How effective is the Estonian military? Latvian?

Factual Questions
41

ISTM the critical firebreak issue will be whether the war resembles Korea, wherein (loosely speaking) the US & China fought a proxy war entirely on their proxy’s territories sparing each others’ homelands and thereby ensuring each side had massive strategic depth to retreat / withdraw into if necessary. Which depth the other side would / did / could be relied upon to respect as a sanctuary.

Versus what we all expected in a NATO / Warsaw Pact conflict: Every NATO country except the US would be attacked or threatened at H-hour with long range weapons of some kind. Likewise NATO plans would counter-attack the entire depth of the WP excepting the SU proper. As well, every target within the SU & US proper would become legit game if the other side began to lose the tactical situation too badly.

IOW …

From an escalation perspective today there’s a world of difference between NATO (whether US or German or Polish) & Russian army forces in direct armor / infantry combat on Estonian territory vs. the same thing happening *plus *non-nuclear cruise missile strikes on NATO airbases in Germany / Poland and Russian bases in Russia / Belarus.

We (i.e. both sides) *might *be able to keep the lid on the former and end it some place and in some manner resembling Korea in 1953. Once anybody crosses the firebreak into the latter scenario it’s hard to see where it stops before somebody fires an SLBM.

As others have noted, another difference from the Fulda Gap or WWII days is the relatively thin magazines these days. Either side could be running out of advanced weapons (PGMs, etc.) pretty early in the war. How they react to that eventuality and how the other side responds will be key.

In the early-mid Cold War days NATO recognized it was so out-gunned by count of men & tanks that it expected to run out of those before it ran out of ground to give. At which point the choices were surrender the continent or use the tactical nukes.

“Escalate now or lose now” has been the unfortunate plight of overmatched fighters since Og & Grog first faced off armed with a stick and a rock. Even if you’re likely to lose either way, choosing not to escalate is a *very *gutsy call. Faced with this situation, most decision-makers in history have chosen to escalate. Some won; most didn’t. Either way the collateral damage increased greatly.

42

But, even for non-“overmatched” fighters, “escalation” is crucial to victory. Bring a gun to a knife fight, etc. Depending on who’s doing it and who’s shouting about it (cough:Israel:most everybody else) escalation as a strategic principle can be denounced as putative war crimes as putative non-proportionate response: every tit gets one tat.

It’s just not fair that one side brings the heat more than the other, in this view.

43

Wouldn’t Russia have to fight a war on all it’s front in any Baltic invasion scenario? Sure, you would have German, Polish and French troops moving east, but wouldn’t the other parts of Russia be highly susceptible to invasion? I assume a counterattack by NATO would include Turkey invading from the south (by land and across the Black Sea), Canada attacking across the Arctic, and the USA attacking across the Pacific into eastern Russia. I don’t see how Russia could survive in such a scenario.

44

I’d think that the main advantage of that would be that you could easily start a second front somewhere else with NATO’s numerical advantage, and the Russians would be hard-pressed to counter it. I mean, what would the Russians do if they were attacking in Estonia, and the US landed 2 USMC divisions and an Airborne division near Vladivostok and were moving toward taking the Russian Pacific Fleet bases?

And if a month later, another NATO landing is made somewhere on the Russian Black Sea coast?

They’d have to counter these moves; and that would take significant logistics ability as well as drawing troops away from the Baltic theater And… any major troop movements could potentially be vulnerable to long range interdiction out of Turkey, South Korea or Japan in those situations.

It wouldn’t be a question of survival; that’s effectively arm-twisting to get them to stop fighting.

45

The major powers see a very big difference between fighting on the minor powers’ soil and fighting on their own soil. Likewise about air/missile attacks on minor powers’ targets vice targets of their own.

The local major power with the land border facing the arena of hostilities always enjoys an advantage over the expeditionary power. Until the firebreak to direct attacks on the local major power is crossed. At which time the advantage shifts the other way.

IOW, Russia can attack into Estonia via ground and air with a decent expectation that NATO will counter-attack only Russian forces within Estonia and will not counter-attack anywhere within Russia proper. Again resembling the 1950s UN/US policy towards fighting across the Yalu river into China; namely, don’t do it.

If the Russians then elected to widen the battle by attacking, e.g., Germany, France, the UK or US, then clearly the game would be kicked up a notch (BAM!) and Russia would find instead that Russia proper, instead of being a sanctuary would suddenly be under significant and widespread attack.

