ADAZI MILITARY BASE, Latvia—NATO troops from 14 nations amassed last month in a wooded area here to take part in the alliance’s biggest military exercise since the Cold War. Once again, the focus was Russia.
The drill began in the early morning darkness with a warning: Enemy forces had crossed Latvia’s border with Russia and were closing on the capital. Communicating in various languages over different kinds of radios, the troops raced to push the mock invaders toward wetlands that would bog down their tanks.
“What’s most important is to demonstrate readiness to act quickly and deploy to defend Latvian and NATO borders,” said Latvian Army Col. Oskars Kudlis, who was commanding a brigade of heavy armored vehicles from a position in the forest. The response required troops from as far away as Canada and Albania to work out kinks in communications, absorb one another’s battlefield practices and coordinate disparate weapons systems.
Ever since Moscow seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has had its eye on Europe’s border with Russia. This year’s exercise, called Steadfast Defender 2024, aims to send a message to Moscow: The alliance stands ready to defend its members—especially those near Russia’s border, including Latvia.
After the Cold War, differences in language, communications systems and weaponry within NATO mattered little because its troops rarely fought shoulder-to-shoulder. Instead, many rotated through short-term deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, planned long in advance. Equipment needs were clear and each ally handled its own provisioning.
Now, preparing for coalition warfare is once again NATO’s priority, and troops have to know how to work together on the battlefield. “The integration of all the countries is a challenge,” said Canadian Army Lt. Col. Jonathan Cox, who helped lead Exercise Crystal Arrow, the Latvian portion of the NATO maneuvers, which include air, land and sea drills across the alliance.
NATO, which marked its 75th anniversary on April 4, is getting stronger in some ways. Finland and Sweden have joined after decades of shunning membership. NATO’s European members are spending more on defense than they have since the Cold War. This year, for the first time in decades, the European members, on an aggregate basis, will meet their financial commitment to the alliance, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said recently.
But the alliance is plagued by other disputes. Leaders disagree on whether Ukraine and other aspiring members should be allowed to join. The contest to succeed Stoltenberg later this year has sparked acrimony between longtime members and newer ones from the former Eastern bloc.
And many NATO countries, including six of its 12 founding members, remain far from hitting the military budgeting levels they pledged to achieve a decade ago. That low spending has made them the target of attacks from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, sparking doubts about the alliance’s future if he wins in November.
Throughout history, many military alliances—including those that defeated Napoleon and won World War II—involved allied armies operating separately under common command. NATO’s objective is to prepare allies to fight side-by-side.
This year’s exercises, the largest since 1988, are being staged over four months through May, at locations stretching from the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea. They involve roughly 90,000 troops, 1,100 combat vehicles, 80 aircraft and 50 naval vessels.The operation in Latvia was one of several staged near Europe’s border with Russia. In 2016, after Moscow had seized the Crimean Peninsula and helped foment rebellion in Ukraine’s east, NATO members agreed to rotate troops constantly through its vulnerable eastern members, specifying which member nation would take the lead in defending each country.The U.S. took the lead in Poland, Germany did so with Lithuania, the U.K. with Estonia and Canada with Latvia. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, NATO beefed up its forces in those countries and added partnerships in Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
