Lublin, a metropolis in southeast Poland, is notable as the location the place, in 1569, the rulers of Poland and Lithuania (which then included massive elements of present-day Ukraine) signed a pact to unite the 2 international locations right into a single state to raised stand up to aggression from Russia. 4 and a half centuries on, town continues taking part in a task in connecting these three international locations as dwelling to the headquarters of the Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian Brigade, or “Trilateral Brigade” in members’ personal parlance. The brigade’s headquarters is staffed with a mixture of troopers from Lithuania (5), Poland (fifty-eight), and Ukraine (eighteen), and is able to planning, organizing, commanding, and controlling three related fight items—one mechanized infantry battalion from every of Lithuania and Poland and a Ukrainian air assault unit—and fight assist items (roughly 4,500 complete personnel) for worldwide navy operations. Regardless of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian personnel proceed to be assigned to the unit, and the headquarters continues its 4 most important missions of worldwide cooperation: executing and collaborating in battle workers coaching, battalion workers officer programs, multinational workouts, and actions of the Joint Navy Coaching Group–Ukraine.
Within the shadow of Lublin’s suggestive historical past, the Trilateral Brigade offers a lens for desirous about versatile choices in US and NATO responses to up to date Russian aggression in Ukraine. This flexibility is very necessary within the context of present US doctrine on deterrence in a brand new section of nice energy competitors. In August, we traveled to Poland on a DoD Minerva analysis mission, the place we carried out interviews with dozens of navy personnel assigned to the Trilateral Brigade. What we discovered underscores the importance of the group’s historic roots and highlights the worth of this joint navy unit appearing as a bridge between NATO and Ukraine. Whereas few US and European navy personnel are conscious of the Trilateral Brigade’s existence, the unit can function a template for future safety cooperation and facilitate Western efforts within the present Russo-Ukrainian Warfare.
Two Toes in NATO, One Foot Out
The Trilateral Brigade occupies a grey house. Whereas multinational items are not unusual—the Dutch-German Tank Battalion 414, as an illustration, was based in 2016—a joint unit composed of NATO members (Polish and Lithuanian) and non-NATO navy personnel (Ukrainian) is clearly uncommon. This presents each alternatives in addition to dangers that have to be managed to be able to reap the benefits of these alternatives.
NATO is a corporation constructed on the precept of consensus. Whereas this can be a essential technique of holding essentially the most profitable navy alliance within the historical past of the world collectively, it additionally implies that even restricted actions are tough when some members are resistant. Right here is the place a corporation just like the Trilateral Brigade proves terribly helpful. The brigade is a joint coaching mission, and numerous actions fall beneath the class of coaching—actions that would have direct impacts within the ongoing battle in Ukraine, for instance. The brigade can due to this fact play a optimistic position by enabling Japanese European NATO members who need to lean into what they see as a broad-based confrontation with Russia—what could grow to be an extended battle of which the battle in Ukraine is simply essentially the most energetic and kinetic entrance—and people additional West that may want to hold the battle at a distance. These totally different tolerances for threat level to the vary of very actual divisions amongst NATO members and are a basis of Russia’s technique of steadily weakening the alliance by exploiting any fissures. The Trilateral Brigade helps bridge these gaps and thus shield towards this Russian technique.
The brigade’s potential contributions to strengthening the protection of NATO’s japanese flank and offering navy coaching in Ukraine will not be with out difficulties. Chief amongst these is the chance of escalation, notably contemplating the shadow that US and Russian nuclear arsenals forged over the battle. This concern is actual, given the realities of opposed strategic goals: America and different NATO members try to restrict battle to Ukraine’s territory whereas serving to Ukraine’s armed forces inflict sufficient ache on Russian forces to compel retreat and to discourage future aggression. Russia’s management seeks to compel america and others to cease supporting Ukraine’s armed forces.
Finally, the important thing to managing this threat whereas additionally pursuing strategic targets of supporting Ukraine is steadiness, and the Trilateral Brigade offers further necessary choices. Help managed by means of the Trilateral Brigade’s decentralized construction is harder to focus on than staging areas and features of communication related to help to Ukraine. Its purposeful benefit lies in its capability to coordinate planning and flows of fabric assets throughout a large territory, and thus could not include the identical dangers of escalation as different forward-leaning operations.
Maybe most basically, the brigade’s distinctive group and membership, partly NATO and partly not, ought to widen our collective perspective on the methods to ship safety pressure help. It leverages an alignment of strategic pursuits amongst a subset of NATO members to generate the shut coordination between help suppliers and recipients wanted for efficient safety pressure help. With the American strategic trip over, america and its allies and companions should be taught from safety help errors with Afghanistan, and forge refined methods of offering navy help that improves Ukrainian navy capabilities in a sustainable vogue.
