When discussing security policy or major
international events like the war in Ukraine, often a lot of attention
focuses on major powers. Doing so might make a degree
of sense, but I think it also misses the massive potential impact
that smaller nations can have, as well as the tremendous strategic
challenge that can come with being a relatively small nation
with some very powerful neighbours. The three Baltic states of
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia between them have a
population of just
over 6 million. They sit on the extreme
eastern edge of the NATO alliance and bordering Russia, Belarus and Kaliningrad,
aren't exactly in the most low-risk neighbourhood. But despite, or perhaps because of, their limited
resources and precarious strategic position the Baltic states have been some of Ukraine's
loudest supporters and most generous donors. They are also a fascinating point of study
when it comes to defence strategy. Basically having to ask, "How do you
come up with a way to
deter Russia, despite having a smaller combined
population than Riyadh or Rio?" And so today, we are
going to talk about them. So as usual I'll start with a bit
of history and then work forward to the modern strategic
environment of the Baltic states. I'll go over their geographic position,
resources, perceived threats, and ask why all those perceived
threats seem to rhyme with "usher". Then we'll look at the
defensive strategies and forces they developed to
answer that potential threat.
That will mean looking at the militaries
of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, their various modernisation plans, and the
immense focus they place on collective defence. That'll lead into a final section where
we look at two major recent events and what they've meant for the
Baltic states, namely the expansion of the NATO membership and
the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Where the governments of the
Baltic states have at once been some of the most generous donors
and loudest supporting voices.
but before we jump into some Baltic
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thanks to Private Internet Access, let's get back to it. OK, so as always before we start digging into strategy
and economics, we have to start with some history. And I'd argue that a lot of the history
of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia has been guided by
their unique geography. Valuable in terms of their
positioning on the Baltic Sea, but also vulnerable in terms of the
neighbours they've often had to keep. In the
modern day for example,
before Finland's accession to NATO, the Baltic states represented the
extreme north-east edge of the alliance. Estonia and Latvia have
borders with Russia proper, with Estonia actually being a relatively
short drive from St Petersburg. Which has the distinction of being
Russia's second largest city, home to some gorgeous
historical buildings, and the headquarters of an
entire Russian military district. Lithuania doesn't border
Russia proper directly, but it does
border the enclave of Kaliningrad (formerly
Königsberg) to the west and Belarus to the east. Which obviously matters given that
Belarus has more than a little recent form when it comes to allowing Russian
troops to march through their country for the purpose of
getting somewhere else. Then, compared to all
that border with Russia, the land link back to the rest
of NATO is actually very narrow. A relatively small strip of land connecting
Lithuania with a NATO centre of gravity in Poland. S
o if you're leaving
Scandinavia out of this picture, a lot of these Baltic states are a lot closer
to Russia than they are to potential help. And while the politics of
the time are often different, if you look back through
history you'll see just how often that geographical position has
shaped the history of these countries. It's always hard to encapsulate the entire
history of a country into a couple of minutes, and with three countries
it's basically impossible. So for the sake of time
today I'm mostly
going to start in the 20th century. But I think it's important to acknowledge
up front that Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians are all distinct people with their own
languages and cultures and long histories. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania for example was a
major European power for a significant period of time. Its personal union with Poland created
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was a major
European power for centuries and had a number of features
that were way
ahead of their time. Like some legally entrenched civil liberties, and
a deeply polarised and dysfunctional parliament. Commonwealth troops
also took Moscow in 1610. Although I'm not sure if the modern Lithuanian military
claims any right to that particular battle honour. At the beginning of the 20th century however,
modern Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were all within the territorial
boundaries of the Russian Empire. Their opportunities for independence
then would come with the defeat an
d collapse of the
Russian Empire in World War One. This was not, as you might
expect, a smooth process. Many in the Baltic states were, for example,
quick to declare independence as soon as Russian troops began
withdrawing, only for Imperial German troops to turn up shortly thereafter and tell them the
whole independence thing was definitely cancelled. Or at least, it was cancelled until
Germany was subsequently defeated and the independence
thing was back on. But only, it seemed, if the
young
nations were willing to fight for it. None of the three states needed to wait
particularly long between declaring independence and fighting a war to
establish that independence. For example, Germany would hand over
