From the pages of The National Interest:
RAND came to its “unambiguous” conclusion after a series of wargames it conducted between the middle of 2014 and early 2015. “As currently postured, NATO cannot successfully defend the territory of its most exposed members,” reads the study. “Across multiple games using a wide range of expert participants in and out of uniform playing both sides, the longest it has taken Russian forces to reach the outskirts of the Estonian and/or Latvian capitals of Tallinn and Riga, respectively, is 60 hours.”
Not exactly good news for the good guys, though RAND did have one recommendation: drop three armored brigades into Poland at $2.5 billion a year — a move that would probably escalate matters rather than suspend them… not to mention, the armored brigades would only serve as a stopgap measure, not ensure victory. This is on top of the $3.4 billion the United States is already spending in Europe for defense personnel.
Such are the conditions on the ground in Eastern Europe in the absence of American leadership. Russian forces today stand somewhere near 65,000 to 80,000 combat troops in their Western Theater, with upwards of 750 tanks and 380 combat aircraft. In comparison, the Baltics combined have a mere 10,000 active duty combat effectives, three tanks, and no combat aircraft. Poland and Romania combined perhaps have the ability to counteract a Russian push into Eastern Europe proper, but nearby Poland certainly does not have the ability to project effective force into the Baltic region.
All of this comes after extensive wargames in the Eastern European theater, including NOBLE JUMP in Poland and Operation Lightning Strike in Lithuania, on top of the RAND recommendations.
So what is to be done?
First, some perspective needs to offered at this point. This is no longer Cold War Europe, and while the Russian Federation has a formidable military and enough of a logistics train to maintain a presence in Eastern Europe and perhaps either the Baltics or the Ukraine, it does not have the means or materiel to sustain a long, protracted war:
Obviously, the Russian Federation knows this. What Russia also knows about NATO is that “red lines” are no longer impermeable — they are in fact quite meaningless, as al-Assad learned to his great relief in Syria and Netanyahu learned to his disgust vis a vis Iran. American guarantees — long the backbone of NATO and the American security umbrella, no longer have the aura of a guarantee… just a strongly held sentiment of shared purpose, or whatever diplomatic spin one might choose to put on it.
So in the lack of guarantees, America’s allies are asking for tangible (read: expensive) demonstrations of commitment. Already, the United States is committing a full division to Europe, including 4,500 personnel at brigade strength in the Baltic region. This is a deterrence of a sort… but much more along the old Cold War thinking that the Russian Federation (or the old Soviet Union) would never take on an American public galvanized by the deaths of American soldiers overseas.
Which is why the Russian Federation has invested so much in asymmetrical warfare and information warfare as a means of securing gains, as demonstrated in Georgia in 2008, the Crimea in 2014, and today in the Ukraine. The game being played here by the Russians — and it is a very artful one — is that the West will not go to war over nations the Russian Federation believes are within their spheres of interest. Crimea? Donbass? Syria? The Baltics… what do Germans care about Donetsk and Kharkov? What do Englishmen care? More specifically… what do Americans care?
That is the game in a nutshell. Hence the emphasis on public relations and the investment in far-right dissident parties in Western Europe. Russia Today (RT) acts as a mouthpiece in a more insidious way than say, Voice of America or the BBC, but nevertheless has adherents as “real news” here in the United States. If the European public is unwilling to challenge Russia for say, the Crimea or Lithuania, then mission accomplished. Take bits, not too much, and eventually Russia’s western frontiers can be pushed back to something approximating the old borders of the Soviet Union.
Of course, this piles into other items as well, most notably the tremendous policy failure of the Obama administration’s “Arab Spring” in the Middle East and in the Ukraine. Revanchism in the Russian Federation runs high, and Putin is delivering the sort of security guarantees to his allies — most notably Syria — that Americans at the moment do not seem to be willing to offer to our own allies.
Indeed, with potential Republican nominees talking about walking back American commitments to NATO, with Syrian “moderates” being abandoned to their fate, with the Iraqi government torn between ISIL and Iran, with Saudi Arabia spearheading the offensive against a Shia-led resistance in the Middle East, and with our Israeli allies afloat in a sea of division, the prospects for a regional war along the NATO periphery have never been greater.
This naturally has an impact back home for Americans, specifically with regards to energy concerns. Right now, energy is cheap (and not by design). Should energy become expensive again, and it undoubtedly will, the provision of American energy to fuel the American economy becomes a highly prized security concern. Maintaining the sinews of the American-led economic system become an economic and moral imperative — hence the reason why the Trans Pacific Partnership and NATO are essential to American security concerns. Beyond that, demonstrating not only an American willingness to project force, but a catastrophic demonstration of that willingness becomes almost a requirement in the post-Obama age.
What the world will ask — and Russia most of all — in the aftermath of the Obama administration is whether or not the United States will continue to lead on the world stage, not just with “soft power” but with demonstrable hard power. Peace through strength was always predicated on the idea that the United States might use catastrophic force. The extreme alternative of putting “boots on the ground” in places such as Syria, the Ukraine, and the Baltics is the expensive alternative when succeeding administrations do not keep their word: a certain sort of strength through peace.
Isolationism as advocated by the paleo-conservative and populist right is perhaps the most dangerous game of all. The extreme alternative of interventionism through force of arms is both dangerous and expensive. Yet a reinforcement of commitment to the NATO alliance and the TPP/TPA agreements all solidify American resolve and deepen our commitment to the post-Second World War order. Alternatives to NATO involvement abound — an expansion of the Visegrad Four to include the Baltics and the Ukraine, for instance — but at some point, once the boundaries are clearly defined? The United States and the European Union need to come to a reckoning with the Russian Federation as equals, not as competitors.
To accomplish this will require concessions in the Ukraine. It will require the United States to abandon pretenses of replacing al-Assad by force. It will require the substitution of “soft power” alternatives that have destroyed the lives of so many in the Middle East with clear but definitive boundaries of American interest — clearly communicated and clearly reinforced with a willingness to decapitate regimes that counteract that interest. More importantly, the former cultural exchanges between the Russian Federation and the EU and US must be fundamentally restored. In an era that is witnessing a resumption of Great Power politics, the Russian Federation is not a natural enemy of the Atlanticist order.
In fact, if pursued properly, not only can the Russian Federation be a valuable partner in an economic revival, the Russian Federation can also prove to be a worthwhile ally in the war against Islamist terrorism, her energy reserves developed, her partnership with China made peaceful rather than as a partner in belligerency, and Eastern Europe serving as a bridge rather than a chessboard.
…or we can let the Russians start a Third World War over the Baltics– one we currently stand to lose in the short term.
