Since he started work as NATO secretary-general almost two years ago, Mark Rutte has spent much of his time trying to keep the United States anchored to the world’s biggest military alliance.
Ukraine was a out what 45mil people vs Russia’s 115ish? so roughly 1:2. But in smaller places like Latvia (1.8mil), Estonia (1.3mil), Lithuania (2.9mil). Would generally be overrun way before any western leadership would wake up from their nap.
Correct. Even with Operation Reassurance, which stations a sizeable contingent of NATO forces in all three states, the NATO assumption is that the Baltics will be largely overrun by any Russian attack before reinforcements can arrive. The strategic goals of the operation are a) to slow any Russian incursion down, and b) to ensure that an attack on any Baltic state would be a direct engagement with a large portion of NATO militaries, thus ensuring that it would constitute an article 5 trigger. As the name suggests, it’s more about reassurance - “We stand with these people and will fight to defend them” - than it is about actually stopping a Russian attack.
Edit: As of very recently this is no longer true. See below.
NATO assumption is that the Baltics will be largely overrun
That WAS (past tense) the assumption. After Russia’s showing in Ukraine, both the ineptitude and the atrocities, you can be certain they’re planning on defending the Baltics from the start.
So, apparently you are actually correct, although the change in posture is much more recent than you think. As in, within the last few weeks to months.
I will not be saying more on this because I’ll get people in trouble if I do.
I have no idea if that is the official policy, in any case official policy lags far after ideas come around. After Russia failed to take Ukraine in 3 days, you can rest assured discussions started pretty quickly about holding on to the Baltics. Nothing top secret about that, you can just think it through.
Read: it does not matter. You know you can think about these things before they become official policy.
Sure thing I’m wrong. Just like if you came across my comments saying this years ago you would have said I was wrong. But if you want it’s because they studied it and determined that they can hold on to it. You just have to think through it.
Yeah. It’s no longer okay to have a plan that says it’s okay if Russia takes some territory, we’ll just take it back a little later. We’ve now seen what happens to the people living in territory that happens to.
Sure, but those places would be in some kind of military alliance anyway, the Treaty of Brussels being the most obvious candidate. It’s also important to remember that they’d be overrun anyway; what’s keeping them safe is the threat of retaliation by the rest of NATO, but even at worst Central and Eastern Europe would be more than enough to provide that threat on their own. My point isn’t that a defensive alliance (mostly against Russia) is unnecessary, but that NATO is way, way too big to be only that. Countries like Spain and Britain aren’t part of NATO for mutual defense, because there’s nothing to defend them from.
You really need to look at WW2 history and the reason for NATO. Before WW2 every small country thought they could declare neutrality and sit out the next war: Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, etc. And how did that turn out? Germany just picked them off one by one. Even the countries that tied to engage like Poland and Czechoslovkia were picked off one by one (or served up on a platter).
Read: This disjointed approach did not work at all. The solution? Get a defence alliance that actually came to everyone’s defence. And the earlier the better, countries like Spain and Britain are off fighting the war with functioning allies (yes even the small ones) and with control of the map rather than waiting for Russia to be at their doorstep. Think through WW2, would it have been better or worse for the allies if Norway and Denmark didn’t fall? It would have been a fuckton easier. Half the reason for NATO is to get the small countries in, not run over one by one, and contributing.
That’s a great example, and it illustrates clearly my point here: Russia aside, the era of intra-European wars of conquest is over. Germany isn’t going to declare a thousand years Reich over Poland, and neither will Italy pick more fights with the Balkans, at least for a generation or two. This is a result of European integration and has nothing to do with NATO per se. So really the only military threat to the Pax Americana in Europe is Russia, which as I said don’t require anything as big as NATO to stop it, so the question becomes “what’s in it for (for example) Britain.”
This leads us to my other point: Britain and France didn’t declare war in WWII because Germany was coming for them. Not that they shouldn’t have intervened, but that what they did was an intervention; they didn’t want Germany to have hegemony over continental Europe and so they declared war. The existence of the Allies wasn’t defensive. Similarly, any war Britain fights with Russia would be offensive, not defensive, because there’s no plausible reality where Russia tries to cross the English Channel. British participation in such a conflict would be to protect a status quo that serves its interests, not to preemptively defend British soil. This means it’d be wrong to say British is in NATO for defensive reasons; its membership in NATO is both unnecessary for its not-quite-stated goal (defending against Russian aggression) and this goal wouldn’t be any more defensive than America declaring the Gulf War on Iraq. There’s a lot more mutual back scratching to keep states not directly threatened by Russia in the alliance than just mutual defense, even if we assume that NATO’s primary goal is defending member states (which is certainly arguable considering NATO hasn’t conducted a defensive operation in its entire history).
And even if small places could survive an invasion attempt by Russia, it would still have an immense cost in lives and destruction. Why not prevent that in the first place?