power to the provisional government in Estonia on the 19th of November 1918. That new government would have just
over a week to get used to their new jobs before the Soviets invaded
on the 28th of November. The chaotic details of the
often multi-party wars of independence
that followed
could occupy entire episodes. But for now it's enough to say
that after serious armed struggle, all three Baltic states were able to
sign treaties with the Soviet Union that, at least on paper, recognised
their sovereignty and independence. These treaties were all deposited
with the League of Nations at the time, so you can go read the
original text if you like. The treaty with Estonia provided
for the unreserved recognition of the independence and
sovereignty of the count
ry and, "Renounces voluntarily and
forever all sovereign rights possessed by Russia over the
Estonian people and territory." The Lithuanian-Soviet Treaty likewise
recognised Lithuanian independence, including some territories
that weren't actually controlled by Lithuania at the time,
which is a whole another story. And the Treaty of Riga, which
provided for Latvia's independence, recognised the independence of
that country "for all future time." Unfortunately for the Baltic states,
appar
ently in Moscow "all future time"
translates to about two decades. In ... August of 1939 the
Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the treaty of "Non-aggression between
Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." More commonly known in colloquial
terms as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The pact included a secret protocol
which carved up the territory between Germany and the
USSR into spheres of influence. With demarcations covering territories including
Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, E
stonia and Finland. Just over a week after the treaty was
signed Germany would invade Poland and have war declared
against it by the Western allies. Stalin would then order the Soviet invasion of
a much weakened Poland about 2.5 weeks later, while avoiding a similar
response from Paris and London. Meanwhile also in 1939
the Soviets requested that the Baltic states sign mutual
assistance treaties with the Soviet Union. It was clear that the agreements
would allow the Soviets to base tens o
f thousands of troops
in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. It was also very clear
that they weren't asking. Later, by mid-1940, with Soviet troops
already in place things escalated further. To greatly simplify the story, the Soviets
demanded free movement of their troops into these countries and the
establishment of pro-Soviet governments. A process considerably helped by the divisions
worth of Soviet troops that were already in place. And from there things played out according to
a pattern
that I'm sure you've never seen before. First a bunch of troops arrive and supervise
the creation of a new "popular" government, you know, one that really genuinely
represents the will of the local people. "Supervised" elections were then held in which
the opposition weren't allowed to file candidates. Miraculously leading to a
new government full of people who think that joining Russia - I mean
the Soviet Union - is a fantastic idea. Moscow of course had no choice but to
recognise the gen
uinely expressed will of the people of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania,
and allowed them to join the Soviet Union. On a more serious note, most Western
nations didn't recognise these annexations. And the prevailing legal position
in much of the world today is that the current Baltic states
of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are the same countries that were in their
view occupied between 1940 and 1991. But with that said,
let's jump back to 1940. Stalin being Stalin, a lot of
not very YouTube
friendly things would then happen in the Baltic states
while they were under Soviet control. The Soviets would then be
displaced by another country famous for its benign occupation
policies: Nazi Germany in 1941. The Second World War was then
deeply costly for the Baltic states. All three fell under the administrative
control of Reichskommissariat Ostland, and many, many residents of the Baltic states
would be killed over the course of the war. Tens of thousands would die having
been mobi
lised into the Soviet army. Units like the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps
or the 308th Latvian Rifle Division, which would go on to win
the Order of the Red Banner. Others would be conscripted or
volunteer into German formations where again casualties
were often very heavy. And after all was said and done,
the Baltic states ended up basically where they had started,
back as part of the Soviet Union. The post-war period saw
attempts to more closely integrate the Baltic territories into
the broa
der Soviet Union. Stalin continued to do
Stalin things while he was alive, and over the course of many
years and many governments the economies of these states
were significantly restructured. Major investments in industry
were made for example, correlated with significant migration of
industrial workers from the wider Soviet Union. With Latvia and Estonia in particular seeing
significant migration, especially by ethnic Russians. And until the Gorbachev era the
Soviet status quo mostly pr
evailed. With Gorbachev's reforms however,
it became more acceptable for organisations and individuals to express views that were
contrary to the official Soviet narrative. And the supreme Soviets in
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania began to move to reassert
their national identities. In 1988 through '89 they declared
their intentions to pursue sovereignty. And while I have to skip over
most of the detail of the path towards independence here, I really
encourage you to go and read up on it.
