. “But that does not mean that Russia can run roughshod over its neighbors. Just because Russia has a deep history with Ukraine does not mean that it should be able to dictate Ukraine’s future. No amount of propaganda can make right something the world knows is wrong.”
Officials would not say before the meeting what kind of additional support might be provided to Eastern European countries. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said during a trip to Poland and Lithuania last week that the alliance might consider rotating ground and naval units through the region for training exercises. Mr. Obama rejected as false Moscow’s claim that Russian speakers were systematically imperiled in Ukraine and he rebutted the argument that Russia did nothing more in Crimea than the West did in Kosovo. He also disclaimed any self-interested motivations in supporting a new pro-Western government in Ukraine that toppled a Moscow ally last month.
The United States has already sent an extra six F-15C Eagles and 60 airmen to Lithuania and 12 F-16 fighter jets and 300 service members to Poland in recent weeks. “We’re looking at doing more things like that,” said a senior American official. “Make no mistake: Neither the United States nor Europe has any interest in controlling Ukraine,” he said. “We have sent no troops there. What we want for the Ukrainian people is to make their own decision, just like other free people around the world.”
Mr. Obama’s news conference came after meetings with European Union leaders and before the president was to deliver a speech here intended to explain and honor Europe’s role in the global democratic movement and demonstrate how Russia’s use of military force in Ukraine threatens to undermine the rules that free nations have fought to establish. Perhaps most poignantly, Mr. Obama took on and dismissed the Russian claim that the United States is being hypocritical because of its invasion of Iraq. He reminded the audience that he opposed the war. “But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system,” he said. “We didn’t claim or annex Iraq’s territory. We did not seize Iraq’s resources for our own.”
The speech came as Mr. Obama moved to deploy additional military forces to Eastern Europe to guard against Russian aggression. The president met with Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary general of NATO, to discuss ways of reassuring Poland and the Baltic states, fellow alliance members that remain acutely nervous about Russia’s actions in the region. The United States has already sent additional planes to patrol the Baltic region and an aviation detachment to Poland.
Mr. Obama vowed to live up to NATO obligations to defend alliance members. “We have to make sure that we have put together very real contingency plans for every one of these members, including those who came in out of Central and Eastern Europe,” he said at a news conference before his speech. “And over the last several years we have worked up a number of these contingency plans.” He said alliance ministers next month would discuss doing more to ensure a “regular NATO presence among some of these states that feel vulnerable.”
The United States has already sent an extra six F-15C Eagles and 60 airmen to Lithuania and 12 F-16 fighter jets and 200 service members to Poland in recent weeks. “We’re prepared to do more,” Mr. Obama said.
Aides said the president will bolster that by rotating more ground and naval troops for exercises and training in Poland and the Baltic countries; update contingency planning for specific countries and update NATO’s threat assessment in the region; and increase the capacity of a NATO quick-response force.
Mr. Obama challenged other NATO nations to expand their own efforts, saying they needed to upgrade their own militaries and help their eastern allies. “Going forward, every NATO member state must step up and share in the burden,” he said.
But in his speech, at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, perhaps the most prominent cultural site in Belgium, the president made a point of saying he did not consider the current showdown with Russia to be a new Cold War, noting that it was not a global struggle over ideology between blocs of nations but what he called an isolated, out-of-touch power flexing its muscles.
“Russia’s leadership is challenging truths that only a few weeks ago seemed self-evident, that in the 21st century the borders of Europe cannot be redrawn with force, that international law matters, that people and nations can make their own decisions about their future,” he said.
Then in a nod to the inward focus of many Americans, Mr. Obama added that “if we applied a coldhearted calculus, we might decide to look the other way” since Russia’s intimidation of Ukraine did not threaten the United States directly. “But that kind of casual indifference would ignore the lessons that are written in the cemeteries of this continent,” he said. “It would allow the old way of doing things to regain a foothold in this century.”
The president has spent the first half of his European trip this week immersed in the gritty details of persuading his European allies to support sanctions against Russian officials, business leaders and politicians, and to help finance an economic recovery for Ukraine.The president has spent the first half of his European trip this week immersed in the gritty details of persuading his European allies to support sanctions against Russian officials, business leaders and politicians, and to help finance an economic recovery for Ukraine.
But in the speech, Mr. Obama will attempt to step back and look at the broader issues, aides said, in the hopes of helping to outline for Americans back home and for allies around the world why it is crucial to confront Mr. Putin after his takeover of Crimea. But the speech was an attempt to step back and look at the broader issues, aides said, in the hopes of helping to outline for Americans back home and for allies around the world why it is crucial to confront President Vladimir V. Putin after his takeover of Crimea.
A senior administration official said that by “standing at the heart of Europe in Brussels, the center of the European project,” the president “will be able to speak about the importance of European security, the importance of not just the danger to the people of Ukraine but the danger to the international system that Europe and the United States have invested so much in.” The official on the condition of anonymity to preview the speech.
Mr. Obama will deliver the address at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, perhaps the most prominent cultural site in Belgium. A discussion of the continuing crisis in Crimea will be a key part of the speech, the official said.
“The reason we take that so seriously is both because of our commitment to the security of Europe and the ability of the people of Ukraine to make their own decisions,” the official said. “But also because it undermines the international system when there are such flagrant violations of international law.”
Even so, the president is not likely to spend most of the speech talking about Ukraine, aides said. Instead, most of the address will invoke broader themes, especially about the importance of the United States’s relationship with its European allies.
That message could help to soothe some hurt feelings among European leaders, who watched with dismay over the last several years as Mr. Obama talked about a “pivot toward Asia” in American foreign policy. The president did not seek to abandon Europe in adjusting his foreign policy, but many on the continent took it that way.
The recent revelations that the National Security Agency has spied on world leaders have deepened the chill between European leaders and Mr. Obama. This week’s trip to Europe and the speech on Wednesday, officials said, are an attempt to demonstrate that the president still views Europe as perhaps the most crucial region in the world.
The senior official said the president would use “this moment of crisis in Europe to reinforce the importance of a Europe that is whole, free and at peace, both to the people of the United States and Europe, but also to the world — because ultimately this has been an anchor of the international system that we’ve spent decades to build.”