Ukraine isn’t a NATO member.
True, but any Russian leader in that position would have to know that such a threat would essentially doom Russia, either via US/British/French retaliation, or via immediate pre-emptive NATO escalation.
There’s no upside to that threat More likely would be some sort of suing for peace and hoping to keep some of the ground they’d gained.
Really, there’s no upside to them beginning a war; the US Army and NG strength of nearly a miliion men represents about 2x the Russian Ground Forces’ strength alone, and there would also be another half to three-fourths of a million men available from the other NATO allies. Same story with the respective air forces, and the naval situation is even more lopsided.
Interesting … I was trying to develop an argument that Crimea was Russian territory to begin with … and that it was transferred to The Ukrainian S.S.R. for administrative purposes as late as 1954. Turns out Estonia was a part of the Russian Empire even longer than Crimea …
Just maybe Russia has a point here. Just how many European lives is the USA willing to risk …
Well, President Trump doesn’t think we should have a NATO, so if he’s elected, I guess we would have to say zero. Or all of them, depending on how you look at it.
Acceding to such a request worked outstandingly well in the 1930s.
So true.
About a third of the Estonian population is ethnic Russian (or Ukrainian), descended from settlers planted there in the '40s and '50s and favourable to Russia’s return so an extensive fifth column can be expected.
Like what? EU is an economic alliance, not a military one.
Reunification with what? It formerly belonged to Germany, and neither Russia nor Germany is demanding that it be returned.
Reunification with a fully contiguous Russia - i.e., “we want Lithuania back, plus two draft picks.”
I think there would be two wars. Remember that on day one, there would be significant American, British and NATO casualties. While it is certainly true that the US doesn’t lose wars, it loses interest, as an American I am certain that if CNN announced that hundreds of US troops were just killed by an invading Russian army and the President (lets leave Trump out of this) announced we are honoring our commitments, the first war would have strong American support. Remember Pearl Harbor and all that. Assuming there was anything left to fight over after a month or two, then the second war would start and it would be a challenge to keep NATO in the fight. But for the first couple of days and weeks, both sides would be vigorous in pursuing their objectives. And if any organized Estonian forces survive the retreat and want to keep fighting the US would stick with their brave allies-for a while. After that, no one has any idea what would happen.
It’s not a military alliance, but it’s much more than an economic alliance. Relevantly, it does have a Common Security and Defence Policy.
The CSDP doesn’t include a treaty obligation of mutual defence, but it hardly needs to. 22 of the 28 EU Member States are also NATO members, and in fact the main reason why the CSDP doesn’t include explicit mutual defence obligations is that it doesn’t seek to duplicate what NATO does. NATO and the EU are supposed to “mutually reinforce” one another on matters of defence, so the EU would line out with NATO in response to an attack on a member state of both the EU and NATO. I’m not sure whether this would mean troops-on-the-ground from non-NATO members like Malta, Cyprus or Ireland, but this hardly matters greatly.
Thing is, Russia can’t just up and invade Estonia one day. They’d have to mass troops on the border. And they can’t expect to move those troops across the border without taking fire. And that means American, British, German, and Polish troops are fighting.
With Crimea, the Russkis could and did expect a bloodless takeover. No such thing would be possible with the Baltics. They’d have to attack not just Estonian troops, but NATO assets from all over.
How is the American public going to respond to Russian invaders killing US troops? Pissing our pants and demanding surrender? Or are we going to demand we start bombing Moscow?
Such a war cannot be contained to a pinprick bloodless border correction. It risks touching off WWIII. Maybe that means we should just hand the Estonians over to be Putin’s slaves, and have peace in our time. Or maybe it means that if we make it clear that attacking Estonia is just like attacking Kansas, then Putin isn’t going to risk global thermonuclear war over a tiny bit land. He can’t conquer Estonia without ruining it, even if NATO capitulated on day one.
I think people are rather overestimating Russia’s power. It is far from the Soviet Union of old.
Russia has about 750 000 military personnel, mostly conscripts. The EU has 1,5 million, mostly professional soldiers.
Russia does have a lot of hand-me-down equipment from the glory days, which allows it to compare better in terms of equipment. They are about even with the EU in combat aircraft, and have half the fleet tonnage. On the other hand they have roughly twice the number of tanks and armoured fighting vehicles.
However, much of this equipment has gone through two decades of poor to no maintenance in a hostile climate. How much of it would survive deployment, far less perform under combat conditions is questionable. European forces certainly have a huge advantage in percentage of equipment that actually functions.
In terms of economy, population etc, Russia compares to the EU much like Mexico compared to the US. For example, before the oil price crash, Russias GDP was roughly even with Italy. Today Sweden and Norway together have a bigger economy.
Additionally, Russia cannot denude its eastern frontier of forces and equipment, whereas the EU probably don’t feel too threatened in the west, and also have considerably better infrastructure.
Russia is significantly behind the EUs current military power, and much closer to its ceiling.
These comparisons do not consider NATO members that are not in the EU, such as Norway and Turkey.
Nor does it consider the USA.
What are NATO forces in the actual area of OPs? Not many. Most NATO assets are several hundred km from the battle zone. The Russians are right next to it.