Article 5 says “little green men” in the Estonian countryside is the same as an ICBM arriving in London or NYC and merits the same response. Practical statecraft and warcraft suggests differently.

46

They have another huge strategic disadvantage. NATO does not really need to worry about land invasions by third parties.

Russia fought China for almost a year in 1969. China is not generally interested in conflicts outside its territory, but there are vast, nearly empty and resource-rich areas of the Russian far east that used to be Chinese.

Quite asides from any urge China might have to join a winning team if Russia looks like its overstretched, they may want to reestablish old borders just as much as Russia does in the west.

Russia needs to maintain credible forces all along its border with China, and cannot commit all its force in the west. The west has no such limitation.

I don’t think I agree with this reasoning. It seems reminiscent of the recurring predictions that the west will drop the sanctions on Russia every time they come up for renewal “because they hurt the wests economic interests” It seems to neglect a few factors.

Like, no-one believes Russia will stop in Estonia. Its not a question of avoiding conflict.

Given the power disparity between Russia and the west, the only thing that could induce the Russians to try is the conviction that they could get away with it, not any chance of winning.

It often reminds me of Imperial Japan, also convinced that they much larger foe was weak and without the will to fight. That they had a harder fighting spirit, and that their much arger opponent would crumble rather than fight.

47

No love for the Lithuanians who aslo have a border with Russia (okay its the Kaliningrad enclave :p). I’ve worked with an officer from each during a deployment. Sample size was one but I didn’t see any issues with competence or professionalism. I was in the Michigan Guard during the period where we served as Latvia’s State Partner assisting their National Guard under the Partnership for Peace program. While I didn’t have more than passing contact with liaisons they sent to visit us, I knew a number of our troops that deployed there for exercises with the Latvians. The Latvians didn’t have a lot of money for high tech gee whiz stuff but my impression from people I trusted was they were solid troops.

All emphasize infantry formations and skip providing fighter aircraft :

  • Estonia - as 3,200 active troops and 60k reserve forces. They have short compulsory service to get basic skills training across the population. As already mentioned they meet the NATO spending guidelines …unlike most of the alliance.
    -Latvia - 4200 active troops and 8k National Guard along with another 11k reserves that can be called up. They no longer have conscription.
  • Lithuania - 15.8K active troops along with 4500 reserve component. They ended conscription in 2008 and reinstated it in 2015 because of the current situation.

Added up that’s about 107k if they fully mobilize. That’s more than Canada’s 98k although skewed more heavily to reserve components. Their on ground combat power is pretty good considering their size.

That lack of combat aviation to provide more ground forces isn’t as much of an issue as it might sound like. NATO has taken responsibility for policing their air space since the day the Baltics entered the alliance in 2004. Those forces have been forward deployed to air bases in Lithuania till 2014 and now Estonia. NATO has already committed to being in the fight if Russian air or rotary wing forces enter Baltic airspace. It’s a small and vulnerable force forward but it’s an ongoing commitment that doesn’t have to wait on the political request for Article 5 support. If Russia violated any of the Baltic republic’s airspace today French and/or German fighters would be rising to meet them even before the politicians got around to figuring out how to respond. Wiki on Baltic Air Policing.

48

OP here. Today is September 1. A forum is where we exchange messages, right?

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,”
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Auden’s ‘September 1, 1939’ | The Gad About Town

49

Baltic Air Policing; 4 planes. I am sure Putin is petrified.

50

Well it’s currently 8. :stuck_out_tongue: It’s not really about raw combat power. If it was the basing decisions are pretty suspect.

It most definitely a trip wire Putin has to be aware of. A NATO HQ is responsible for air defense over the Baltics and any direct conflict would involve killing pilots/airmen from non-Baltic republic NATO members before the political processes could likely intervene. That certainly raises the potential of affecting Article 5 decisions as the situation becomes clearer.

51

How many Turkish F-16s did it take to shoot down a Russian jet that violated someone else’s airspace?

52

During my NATO deployment in 2010 we had a port visit in Lithuania and Latvia. We also did a weeklong combined exercise with the Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian and Polish special forces. We hosted about 150 foreign troops, and practiced interoperability, including helicopter assault and general shipboard operations. I know that the actual training that they were receiving was probably useless, since I don’t think that their focus in a war would be taking Russian ships. However, my overall impression was that they were formidable fighters who would be very competent in battle.