Keeping it GQ…the Estonian military.
Do they have a mutual military coordination (if not a treaty, ala NATO) with Latvia?
Is the nation (sad to say, if true) considered nothing more than a “speed-bump”/trip-wire for NATO? I.e., what kind of independent defensive forces against different Russian excursions are possible?
I ask–and this gets into non-GQ–but NATO might hesitate/stall for time in an Estonian crisis more than it would for an incursion into other membed states.
Both Latvia and Estonia are NATO members. An attack on any one NATO member is an attack on all NATO members. If Russia starts building up their military forces on the border, presumably, NATO will start building up their forces.
Here’s an article about NATO deploying a battalion in the area to deter Russian aggression “NATO to deploy a battalion to Estonia to help defend the country”, Estonian World, June 14th, 2016.
I think the answer to your question would be a tightly guarded secret, but it looks like NATO will defend the border …
500 British troops are being deployed to Estonia and the RAF has a base at Amari there.
Sure they’d be but a speed bump for the massed Russian forces, but as our Prime Minister has confirmed, those Russian forces would find themselves radioactive in short order.
Estonia is one of the few members of NATO that meets its commitment to spend 2% of its GDP on defense. (Roughly five NATO countries meet this goal.) As such, they do what they can, but they are a small country and there’s only so much that can be done.
Estonia, like its neighbors, relies on NATO for security. Fortunately, coordination with NATO is quite strong. For example, since Estonia cannot support any kind of modern air force, the Baltic Air Policing mission has been established to rotate Western fighter squadrons to defend against incursions. The Amari Air Base hosts regular deployments of American, British, French, German, and sometimes other fighter air craft.
There is no hope whatsoever for Estonia to withstand an kind of Russian attack that is greater than perhaps a Russian battalion that gets lost on exercises and blunders into Estonian territory. The total number of active duty Russian troops across all of its military services would constitute about half the population of Estonia.
Thanks for cites. Public info on Ravenman’s BAP too.
“Radioactive” response seems unlikely following Crimea.
But following Crimea maybe something akin is more likely.
Both of those countries’ fighting forces would evaporate completely within a handful of hours following a go-for-broke Russian invasion. And that’s before we consider any Russian WMD use.
The first couple of hundred miles of anywhere along any major powers’ borders are forfeit in the event of real war by that major power. It’s doubly unfortunate to be a small country situated along such a border; you’ll be comprehensively overrun before you knew what hit you.
These buffer spaces, pardon me, vital sovereign nation allies, can be valuable for providing reaction time to the countries further back. Just as the French were widely suspected of being quite glad to fight WWIII to the last German. The bad news for those second-line countries (e.g. the rest of continental NATO) is that a mutual defense pact with front line statelets is essentially signing up in advance to do the impossible on somebody else’s initiative according to somebody else’s timetable.
It was real impolitic for Trump to state publicly and loudly what foreign affairs specialists have known about and written about for years: NATO’s security guarantees are very brittle and may fail under actual provocation. But the more we talk about the possibility of failure, the weaker the guarantee becomes. And therefore the more likely it will be tested by an adventurous opposition leader. Such as Putin or his eventual successor. Better for the politicians to ritually incantate: “Article 5. Article 5. All Hail Article 5.”
Letting v2.0 chimps have nuclear weapons was not one of the Universe’s better decisions.
After the Ukraine falls, it will be interesting to see which direction Russia chooses to move. Seems like Belarus would be a safer bet at first, and would probably not take much of a threat from Russia, that would encircle and isolate the Baltic states.
You have to remember that at the height of the Cold War, West Germany would have been little more than a speed bump if the Soviets had decided to invade. That’s why the U.S./NATO kept nuclear weapons ready to use on something like 15 minutes notice.
Estonian troops are pretty well fed, too. Check out some of the Youtube reviews of Estonian rations. Tasty stuff.
Bitterly witty, two times.
Yes, it was Trump who, typically, was impolitic (and frightening internationally) that he, for one, wondered if, and why, NATO would spring to action for Estonia. And, typically, he vocalized the actual and natural fact that a huge (yuuge :)) number of US citizens would balk at Americans dying for some unknown place in “Russia’s backyard.”
I suspect that in an actual war, NATO planners will give up most of the Baltics and Eastern Poland fairly quickly. The first real defensive line is the Vistula.
Is there any other precedent for an organisations political responsibilities increasing so much while its fighting capabilities have reduced.
I’d like to think that us in the rest of the EU would do something about a member state being invaded too.
Excellent points both.
#1:
Certainly the first defensible line against a large scale infantry + armor ground assault is the Vistula. But in thinking that way are you / we Dopers / NATO guilty of planning to refight a WWII-style war?
IOW, here in the 21st century we can expect cyber war, propaganda war, long range smart munitions, widespread terrorist-style anti-civilian sabotage by special forces and embedded agents, etc. Plus a hostile naval and deep-strike air arm that makes their WWII predecessors look like toys.
The we add the WWII-style blitzkrieg but with modern speed, mobility, & weapons.
It’s the effect of all that first paragraph stuff which will determine how fast / far the second paragraph blitzkrieg advances on Day 2+. And nobody on Earth has any experience with how well that works. Bits and pieces have been tested at low amplitude in various places and times. And the force multiplier effects are impressive. But nobody has ever done the full monte.
#2:
All the other non-wartime examples I can think of are stories of hollowed out empires where maintaining control of the restive perimeter states slowly becomes more than the declining center can afford / is willing to spend. The Romans, Ottomans, and even Britain in India almost fit this model.
The archetype for the more common wartime version is Germany’s WWII experience vs. the Soviet Union. As they advanced eastward, the front got ever longer, as did the supply lines. Meanwhile the volume of conquered territory needing to be pacified grew. And the meat grinder of combat, both there and on the Western & Southern Fronts, continued to sap their strength.
