A lot has been going on as we all know with Putin’s Russia and the Crimea. But looking forward, what’s most important is this confirms what people should have already known–Putin is willing to go against the West to change long agreed upon national borders. What it has also proven is the West is not all that willing to do anything about it.
If I’m Vladimir Putin, a fantasy of mine would be the end of NATO entirely. It would represent fracturing Europe militarily into many small countries, none of which alone could easily stand up to Putin due to a decade of weak defense spending while Putin has dramatically increased the spending of Russia. This isn’t the country of decaying Soviet military facilities and equipment that is often joked about in the West. Putin has been spending a lot, but spending smartly. He’s spent money on developing smaller, highly trained forces that can carry out rapid operations effectively. Both the Chechnyan War and South Ossetian War have given Mr. Putin many lessons about what doesn’t work, and all signs suggest they’ve proactively worked to fix problems uncovered in those conflicts.
Tomorrow morning Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuanian could be completely occupied by Russia. There is absolutely no military mechanism we have to stop that. Further, we made a promise of sorts to Russia that new NATO members such as Poland and the Baltics would not become staging grounds for NATO troops. This is why the 60,000+ American troops in Europe are all in Western Europe, and why we have made little in regard to moving troops into the Baltics or Poland.
If I’m Putin, why don’t I pick one of the Baltic Republics and start fomenting issues there like I did in Ukraine. He’s already made noise about oppression or discontent amongst his “Slavic brothers” in those countries. Then, do a mixture of non-conventional/conventional invasion like in Crimea.
If you’re my adviser, why would you counsel me not to do this? The way I see it there is only two expected results:
NATO and particularly the United States immediately threaten a declaration of war on Russia, putting me in the position of either having to immediately retreat or be at war with NATO. Under that circumstance, I would retreat and lose a small amount of face.
NATO responds tepidly, as they did to Crimea. This causes the effective end of NATO. Once Article 5 of NATO is shown to be toothless, NATO is no longer a meaningful military alliance. It basically ceases to exist.
What’s most notable, is all of the West’s actions in regard to the new NATO member States actually would lead Putin to believe that #2 is the likely result. We’ve promised to not put many/any serious troops there. Showing that unlike Germany, these countries are not a tripwire. We’ve even avoided developing a defense plan at all for the new NATO countries. That’s right, we have no formal defense plan about what we’d do in response to a potential Russian invasion of the Baltics or Poland. We’re afraid of this looking “provocative.” Never mind that it’s perfectly normal war planning and not at all a belligerent act. Russia actually did major military maneuvers a few years ago testing out a potential war with NATO and it culminated with a nuclear strike on Warsaw. We’ve shown Russia that we aren’t even willing to war plan, as they are, and that sends the message these countries are not seriously defended by Article 5. Putin has everything to gain and almost nothing to lose by following this strategy.
While it’s an interesting question to ponder what NATO would do if Russia decided to take Estonia, I can’t think of any scenario that would actually lead to an end of the NATO alliance between the core members. It might not be worth a war to free Estonia, but it would be worth one to free GB, France or Germany.
Actually there has always been substantial distrust of NATO in all of those countries other than the UK. If NATO was shown to be a paper tiger why would these countries you mention, all of whom are rapidly cutting their military spending, bother to keep up with NATO? It’ll have been proven a nonsense alliance, and the countries you name also have militaries that are too advanced and in the case of France and the UK nuclear deterrent. So they really don’t have to fear being attacked by Russia. But they might start to question what’s the real benefit of being in NATO and why bother defending countries like Austria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, the Baltics, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Turkey etc. Many of these countries have various issues of their own and aren’t even particularly good allies. Putin’s goal would be to see Nato completely out of anything east of the Elbe, and while I’m sure the U.S. would continue on with military cooperation with UK/France/Germany all those smaller or more distant from Western Europe countries I mentioned would be seen as basically pointless in terms of defense.
Maybe NATO is too big for its own good, but if Russia started gobbling up countries in Eastern Europe, that would drive the Western European countries closer together. With a real enemy, attitudes toward military spending would almost certainly change. I’m seeing possibly a shrinking and strengthening of NATO, not the death of NATO.
So who cares, why would you not attack the Baltics if you were Putin? Whether it kills NATO entirely or not, it would remove NATO interference entirely from your sphere of influence which would be all he cares about anyway (Putin doesn’t care about NATO’s presence in Spain or Albania.)
… or it would potentially cause a catastrophic war. Humanity may survive such a war, Putin would surely not.
Also, attacking NATO may serve to strengthen it rather than weaken it. Current troubles in Crimea have made many in Sweden and Finland (historically non-aligned nations) to consider joining. Don’t forget that the goal of this alliance is to respond to external threats - Russian expansion would change many countries’ cost-benefit calculations.