The Trilateral Brigade’s Comparative Benefit
Lublin’s regional and historic significance as the middle of the previous Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are cited as a “issue within the emergence of Ukrainian nationwide consciousness.” Past these deep historic ties, official discourse in all three international locations concerned within the Trilateral Brigade outline their identities when it comes to repression and resistance throughout Soviet rule. Shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine started codifying relationships for navy “training-operational cooperation.” Inside this identification of shared strategic pursuits, cooperation amongst members of the armed forces of those international locations started to ascertain a shared cultural body for planning and executing operations, a key aspect in motivating environment friendly software of navy assets and energy.
Formal cooperation between the three militaries started in 1997 with the Lithuanian-Polish Battalion, adopted by the institution of the Polish-Ukrainian Battalion in 1998. Between 2000 and 2010, personnel from the Polish-Ukrainian Battalion (strengthened with thirty Lithuanian troops) had been deployed to Kosovo to take part in NATO-led peacekeeping operations. Moreover, Polish and Ukrainian troopers deployed to Iraq (2003–2005) as a part of the Multinational Centre-South Division, which included two Lithuanian infantry corporations and logistics personnel. Individually, all three international locations contributed forces to assist US and NATO missions in Afghanistan (2001–2021) as a part of broader targets of enhancing strategic partnerships with america, European Union, and NATO. Personnel from all three international locations turned accustomed to each other as they constructed private networks and shared data.
Lithuanian and Polish relationships with Ukraine got here to a pause in 2010 when Viktor Yanukovych assumed Ukraine’s presidency, which strained many ties to the US and neighboring NATO international locations. Cooperation stagnated till 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and secretly invaded to provoke a separatist revolt in Ukraine’s japanese Donbas area. After pro-Western leaders returned to energy in Kyiv within the wake of the Maidan Revolution, the Trilateral Brigade was shaped in late 2014. The brigade achieved operational functionality and fight readiness by 2017, as demonstrated by efficiently executing its first multinational train in December of 2016. This was adopted by additional symbolic integration because the Trilateral Brigade selected their patron: Grand Hetman Konstanty Iwanowicz Ostrogski. The symbolism was vital: Ostrogski was “the three nations’ hero who efficiently led campaigns towards the Tatars and Muscovians,” with the best unifying victory occurring towards Vasili III of Russia in 1514.
In 2020, given deepening protection ties, elevated political coordination between Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine adopted. This took the type of the “Lublin Triangle,” an interregional cooperative physique with one in every of its goals being to “coordinate actions to guard worldwide legislation within the context of Russia’s ongoing aggression towards Ukraine each in tripartite coordination and in worldwide organizations.” This was not the primary time such a cooperative group was shaped within the area. For example, GUAM (Georgie, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova) was shaped in 1997 for “quadrilateral cooperation for strengthening stability and safety in Europe primarily based on respect for the ideas of nationwide sovereignty, territorial integrity, inviolability of state borders, democracy, the supremacy of legislation and human rights.”
With these examples of rising collaboration between former Soviet and Japanese Bloc states, america and NATO ought to view the proliferation of such organizations as a chance to leverage private and organizational connections, partnerships, and relationships in a manner that strengthens protection establishment constructing and the best way safety help is delivered and acquired.
One caveat is that extremely motivated Trilateral Brigade members and their governments could have greater threat acceptance thresholds than america and another NATO nation planners; this brings the dialogue again to the elemental concern over escalation described earlier. Throughout our interviews in Poland, we frequently encountered dismissive attitudes towards the dangers of Russo-Ukraine Warfare escalation in interactions with the brigade’s personnel and varied different members of the three international locations’ armed forces. Whereas there’s vital alignment of companions’ strategic goals, coupled with vital capabilities, differing assessments of threat pose the chance that recipients of help will use assets in aggressive and provocative methods that aren’t to Washington’s tastes and would concern NATO companions that don’t share experiences of Soviet rule.
Leveraging the Trilateral Brigade in Competitors
Because the battle in Ukraine grinds on, america will search to use the chance to weaken and undermine Russia within the context of a grand technique that views Russia as a declining energy—although one which occurs to own about six thousand nuclear weapons—and China as a rising, revisionist, flexing regional hegemon. Serving to Russia fail militarily within the Eurasian geopolitical context will not be solely important for European safety, but in addition for US and NATO plans to pivot assets, navy forces, and strategic considering towards Asia to include China’s rising energy.
There are three necessary coverage implications of getting a non-NATO member like Ukraine codifying relationships with NATO members by means of a joint safety group just like the Trilateral Brigade.
First, the best worth of the Trilateral Brigade lies in its capacity to function exterior of the figurative NATO umbrella whereas minimizing dangers of territorial escalation, because the brigade’s commander advised our analysis workforce. In sensible phrases, it implies that whereas america and NATO should be comparatively extra legalistic and bureaucratic in coaching, help, advising, and equipping Ukraine, the established regional cooperation of the Trilateral Brigade allows interoperability and long-term relationships between these international locations in a manner that’s tough for the common US or NATO navy unit to attain. Furthermore, such an established regional safety group can allow casual coordination and the sharing of knowledge. Per our interviews, the Trilateral Brigade facilitates quite a few actions between Ukrainian forces and NATO, comparable to amassing classes discovered from open sources and personnel concerned within the battle towards Russia. Such information informs navy workouts and makes coaching extra lifelike between US, European, and Ukrainian personnel.