The punch line in both cases, peacetime political and wartime military, is that things appeared to be going pretty much mostly OK if you squinted right, until suddenly they buckled catastrophically under load.
Not an encouraging analysis IMO.
I.e., Crimea, just to be clear.
Not encouraging for who? Russia, or NATO?
Yes, if Russia invaded the Baltics for real, there’s no stopping them at the Estonian border. But compare and contrast the economies of the NATO countries to the economy of Russia.
Italy alone has a larger GDP than Russia. There are a dozen countries in NATO that are economically larger than Russia. Sure, Russia has a lot of conscripts and a lot of armored vehicles. How the fuck is Russia prepared for the logistics of invading Western Europe? And what are the expecting to gain, exactly? How is the Russian blitzkrieg going to work in the teeth of modern air defenses?
Estonia is not a restive frontier province that we have to keep expensively occupied and pacified so the natives keep sending tribute back to Washington. It is an independent country that wants to avoid becoming a conquered frontier province of Russia.
All the correlation of forces of a hollow empire that can’t afford to maintain its military empire apply to Russia, not NATO. And the Fulda Gap isn’t on the Western Front anymore. Russia is much farther behind militarily than they were during the cold war, and economically are so far behind it’s ridiculous. Could they stage a three day invasion of Estonia and then dare us to do something about it? Maybe so. But they can’t expect to just announce one day that they’ve annexed Estonia, like they did with Crimea. They already had military bases in Crimea, for crying out loud. All they had to do to occupy Crimea was send a guy out with a screwdriver to change the signs.
And lets not forget the crucial difference between Crimea and the Baltic states: Ukraine was not a member of NATO, no one had any kind of obligation to come to their aid. So you can’t really use it to predict what would happen if Putin tried a similar stunt with the Baltic states.
I have to agree with this. I’m kind of confused by some of the things I’m reading because the verbiage some of the posts include is very unclear. Nonetheless:
Membership in NATO is Estonia’s guarantee of security. Nobody doubts that Estonia’s military by itself is extremely small and weak (roughly equal to a large Brigade). If Russia invaded Estonia one day and NATO did not respond, it would mean the death of the alliance. None of the European states can fight Russia individually if it is “every man for himself,” therefore it is in their rational self-interest to enforce Article 5 even if the country they are defending is one of the smaller ones. It’s not just about the actual value of the ground itself, but the credibility of the alliance.
NATO didn’t attack Russia over the Crimea annexation for a variety of reasons. As Lemur points out, Crimea was practically a Russian state to begin with. Ukraine was sharply divided between ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians, and Crimea was a location densely populated with ethnic Russians who were supportive of the invasion. But most important of all, Ukraine was NOT a NATO member.
The invasion of Crimea and the Russian attacks on Ukraine have done wonders for re-energizing the NATO alliance. It was not very long ago that Bobby Gates was publicly criticizing NATO countries for failing to uphold their end of the bargain, and strategists the world over were debating what purpose NATO served in a post-Cold War environment. The Crimean annexation reminded everyone in Europe that Russia remains a very real threat. Since then, we have seen a great willingness on the part of the US to launch exercises and troop rotations in eastern Europe, including Estonia, to demonstrate its willingness to defend all of the NATO countries.
As Lemur866 points out above, Russia’s military assets are limited and uneven. Russia’s most sophisticated assets are defensive area denial systems (such as air defenses, for example). It is unlikely that they have the ability to launch and sustain military operations outside their own country. Any conflict with Russia would be fierce and bloody, no doubt, but they could not win against the Western European powers and the US. The greatest risk, as always, would be that the Russians start to lose and decide to go nuclear, in which case nobody wins.
In the event of such a war, what would the different militaries (Russian, Baltic, NATO) primarily try to impede or destroy? What would they try to seize or at least deny access to?
Would military airports and bases within about 1000km of the enemy be pretty much done for through getting swarmed by air/sea/land-launched cruise missiles?
Italics mine.
I agree with all you said, including the parts I snipped out of the quote above. I shortened your post to focus on the key parts.
IMO, *the *key point you made is the part in my italics. As a practical matter, Russia can invade Estonia (or Latvia) more or less at will. With the reasonable expectation of occupying the entire territory.
NATO will then be faced with the existential dilemma of responding, up through and including intercontinental nuclear war, or rationalizing away Putin’s fait accompli. I’m highlighting the grossly untenable spot the NATO, European, & US leaderships now find themselves painted into by the incremental decisions of the last 40 years. Each of which was rational and reasonable at the time.
IOW, although the US & NATO are *not *declining powers there is a similarity in the scenario. Like a declining power, we’ve slowly walked ourselves deeper and deeper into a brittle corner. One where our ability to influence events is weak and the transition from normality to acute, perhaps existential, crisis will be abrupt. And in which the proximate *casus belli *would not, in and of itself, be a vital US interest.
This too. Or perhaps this especially.
Said another way, imagine the Russians get bogged down halfway to Kaliningrad (whose reunification is an all-but formalized strategic goal) then tell the West: Let us finish annexing the Baltic Three or we escalate to striking major counterforce targets in France, Britain, and the US.
Would that be sound mature statesmanship on the part of Putin or his successor? Surely not. Would it be within the realm of possibility for such a totalitarian leader driven by a mix of paranoia, historic West envy, plus a tinge of messianic ambitions for the Greater Rus? You bet. That thinking is so deep in the Russian collective psyche that it makes you wonder whether there’s something in their water.
And would you and I really be screwed the day Moscow makes that communique, almost regardless of how Paris, London, and Washington respond?. You bet.
My bottom line: We are in a far more brittle and dangerous place than the populations of NATO and the US recognize.