Two F-4 Phantom jet fighters under Nato control streaked off the runway at a former Soviet air base in Lithuania this week in response to a report that an aircraft had lost communications as it neared Finnish airspace. It was all an exercise a simulation but one with a point beyond mere rehearsal: Nato officials hope that, at a summit in Chicago this May, member nations will put aside concerns over sovereignty and agree in principle to create joint defence capabilities.
The idea is that, in a time of dwindling defence budgets, it makes sense to have co-ordinated programs in which specific countries agree to buy certain weapons systems and forgo others to create a coherent whole. The economic arguments are strong. Twenty of Nato's 28 member countries cut their defence budgets between 2008 and 2011. And greater military integration in Europe would be of a piece with the greater economic integration that is emerging as a response to the continent's financial crisis.
But defence is a closely guarded national prerogative, and the outcome is far from certain. A Nato official said earlier this week that no specifics would emerge from the summit in Chicago. Instead, he said, Nato officials hope for a "public declaration of how far we're prepared to go as an alliance." He spoke on condition of anonymity because of Nato rules.
The exercise in Lithuania involved German F-4 Phantom fighter planes at a Lithuanian air base co-operating with F-18 Hornet fighters from Finland a country that co-operates with Nato but is not a member. Since 2004, different Nato countries have been policing the airspace over the Baltic countries, all three of which Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are small former Soviet republics that are now members of Nato, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
In microcosm, the security arrangements for the Baltics are similar to what Nato officials wish for the entire alliance. The three Baltic countries cannot do their own air policing. Lithuania, for example, used to have six L-39 training jets. But four have been grounded, one has crashed, and now the country's air force is down to just one jet.
The defence budget is shrinking, and fighter planes cost many millions of dollars each. "Buying aircraft today is something out of my fantasy," Colonel Antanas Jucius, chief of staff of the Lithuanian Air Force, told The Associated Press.
So other Nato countries, on four-month rotations, do the Baltics' air policing. And the Baltic countries do what they can. All three have sent troops to Afghanistan. In the exercise Wednesday, a Lithuanian transport plane simulated losing communications. It was intercepted by the Finnish fighters, who assessed the problem, then turned control of the plane over to the two German Phantoms from Nato, who escorted it to Siauliai Air Base, where it was cleared to land by a Lithuanian air traffic controller.
The stress of shrinking budgets does not necessarily mean that national governments will agree to a co-ordinated way of deciding which country does what. During the Cold War, Nato tried to implement similar joint programs involving naval vessels, armored vehicles, munitions, and communications and other equipment, but achieved only limited success.
"We've been talking about this forever," said Jan Techau, director of Carnegie Europe, which studies such issues. He believes such sharing of capabilities is essential, but he is doubtful it will happen.
"Now, in the financial crisis, everybody's broke," Techau said. "It's ever more urgent, but it collides with the sovereignty, which is strongest in the defense sector, as we know. Nothing ever happens out of sheer necessity in politics." Still, budgets are shrinking almost by the day. Just this week, Spanish defense minister Pedro Morenes said he expects his slice of the pie to be cut by 12 to 14 percent when the country's new budget is unveiled Friday. And Nato planners continue to hope for a strong declaration of political intent from the summit in Chicago. "The ground has changed," the Nato official said.
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