And if the Russians have reduced forces from the Soviet era, NATO forces are even more depleted since 1990 and the restructuring has meant that they are currently more focused on CI than major state v state warfare.
Much more to the point, it is flat terrain with few obstacles until you reach the Vistula. Unless NATO makes a much larger commitment in the area than they have now, including armoured formations permenantly stationed in the area ( and by armoured formations I mean real large divisions and corps, not the “battle groups” they have been putting up). NATO position in the area will quickly become untenable in a real war, unless large forces are preplaced and in depth, for which there seems to be little appetite.
Finally, is a Russian assault going to be a traditional one in the first place? They could use proxies, or “volunteers” like in Crimea, both of which will be politically difficult for NATO, getting involved in internal security of member states. Or in a general war have limited objectives, say advance to the Vistula and stop and fortify, leaving the now built up NATO forces the prospect of having to dislodge entrenched Russians backed up all the way to Moscow, a task which will entail thousands of casualties at best. Will there be political will in NATO capitals to do that, especially as core states are not directly threatened?
What are the Russian forces right next to it?
Yes, if we assume that the Russians can manage an invisible build-up of forces next to the border without anyone noticing and then blitz across the border, they can win the initial battles and probably get quite far. However, to do so they would have to kill forces from a number of NATO countries. That is why they are called tripwire forces.
NATO cannot build up forces at every point along Russias border sufficient to defeat the entire Russian military at every meter. And would probably justify Russian paranoia if they tried.
NATO can and do have forces sufficient to crush Russia in a conventional war.
The comparison is current numbers. EU only, excluding non-EU NATO members such as Turkey, Norway and the USA. It is not in Russias favour, and Russia is very close to its ceiling, whereas the EU is not really trying.
Yes, obviously. I don’t think you understand how the European see their interests here.
Correction to my above post; Russias GDP is slightly larger than the combined GDPs of Sweden and Norway.
Northern Military District has forces deployed all across the Baltics states and Poland border. The main NATO armies aren in Western Germany and across the Atlantic.
Actually, the big question would be at what rate can the two sides keep fighting full-bore, in terms of ammunition, manpower and equipment? There are only so many missiles, bombs, bullets, shells, etc… on hand in Europe, and easily transportable across the Atlantic, and there are only so many tanks, APCs, etc… available in Europe or the Middle East.
The rest would have to be moved across the Atlantic, and things like tanks typically have to go by ship (yes, I know you can fly a M1 in a C5 Galaxy).
Manpower probably wouldn’t be a big deal until months in.
Actually, the NATO/Russia border is pretty small- Latvia’s eastern border, and Estonia’s eastern border. Pretty much everywhere else, either Belarus or Ukraine is between the rest of NATO and the Russians. It’s a small border.
I suspect the plan, assuming Belarus sits it out, would be for the Russians to attack, and the tripwire forces would assume a flexible defense posture, and withdraw, until the NATO forces from the rest of Western Europe were able to engage- probably somewhere in western Latvia and Estonia, or possibly in Poland. Meanwhile, NATO air forces would be furiously going after Russian second-echelon forces- logistics, troops moving to the front, advancing in the open, etc… In an ideal scenario, the tripwire forces would bleed the Russians as they advanced, the interdiction strikes would mess up their resupply and reinforcement, and then when larger NATO forces came to bear, they’d counter-attack and drive the Russians back to the border.
Let’s hope you are right.
Bump you are presuming uncontested control of the skies (iffy) and lack of attacks on NATO airbases from Russian missiles, even more iffy.
Basically I see NATO conducting a fighting withdrawal to the Vistula and await the completion of a buildup (presuming several days warning) or basically surrendering land beyond it (presuming complete surprise).
Unlike the 1980’s scenario at the Fulda Gap, NATO can trade space for time. OTH, modern guided weapons have very high lethality, casualty rates and the rate of expension of weapons might see us in a situation like autumn/winter 1914, with armies having battered each other to a standstill.
I understand that Russia has huge reserves of equipment and other materiel. Sure the tanks and trucks and whatever may be from the 50s and 60s but they’re still tanks and trucks and whatever. Quantity still has a quality all of its own.
I agree with the fighting withdrawal notion; and I think that NATO would get control of the skies fairly quick- they outnumber the Russians, as well as have either parity or superiority in both pilot training and aircraft.
What I suspect would happen would be a fighting withdrawal like you say, but the real kicker would be the war reserves of ammunition, more specifically the high-tech smart bombs and missiles. Anyone have any idea what that reserve is in terms of days of high intensity combat? Back in the Cold War, ISTR that the reserve was 30 days or so- have we kept that up in Europe?
Units would be relatively easy, if slow. A bigger issue for the US would be a lack of heavy brigades and tanks; with the end of the Cold War, the US Army has reorganized itself to be more optimal for fighting smaller-scale expeditionary wars, not WWII-style mechanized warfare.
It would seem to me that the war would either be decided very early on, before the war reserve ammo stocks were depleted, in the next few months as follow-on units and ammo came from the continental US and NATO countries further west (France, UK, Spain, Netherlands, etc…) or sometime after that, when wartime production and potential conscription took effect, assuming that things got that far.