VALGA
\nThe United States will stand with its European allies in the defense of the Baltic countries, the American commander of NATO\u2019s land forces in Europe said on Tuesday as the alliance assigned an additional headquarters to the region.
\n\u201cYou\u2019re ready to do more and following words with action, and the United States will be there alongside you,\u201d US General Chris Donahue said at a ceremony in the Estonian town \u200cof Valga. \u201cThat \u200cis how deterrence is built: Not with words from \u200ca podium, but with boots in the mud.\u201dDonahue, who will relinquish his post on Thursday, doubles as chief of the US Army in Europe and Africa.
\nNATO troops in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and in northern Poland, have until now come under the command of a single multinational headquarters based in the northwestern Polish city of Szczecin. Creating a second command zone allows the alliance to devote more troops to the Baltic states. For now, two multinational divisions in Estonia \u200cand Latvia will come under the command \u200cof the German Netherlands Corps based in the German town of Muenster.
\nNATO has said Russia, \u200cwhich invaded Ukraine in 2022, could mount a large-scale assault on allied \u200cterritory as early as 2029 if it continues arming as it is now. The Kremlin denies such plans. Pressure on Europe to increase its defenses has mounted following criticism from US President Donald Trump, who accuses the bloc of not pulling its military weight.
\nGerman Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said the shift in NATO\u2019s posture was proof of the alliance\u2019s determination to defend every inch of allied territory. \u201cIt is a visible and strong demonstration of NATO\u2019s unity, readiness, and of our collective determination to defend every inch of Allied territory,\u201d he said in Valga.
\nWhen fully operational, an army corps typically commands three divisions, or 40,000 to 60,000 troops. In peacetime, it normally exists as a skeleton command structure, with specialist functions such as artillery, air defense and medics in place to allow rapid deployment of troops when needed.
\nThe Multi-National Corps Northeast in Szczecin has been in charge of the entire region until now. It was set up in 2017, three years after Russia annexed the Crimea region of Ukraine. A second corps in charge of Baltic defense would allow NATO to bring in \u201cmass at speed,\u201d a military official said on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VALGA The United States will stand with its European allies in the defense of the Baltic countries, the American commander of NATO\u2019s land forces in Europe said on Tuesday as the alliance assigned an additional headquarters to the region. \u201cYou\u2019re ready to do more and following words with action, and the United States will be …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":99658,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99688,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99678\/revisions\/99688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}