Ukraine was a out what 45mil people vs Russia’s 115ish? so roughly 1:2. But in smaller places like Latvia (1.8mil), Estonia (1.3mil), Lithuania (2.9mil). Would generally be overrun way before any western leadership would wake up from their nap.
Correct. Even with Operation Reassurance, which stations a sizeable contingent of NATO forces in all three states, the NATO assumption is that the Baltics will be largely overrun by any Russian attack before reinforcements can arrive. The strategic goals of the operation are a) to slow any Russian incursion down, and b) to ensure that an attack on any Baltic state would be a direct engagement with a large portion of NATO militaries, thus ensuring that it would constitute an article 5 trigger. As the name suggests, it’s more about reassurance - “We stand with these people and will fight to defend them” - than it is about actually stopping a Russian attack.
Edit: As of very recently this is no longer true. See below.
That WAS (past tense) the assumption. After Russia’s showing in Ukraine, both the ineptitude and the atrocities, you can be certain they’re planning on defending the Baltics from the start.
So, apparently you are actually correct, although the change in posture is much more recent than you think. As in, within the last few weeks to months.
I will not be saying more on this because I’ll get people in trouble if I do.
I have no idea if that is the official policy, in any case official policy lags far after ideas come around. After Russia failed to take Ukraine in 3 days, you can rest assured discussions started pretty quickly about holding on to the Baltics. Nothing top secret about that, you can just think it through.
That’s OK. I do.
Like I said, you’re right, though the change was recent enough that I hadn’t been aware of it until I double checked.
You’re wrong about the reasons why the posture changed, but I really can’t get into that.
Read: it does not matter. You know you can think about these things before they become official policy.
Sure thing I’m wrong. Just like if you came across my comments saying this years ago you would have said I was wrong. But if you want it’s because they studied it and determined that they can hold on to it. You just have to think through it.
Yeah. It’s no longer okay to have a plan that says it’s okay if Russia takes some territory, we’ll just take it back a little later. We’ve now seen what happens to the people living in territory that happens to.
Sure, but those places would be in some kind of military alliance anyway, the Treaty of Brussels being the most obvious candidate. It’s also important to remember that they’d be overrun anyway; what’s keeping them safe is the threat of retaliation by the rest of NATO, but even at worst Central and Eastern Europe would be more than enough to provide that threat on their own. My point isn’t that a defensive alliance (mostly against Russia) is unnecessary, but that NATO is way, way too big to be only that. Countries like Spain and Britain aren’t part of NATO for mutual defense, because there’s nothing to defend them from.
You really need to look at WW2 history and the reason for NATO. Before WW2 every small country thought they could declare neutrality and sit out the next war: Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, etc. And how did that turn out? Germany just picked them off one by one. Even the countries that tied to engage like Poland and Czechoslovkia were picked off one by one (or served up on a platter).
Read: This disjointed approach did not work at all. The solution? Get a defence alliance that actually came to everyone’s defence. And the earlier the better, countries like Spain and Britain are off fighting the war with functioning allies (yes even the small ones) and with control of the map rather than waiting for Russia to be at their doorstep. Think through WW2, would it have been better or worse for the allies if Norway and Denmark didn’t fall? It would have been a fuckton easier. Half the reason for NATO is to get the small countries in, not run over one by one, and contributing.
That’s a great example, and it illustrates clearly my point here: Russia aside, the era of intra-European wars of conquest is over. Germany isn’t going to declare a thousand years Reich over Poland, and neither will Italy pick more fights with the Balkans, at least for a generation or two. This is a result of European integration and has nothing to do with NATO per se. So really the only military threat to the Pax Americana in Europe is Russia, which as I said don’t require anything as big as NATO to stop it, so the question becomes “what’s in it for (for example) Britain.”
This leads us to my other point: Britain and France didn’t declare war in WWII because Germany was coming for them. Not that they shouldn’t have intervened, but that what they did was an intervention; they didn’t want Germany to have hegemony over continental Europe and so they declared war. The existence of the Allies wasn’t defensive. Similarly, any war Britain fights with Russia would be offensive, not defensive, because there’s no plausible reality where Russia tries to cross the English Channel. British participation in such a conflict would be to protect a status quo that serves its interests, not to preemptively defend British soil. This means it’d be wrong to say British is in NATO for defensive reasons; its membership in NATO is both unnecessary for its not-quite-stated goal (defending against Russian aggression) and this goal wouldn’t be any more defensive than America declaring the Gulf War on Iraq. There’s a lot more mutual back scratching to keep states not directly threatened by Russia in the alliance than just mutual defense, even if we assume that NATO’s primary goal is defending member states (which is certainly arguable considering NATO hasn’t conducted a defensive operation in its entire history).
And even if small places could survive an invasion attempt by Russia, it would still have an immense cost in lives and destruction. Why not prevent that in the first place?