Second, given rising discussions about Ukraine buying 48 to 128 American F-16s, the precedent of a Trilateral Brigade means that comparable cooperative actions might happen between NATO members and Ukraine. For instance, Poland has forty-eight F-16s and Romania has seventeen (plus thirty-two extra being acquired this yr). This implies a chance to kind a bilateral Polish-Ukrainian air squadron or a trilateral Polish-Romanian-Ukrainian air squadron. An operational template of kinds already exists with the Heavy Airlift Wing in Hungary, the place twelve international locations (america, 9 different NATO members, and Sweden and Finland) collectively function three C-17s. Using joint air pressure items could be a bridging perform for the Ukrainian navy, enabling Ukrainian pilots and related assist personnel to be taught greatest airpower practices from their neighbors. This may stop the Faberge Egg navy downside that usually happens when American advisors should not round to watch a accomplice pressure working an costly and sophisticated weapon system just like the F-16 (Iraq, for instance, struggles to function its fleet of F-16s). The importance of this was highlighted whereas interviewing a Polish fighter pilot, who defined a “mentality change on each stage” was wanted when Poland established its first F-16 squadron at Poznań air base in 2006. He admitted quite a few struggles within the transition away from Soviet-era plane and requirements for logistics, upkeep, and airfield assist. Lastly, rising regional cooperation between air forces might probably speed up timelines for Ukrainians to have the ability to make use of F-16s extra skillfully in fight operations as soon as they’re deemed able to working independently out of air bases in Ukraine (seemingly two to a few years).
Third, given the deep ties the Trilateral Brigade is fostering between Lithuanian, Polish, and Ukrainian forces, there is a chance for NATO and america to additional improve the connection between Western militaries and Ukrainian safety forces. For example, the Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian Brigade’s management talked about how helpful the US Nationwide Guard State Partnership Program was in facilitating coaching periods with Nationwide Guard items of California, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, which helped them refine coaching programs on the Navy Resolution-Making Course of. Future engagements with the Trilateral Brigade might embrace the Canadian navy instructing the Operational Planning Course of and the British navy instructing their 7 Questions fight estimate technique. Lastly, with the Trilateral Brigade having submitted a plan of coaching ten thousand Ukrainian infantry by 2023, this presents a chance to assign officers and noncommissioned officers from america and NATO to behave as liaison officers in advising, creating, and facilitating such actions. This may additional improve and enhance the fight energy and professionalization of Ukrainian forces.
Leaders from america and different NATO members frequently take into account the ladder of escalation—when it comes to what deadly and nonlethal help to supply subsequent to Ukraine—and the way Russia would possibly reply. Quite a few basic realities form the contours of the general battle, nevertheless. Ukraine can’t combat the battle with Russia to complete victory, as an illustration, since Russia would by no means let Ukrainian forces march on Moscow and not using a nuclear strike. That is exactly why the Trilateral Brigade gives such a major alternative. It presents another functionality to NATO, a method of not directly hurting Russia through the coaching of Ukrainian troops and different coordination actions that allow Ukrainian fight energy. It’s also a strong proof of idea, and a powerful argument for NATO management to encourage the forming of comparable joint items with non-NATO members (e.g., Moldova, Georgia, and many others.) that additionally view Russia as a risk to their safety. Such collaboration lays the inspiration for future safety cooperation to enhance interoperability capabilities that may be wanted in a future battle.
Lieutenant Colonel Jahara “FRANKY” Matisek, PhD, (@JaharaMatisek) is the fellowship director for the Irregular Warfare Initiative and US DoD Minerva researcher that shall be a navy professor on the US Naval Warfare School starting in October 2022. A 2020 Bronze Star recipient for his time because the director of operations and commander of the 451st Expeditionary Operations Help Squadron, he’s a command pilot that beforehand served as a senior fellow for the Homeland Protection Institute and affiliate professor within the Navy and Strategic Research Division on the US Air Drive Academy.
Dr. William Reno is professor and chair of the Political Science Division at Northwestern College. He has carried out fieldwork and interviews in battle zones throughout Africa and the Center East for over thirty years, having authored three books: Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone, Warlord Politics and African States, and Warfare in Unbiased Africa. Dr. Reno has printed over 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals, policy-relevant periodicals, and edited volumes on civil wars, rebels, and navy help. Lastly, he’s the principal investigator for the US DoD Minerva-funded program finding out how america can enhance international navy coaching.
The views expressed are these of the authors and don’t replicate the official place of america Navy Academy, Division of the Army, Division of the Air Drive, or Division of Protection. This text was supported by the Air Drive Workplace of Scientific Analysis beneath award quantity FA9550-20-1-0277.
Picture credit score: Employees Sgt. Philip Steiner, US Army