It includes mass protests, legal arguments,
attempted military interventions, and a minor logistical exercise
known as the Baltic Way. Where by some estimates, between 1 and 2
million Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians formed a contiguous human
chain linking the three capitals. As a side note here, generally speaking, assessing the
size of a crowd can be a pretty contentious exercise. But when you shape that crowd into
a continuous line over a known distance it becomes basically impossibl
e
to argue that this was just a couple of thousand agitators
expressing a niche political opinion. Now on reflection, it's possible
that under different circumstances the Soviet Union might have applied more military
pressure to stop the Baltic states breaking away. And indeed a number of Lithuanian citizens would
be killed in an exchange of fire in early January 1991. But by this point the sun was
thoroughly setting on the Union. Russia was breaking
away from the Soviet Union, and that w
as a rather more important
problem to deal with than the Baltic states. With the collapse of the Soviet Union,
Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia once again regained their
practical independence. And among the many pressing priorities for the
governments of those states in the chaotic 1990s was the establishment of a military
capability and security strategy that would prevent that
independence being short-lived. In some respects the Baltic states
faced a lot more obstacles rebuilding their mi
litary capacity than
did other former Soviet Republics. They didn't for example inherit
the military-industrial complex, vast arsenal and military educational
establishments that Ukraine did. But in a sense it might be argued that
that curse was actually a bit of a blessing, because it allowed the Baltic states
to start basically from scratch, building a military that was configured
to work not with other Soviet militaries, but potentially with Western
military partners instead. Veterans
of the old Soviet forces were obviously
very important, but so too were new voices. The Estonian forces for example, were commanded
for a couple of years by General Aleksander Einseln. Einseln had been born in Estonia, but
lived most of his life in the United States where he went career army.
He fought in Korea, commanded Special Forces in Vietnam
and retired a Colonel in 1985. Now it's not unusual after people retire for them
to get bored and seek out some sort of hobby. Some take up golf
, others travel a lot, and some apparently decide to
take command of entire militaries. The other element of the
new nations' security strategy was to try and find some friends
as quickly as humanly possible. That presumably meant shaking off
the post-independence party hangover and figuring out how to get into
the European Union and NATO. That's something that all three states
would ultimately achieve in 2004. But if you want to understand
why they pushed so hard to get there and how it
continues to shape
their strategy to this day, it's probably time to talk about the modern
strategic position of the Baltic states. The resources they have
and the challenges they face. And as always there are three
key bits I want to look at here: economics, demographics
and geography. Economically the story
of the Baltic states in the 1990s is probably one you've heard
a few times before at this point. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia had all been
integrated into the Soviet planned market
economy. So when that system collapsed,
the old supply chains broke down and the economy suddenly had to transition towards
being market economies with new trade partners, there was initially an enormous
amount of pain involved. But you could argue the Baltic states were
ultimately better able to affect that transition than many of the other countries trying to
do the same thing at basically the same time. For one thing, while they did
take very different approaches to the issue of privat
ising
old state-owned enterprises, all three generally avoided the problem
of having a couple of oligarchs come in, buy assets for pennies on the dollar, and then
monopolise economic and political power. A lot of really valuable
human capital was still there, the geographical advantage of where these
states were was obviously still the same. So you saw very rapid economic
integration with the European economies, and sort of a marketing pitch that these countries
could act as a bridge betw
een East and West. So after a hard slog
post-independence, things got better. In fact they got much, much better. In 2000 Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were all
nations outside the bounds of the European Union with a GDP per capita of under
5,000 US dollars per person. Before the global financial crisis hit about 8 years
later, they were all European Union members with GDP per capita about three times
what it had been just a couple of years earlier. The growth chart for the
"Baltic Tigers"
as they became known, basically looked like a crypto pump
and dump scheme, but without the dump. It was just a case of
line go up, and up, and up. The GFC would slow things down,
but only for a while. And until the major disruption
caused by the February 2022 invasion, the growth story had basically returned. And in the 10 years
between 2012 and 2022 all three states essentially doubled their
GDP per capita in nominal US dollar terms. To put that in perspective, if the USA had
managed th
