The West should really be arming Ukraine already, says former NATO chief

ESTORIL, Portugal — NATO allies should be prepared to arm Ukraine's military if Russia continues to destabilize its western neighbor, says Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the man who once headed the world's most powerful military alliance.

“If Russia continues to destabilize the situation in eastern Ukraine, I think NATO allies should consider positively the delivery of defensive weapons," Fogh Rasmussen, who left his post recently after five years, told GlobalPost during a conversation in this Atlantic coast resort town. “NATO allies do have an obligation to help Ukraine.”

Western nations have been divided over the question of arming Ukraine's military. Some leaders fear it would further escalate the conflict; others contend robust action would deter Russia from further encroachments into Ukrainian territory.

Last week, the House Appropriations Committee in the US Congress proposed setting up a $200 million fund to provide weapons, training and other support to Ukraine.

Fogh Rasmussen discussed the conflict in Ukraine and the West's standoff with Russia in an interview with GlobalPost earlier this month on the sidelines of an international affairs conference.

He said NATO nations bear a responsibility to help Ukraine under a 1994 agreement in which the United States and Britain joined with Russia to guarantee Ukraine's sovereignty and borders in exchange for the former Soviet state giving up its nuclear arms.

The ex-NATO secretary general gave a gloomy assessment of prospects for peace.

A February cease-fire agreement signed in the Belarus capital Minsk has led to a scaling down of the fighting, but clashes have continued. Ukrainian forces say the growth of pro-Moscow units and a spate of bomb blasts in cities loyal to the government could be the prelude for a renewed Russian offensive.

"We all hope that the Minsk deal could pave the way for a peaceful political and diplomatic solution, but based on past experience, I'm not that optimistic," Fogh Rasmussen said. "We do see a lot of violations and my concern is that the separatists, under the guise of the cease-fire, will further advance supported by Russia."

Fogh Rasmussen stepped down at the end of his term as NATO's top civilian official in October, handing over to former Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg. During his final year in office, Fogh Rasmussen focused on forging a unified response among the 28 NATO allies to the crisis in Ukraine.

He said there was a risk that Russian President Vladimir Putin could launch a new offensive to capture territory along Ukraine's Black Sea coast in order to link southern Russia with the Crimea peninsula that Moscow seized from Ukraine in March 2014.

More from GlobalPost: None of these things work anymore in Crimea

However, Fogh Rasmussen also believes Putin has already gotten most of what he wanted in Ukraine.

"Russia has actually more or less achieved what they wanted. They have annexed illegally Crimea and they have destabilized eastern Ukraine. I think the goal now is to keep this conflict alive in order to keep Ukraine weak and prevent Ukraine from seeking integration with the EU and NATO," he said.

"The Russian goal is very clear …  and I think this will be what we witness for quite some time to come."

In response, Fogh Rasmussen said the West should maintain existing sanctions on Russia — some of which are up for renewal in the European Union over the summer — and consider tougher economic measures.

"Clearly the sanctions should be prolonged and if Russia continues to destabilize eastern Ukraine, personally I think sanctions should be strengthened," said the former Danish prime minister. "In addition to that, the most important thing now would be to expand help to Ukraine, not least economically, because the Russian goal is to keep Ukraine weak."

The EU signed a $2 billion loan agreement with Ukraine on Friday to shore up the country's battered finances, but the bloc's "eastern partnership" summit in the Latvian capital, Riga, stopped well short of meeting Ukraine's hopes of getting a road map pointing to EU membership.

Fogh Rasmussen said new measures to bolster defenses on NATO's eastern borders and build up rapid-reaction forces should deter Moscow from launching a conventional attack on neighboring nations within the alliance.

However, he warned that some in the east could still be vulnerable to the type of "hybrid warfare" tactics used to destabilize Crimea before the Russian annexation — such as infiltration by undercover forces, mobilization of local pro-Russian radicals, cyberattacks, propaganda campaigns and economic pressure.

"Strong NATO deterrence is essential to prevent any attack against the NATO allies and I think the steps NATO has taken have really protected the Baltic states, so I don't consider an open attack as an imminent threat," Fogh Rasmussen explained.

"Hybrid warfare could still be used to destabilize, or try to destabilize some eastern allies, in particular Estonia and Latvia where there are big Russian-speaking communities," he added.

"These countries are for many good reasons very much concerned about the Putin Doctrine that Russia reserves the right to intervene in other countries, to protect what they consider to be the interests of Russian-speaking communities."

The decision by NATO nations last September to extend the alliance's all-for-one-one-for-all defense guarantee to cover cyberattacks was a big step toward confronting the hybrid warfare threat, Fogh Rasmussen said. He recommended NATO and the EU also do more to counter Russian propaganda — including through Russian-language news broadcasts.

Russia's renewed belligerence toward the West and the intensified threat from the Middle East posed by the emergence of the so-called Islamic State movement should have served as an alarm bell for NATO governments who have been cutting back on defense spending for years, insisted Fogh Rasmussen, who now heads a Copenhagen-based consultancy firm.

Although just six NATO members met the alliance's target of spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense last year — the United States, Estonia, France, Greece, Britain and Turkey — Fogh Rasmussen says he's convinced the others will stick by pledges to expand military budgets.

"It was a wake up call to see the Russian attack on Ukraine and it will lead to a rethinking in European capitals when it comes to investment in defense and security," he said. "Territorial defense is essential, but NATO should also be capable to address threats out of area, for instance, the terrorist threat coming from the Middle East."