Big military exercises in western Russia and Belarus, which finished earlier this month, were based on the following improbable scenario: ethnic Poles in western Belarus rise up and “terrorists” from Lithuania attack the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. More than 10,000 troops from Russia and Belarus countered them, reinforcing Kaliningrad from the sea and sending special forces behind the enemy lines. Three NATO–like brigades, one visiting, one Estonian and one Latvian, then invaded western Russia, where they were successfully rebuffed by the elite Pskov-based 76th air assault division, reinforced by a motorised rifle brigade…
[T]he war-games look alarming to neighbours. They recall that the war in Georgia in August 2008 followed many years of exercises, and they point out that NATO has no formal contingency plans to defend its vulnerable Baltic members. Nor has the alliance held land drills on the territory of any of its new members. Indeed, until two years ago NATO’s threat assessments explicitly discounted the idea of conflict with Russia…
Western military analysts have noted Russia’s use of destroyers and landing craft from the Black Sea and Northern Fleets to back up its feeble Baltic-based naval forces. They also noted the deployment of Russia’s most advanced S-400 air defence system in Belarus and a parallel drill conducted by the Strategic Rocket Forces, the guardians of the Kremlin’s nuclear arsenal. “The scope of the exercises, the weaponry used, the troops involved and the scenarios rehearsed all indicate unequivocally that Russia is actually rehearsing a full-scale conventional strategic military operation against a conventional opponent,” says a report by Kaarel Kaas, an analyst at an Estonian security think-tank, the International Centre for Defence Studies…
The alliance’s ability to defend the Baltic states depends almost wholly on American involvement. NATO hawks complain that members such as Germany and Italy are blocking attempts to draw up formal contingency plans for all its members—something that President Barack Obama has demanded. The doves retort that NATO’s Article 5, which says that an attack on one member is an attack on the whole alliance, is deterrent enough; new members who question its worth are hurting their own cause. (photo: Getty)