MARCH 24 — Even as Russia’s annexation of Crimea is answered with an economic, rather than a military, response from the West, the crisis is provoking some uncomfortable reckoning on the part of NATO. Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has called it a “wake-up call” that should prompt both the US and Europe to ratchet up their commitment to the transatlantic alliance.

He’s right. And if North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials are serious, they will seize the occasion to rediscover a mission that once defined the alliance, but has fallen into disregard: deterrence.

In recent years, NATO has been distracted by the war in Afghanistan, its first extended “out of area” combat operation, which has proved long, costly and deeply unsatisfying for publics on both sides of the Atlantic. Discouraged and, at the same time, beset by monetary and financial crises, Europe has systematically dismantled its military capabilities. For its part, the US withdrew the two potent heavy-armoured brigades in Germany that had anchored its European presence.

US officials have complained for years about Europe’s abdication of defence responsibilities. Among NATO’s 28 member countries, only a handful come close to the goal of spending 2 per cent of gross domestic product on defence. The UK, France, Greece and Estonia meet or almost meet the target, but the European average is about 1.5 per cent. (That compares with US defence spending of more than 4 per cent of GDP.) The result, as former Defence Secretary Robert Gates noted in his farewell speech to NATO in 2011, is a two-tiered alliance: a select group of members capable of contributing to intensive military operations, and a larger group of free riders.

Lately even the strongest European partners have been drastically trimming their forces. Britain and France have retrenched to the point where they have contemplated sharing a single aircraft carrier. Pentagon leaders fear that reductions in armoured ground units could render UK forces incapable of operating alongside their US counterparts. Meanwhile, the Dutch have eliminated heavy tank forces altogether, and Germany is in the process of cutting its ground and tank forces roughly in half.

In light of Russia’s second military incursion into a neighbour’s territory in recent years, the Pentagon’s decision to withdraw heavy tank forces from Europe also looks questionable. Keeping these units in the US is only marginally cheaper than keeping them in Germany, where their deterrent value is maximised. Last week, to steady the nerves of shaky Eastern European allies, the US dispatched fighter aircraft to Poland and the Baltics. But nothing says military commitment quite like heavily armoured forces on the ground.

Earlier this year, the US Army redeployed to Germany for training and exercises a battalion of roughly 22 M1A1 Abrams heavy tanks. It should go much further and return to Europe at least one heavy brigade, and position three to four tank brigades’ worth of equipment where it can be quickly accessed. European partners should be encouraged to help foot the bill.

None of these actions could be expected to disturb Vladimir Putin’s calculus in Crimea or Ukraine. But NATO’s flagging European forces conveyed a message of weakness that could not have been lost on the Russian strongman. To express a new resolve will require reinforcing the foundation of deterrence on which NATO was built. — Bloomberg View

*This is the personal opinion of the columnist or publication.