Washington bolsters positions in Romania as Canada beefs up its own air defenses

(Originally published Jan. 10 in “What in the World“) The U.S. continues to fortify Romania as a bulwark in Europe’s defense against threats from the East.

The latest is that the Pentagon will sell Romania a $217 million Naval Strike Missile Coastal Defense System, built by the same two companies that produce the Nasam, or National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System that protects the White House and Ukraine from missiles and drones.

The NSM, which will presumably protect Romania’s Black Sea coast, are already in use by the navies of Australia, Canada, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

In Romania, they join U.S. Patriot missiles along the Black Sea provided to Romania in 2020. The Patriots accompany a Thaad (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) battery the U.S. installed in 2019 at a base along the Bulgarian border. The Thaad augmented the Aegis Ashore missile defense system it put there in 2015. The U.S. is also stationing troops at a base along the Black Sea coast near the Ukrainian border.

Back in Ukraine, which continues to fight a pitched battle against Russian forces for the city of Bakhmut, the Pentagon will send $40 million of Vampire (Vehicle Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment) anti-drone rockets to Kyiv to help knock down Iranian drones. The Pentagon promised in November to get the Vampires, which will be mounted on flat-bed trucks, to Ukraine by the middle of this year.

Many believe the U.S. must give Ukraine whatever weapons it takes to drive Russia out. Others say the only way to avoid World War III is to press for a negotiated settlement in which Russia retains some strategic territory, notably Crimea. But the West is unwilling to wage a global nuclear war over Ukraine—though the weaker Russia appears, the more willing it seems to risk one. Conversely, neither Ukraine nor Russia appears willing to make the concessions necessary for a negotiated settlement.

The more likely scenario, warn former NATO Ambassador Ivo Daalder and James Goldgeier in Foreign Affairs, is that “this war is likely to continue for quite some time.” That reinforces this newsletter’s longstanding thesis that we have entered a new and protracted Cold War between the West and revanchist regimes in Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, and Tehran.

China on Sunday sent 57 warplanes and four ships toward Taiwan as part of military exercises, with 28 of the planes crossing the halfway point between Taiwan and the mainland coast—a line once respected as a defacto border. The latest incursions, which have become a near daily occurrence, coincided with a visit to Taiwan by German legislators, who will meet with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen. China typically denounces any such official visits as a violation of its sovereignty over Taiwan, which both Beijing and Washington recognize as part of China.

To better prosecute this unfolding contest, peace-loving Canada announced it will pay $14 billion for 88 F-35 fighter jets.