Let’s suppose Russia invaded a NATO country. Say, Estonia. Completely without warning.
How precisely would the rest of Nato respond? Do you think they would immediately mobilize and try to liberate? Would we have a phony war situation while each side built up near the borders, while trying to find a way out? Would it be like more recent conflicts with lots of talk of responding, all the while doing nothing? Would the US drop a nuke on Moscow without further ado?
How SHOULD NATO respond? I realize they are treaty-bound to treat it as an act of war against all, but there’s a pretty broad spectrum of response from military buildup and negotiations happening in parallel, to a full out and immediate mobilization to war.
I want to be completely clear that I do not think this is a likely event. I’m not asking out of fear, or anything like that. It’s just that industrial scale war is so hard to imagine.
Despite the notion that all NATO nations are to be defended equally, I suspect any attack on Estonia would be responded to less enthusiastically than an attack on, say, Germany or the UK.
Personally, I suspect there would be a period of threats and ultimatums, and if the Russians didn’t pull out of their own accord, then NATO would go to war to liberate Estonia. This assumes that the Russians just plowed the Estonian forces under very quickly, before NATO could reinforce and respond.
If the Estonians kept fighting and held out, NATO would be honor-bound to reinforce them and start interdicting supply lines to the Russian forces in Estonia, etc…
There’s no real point to NATO if incursions against the weakest and/or newest members aren’t treated exactly the same as attacks on Germany, the UK or the US.
NATO ***should / ought to ***gather together fighters, tanks, AWACS, SSNs, etc. according to whatever contingency plan it has for this situation and begin moving into Estonia en masse in all-out war until the Russians are ejected, take it 1 week, 1 month or 1 year. Especially since the resolve of the NATO alliance has never been seriously tested in its long history. It’s important to set an example for all time the first time.
In reality, the anti-war protests at home would be so intense that the US would respond halfheartedly and so would most European NATO allies. Most Americans probably don’t even know where Estonia is, or that it’s a country.
If it was during the Cold War likely WWIII and full scale nuclear exchanges.
Today? Nothing. As long as craven individuals like Obama and Angela Merkel handle Western foreign policy nothing will ever be done in response to overt Russian aggression other than whining and complaining.
Nonsense. If Russia invaded a NATO country, the United States and all the other NATO members would declare war on Russia. At most there might be a twenty-four hour ultimatum. It’s that simple.
From a military standpoint, we don’t have the troops on hand like we did back during the Cold War. So there would probably be an initial period of forming a defensive line while the troops were build up for a counter-attack.
We send in the tanks. We’ll have air domination, the Russian invasion will get destroyed by us or by Putin launching a nuke. If he doesn’t launch a nuke and we destroy the invasion force and then head toward Moscow he’ll launch a nuke. If he tries to fight us in the air and/or commits too many ground forces to the invasion we’ll leave them defenseless except for nukes, so he might just launch one anyway. Pretty bad odds of this coming out good in the end.
Eventually, probably, but it will be costly. Russia has good air defense, and a sizable air force. This will not be a Desert Storm style air show without significant resistance/casualties.
Surely. But we’ll dominate in the end, but that’s the great danger, we can leave Russia defenseless save for their nukes. That’s why I think Putin would never do this in the first place.
I don’t think we’d go for Moscow. We’d aim for a repeat of Iraq War I not Iraq War II. Fight the Russians in Estonia and drive them out of our ally. But don’t directly threaten Russia or Putin. We keep the war aims limited and nobody starts launching nukes.
Yeah, but the US Navy (and to a lesser extent the UK & French ones… I have no idea what’s the status of the German navy come to think about it) would be the ace in the hole. The Red Fleet barely exists any more (although they’re plowing 1/4th of their mil spending into it these days, so the answer might be different in, say, 2020) - park some Los Angeles along the coast of Estonia to rain Tomahawks on every vaguely active radar or airfield within range, a couple carriers to run deep drone strikes on the invasion’s logistics…
Wouldn’t be a walk in the park, and evidently “Ve have nyukyular veapons, da ?” would be a big concern from the get go, but I doubt Russia’s any more ready to take on the whole of NATO today than it was at the height of the Cold War.
I can’t help seeing the the initial fight as Russia versus the former Warsaw Pact countries while everyone else plays chicken little. If that fight truly began in earnest I would expect support to come from at least some of Soviet era members. It important to remember all the other post Soviet breakup new NATO members. Their senior leaders generally remember what it was to fall under the old Soviet Union. Latvia and Lithuania don’t bring massive combat power but they’d be having a conniption.
Of the remainder the Polish are probably the cream of the crop. They are professional with good equipment and a decent chunk of their troops are veterans. At full mobilization they have the third largest military in NATO. If Poland acted unilaterally to support the Baltic republics they probably could stand and trade punches for a while to allow the rest of NATO to find a pair. What the Poles want to do strikes me as key. Romania is next biggest of the former Pact and might be assist with some non-token forces. I wouldn’t expect much of major significance from the other Pact countries.
US doesn’t have a lot of ground combat power in Europe anymore and isn’t postured to reinforce like during the cold war. Air would be easier to reinforce quickly and could play an important role. Drones will get chopped in an environment with real air defences. Heavy ground forces would take a while. Early on they wouldn’t be major players in the ground fight. Supporting roles could be huge though.
Did I mention the Polish? It’s all about the Polish.
*Entirely *different.
It would be a blunder of the most epic level to send NATO/US troops deep into Russia to try to capture the capitol of the largest nation in the world, with the largest nuclear arsenal, and a famous record of thumping the likes of Napoleon and Hitler on its own home turf.
Imagine if Russia and Mexico were allies, and the USA invaded Mexico. Russia then drove American forces back into Texas. Do you think the Russians would try to march on Washington, DC next?