Putin may not care about NATO presence in Spain or Albania, but he does care Poland, Romania, or the Czech Republic, if for no other reason the ability of NATO to place both conventional forces and ABM facilities so close to Russia. John Mace has already answered the question with regard to NATO response; it may be willing to let Putinist Russia claim “breathing room” in retaking the Crimea, but encroaching on the Warsaw Pact borders would certainly reinvigorate the NATO alliances which have otherwise been allowed to lapse in the post-Cold War environment and have been fractured by internal disagreements over US objectives versus those of the rest of mainland Western and Central Europe.
I don’t think any NATO member is going to abandon the alliance. If Putin starts a fight with one of the Baltic countries, he’s starting a war with every NATO country, including the United States. And that’s the best reason why Putin isn’t going to start a fight with one of the Baltic countries.
Putin won’t try it as he is painfully aware of Russian military limitations. With the exception of the AK-47, most of Russia’s military arsenal was proven to be largely ineffective during the Second Gulf War. There’s also the fact that Russia attacks on NATO members might invite attacks upon Russian military installations, meaning many dead Russian soldiers and much rancor within the Russian populace.
And there’s the fact that offensively, a non-Soviet Russia hasn’t engaged in a major conflict since the First World War. Even the Soviet Union’s last conflict was in Afghanistan almost 30 years ago. NATO, on the other hand, is fresh from battle in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While its troop numbers might seem impressive on the surface, Russia has always had a limited degree of success fighting an offensive conflict against anything other than neighboring states.So if Putin wanted to throw his country into turmoil, then he would engage in a direct conflict with NATO, and especially with a now demographically superior US.
I agree that this is true but I seriously wonder if Putin does. I get the impression that he has surrounded himself with yesmen and that he believes that the West is weak.
This is how Wars get started, you know the World kind and I foolishly thought this danger had passed 20+ years ago.
In the case of somewhere actually NATO-engaged like Latvia or Estonia, Putin would not launch an actual attack. He’d foment trouble among the Russian populations therein and find ways to “discreetly” funnel support while making speeches saying “NATO should encourage her allies to be more participative for their minorities” and denouncing that “NATO’s mission is not to provide the Baltic governments with muscle for a crackdown on internal unrest”.
Maybe. Or maybe it’s how wars get avoided. NATO, after all, was able to successfully avoid an actual war with the Soviet Union for four decades. Sometimes a strong and clear commitment to fight if necessary can deter other countries from attacking. If something like NATO had existed back in 1938, we might not have had a second world war. Even World War I, which was largely caused by alliances, might have been avoided if the governments in 1914 had made it clearer what their alliance commitments were.
I think you overestimate Western Europeans. I suspect a lot of hemming and hawing and “strong sanctions” (that in the end turn out to be basically nothing, like the current ones that EU imposed) will ensue, but absolutely no military response. But I hope I am wrong.
Can someone explain to me why Putin would even risk a collision with NATO?
sure, it might make him feel good. But I can’t see NATO members not supporting and/or defending a member country that has been attacked. Isn’t that the point of a military alliance? As Terr said, if they don’t come to the defense of a member country, NATO doesn’t exist.
I can hear the ghosts of Neville Chamberlain and the word “appeasement” being tossed around if NATO did nothing while Russia reclaimed the Baltic States. That just seems wrong to me, but if they aren’t NATO members, maybe there is no moral obligation to do so.
Just think if the Crimea, Estonia, Latvia and/or Lithuania had oil. A Putin invasion would start a major conflict, although i am no exactly sure who is left from the old Warsaw pact that would jump on Russia’s side.
Russia may find they are alone, especially if, like WWII proved, the Allies aren’t exactly interested in territorial expansion.
Who are Russia’s allies these days that would want to get into a fight with NATO?
I don’t see it.
That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, but I don’t see it.
I can’t really see the US sitting idly by if an actual NATO member is attacked by Russia. And if Russia did actually attack the Baltics, I can’t imagine Poland refusing to allow us to stage out of them. And Turkey and Romania probably would allows us as well.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
NATO and particularly the United States immediately threaten a declaration of war on Russia, putting me in the position of either having to immediately retreat or be at war with NATO. Under that circumstance, I would retreat and lose a small amount of face.
[/QUOTE]
The US could bomb a crap-load of Russian infrastructure before the Russians retreat. That’s a pretty big disincentive for the Russians to invade a NATO member.
I don’t see how Crimea is relevant. The Ukraine is not in NATO, and I might be wrong, but I don’t think we have any sort of defense agreement with them, the way we do with Japan or Australia.