e same growth rate over that period, GDP per capita would have crossed
100,000 US dollars per person back in 2022. Demographically however,
the post-independence period left the Baltic states with
a couple of lingering challenges. What you see on the right there is a
demographic pyramid for Estonia in 2021, but it could pretty much just as easily be
one for Latvia, Lithuania, Russia or Ukraine. Some elements of the basic shape just
speak to common historical factors. For example, all of th
ose
countries have those characteristic inward bulges once you get
down below the 30s age group. These are the people who should have
been born in the 1990s or early 2000s but weren't, because the 1990s were pretty
awful everywhere east of the Elbe River. All three states also have challenges
with young people particularly travelling to other jurisdictions in the
European Union to seek out career opportunities. And all three states face
significant demographic challenges. But at a big pic
ture level in the here
and now, all three of these countries are probably best characterised as advanced
economies, albeit ones with small populations. To translate for any Americans listening,
Lithuania has a population of about 2.9 million,
about the same as Mississippi. Latvia 1.8 million, West Virginia, and
Estonia 1.37 million, about the size of Maine. Collectively the three states have
a population north of 6 million, making them larger in
population terms than Finland. All three ha
ve advanced service-based
economies, albeit with slightly different twists. And if you're trying to get a sense of where
that puts them on the European spectrum, in nominal terms all three are significantly
ahead of Russia, still leading Poland, a bit behind Finland and
way, way, way behind Norway. Because no one really ever gets to catch Norway
with their 1.6+ trillion dollar sovereign wealth funds, so hey, Norway, if you ever find you need
yourself an extra defence consultant, let me kno
w. But the essential point here is that economically
the Baltic states have a lot going for them. They are relatively prosperous,
high HDI, low corruption jurisdictions, with what organisations like Freedom House
assess to be free and fair multi-party democracies. Which is not a happy ending that all states
in the former Soviet Union or Eastern Bloc got. But while they are blessed with a tremendous
economic asset, namely their position on the Baltic Sea, they are also cursed with a tremendo
us strategic
weakness, their position on the Baltic Sea. Added to that is the challenge of not just
being in a difficult position geographically, but also being very small countries
with limited strategic depth. We talked about the challenge of
limited strategic depth in my video on the IDF, so I won't go over
all the core concepts here. Instead it probably suffices to say that none of these
countries have a significant geographical buffer between their core economic
and populated regions
and their borders, either with Russia
or that place run by the bloke who really wants Putin to make him
a Soviet Colonel for some reason. For Estonia, the headquarters of the
Leningrad military district is right there. And if you're Lithuania the situation is so
depressing that it is probably funny at this point. Lithuania's capital, Vilnius, is about
40 kilometres from the Belarusian border. Meaning there are a significant number of long-range
rocket artillery systems in the Russian inve
ntory that could fire on Lithuania's
capital without crossing the border. And it wouldn't take that much of an advance to put
the capital within range of regular 152mm shell fire. That is not strategic depth,
it's a strategic puddle. And it helps explain one reason
why the strategic situation of the Baltic states is often
perceived as being quite precarious. If you look at how much territory Russia
was able to seize in Ukraine in 2022 before the Ukrainians were able to blunt that
initial
offensive and start throwing it back, then an equivalent achievement in the
Baltics would leave them basically overrun. The Russians obviously
didn't manage to take Kyiv, but Vilnius is much closer
to the border than Kyiv was. And keeping all of Latvia, Lithuania and
Estonia's critical infrastructure and settlements out of the range of most
Russian weapon systems would mean pushing most Russian
forces far, far back from their own border. It's just the unfortunate
geographic reality of how
these countries are shaped
and where they are positioned. Which brings us to the question of strategic
thinking and defence policy in the Baltic states. How do they perceive their threat environment,
and how do they propose to answer it? As we've discussed in the past, before you
get to strategy often a country will start with an understanding of its strategic
environment, its threats and its objectives. And in terms of the Baltic states,
post collapse of the Soviet Union, the source of a
ny potential perceived threat may
not have changed, Russia has always been there, but how serious that threat is and the way it is
described has in some cases shifted over time. If you read Lithuania's military strategy from
2012 for example, pre-invasion of Crimea, it can feel like looking through a window
into a distant and long-lost world. The document outright says for example "at present
Lithuania does not face any direct military threat." However, even at that point there were
some d
ubiously deniable notes of caution. It referred for example to
unspecified non-democratic states with "an alarmingly increasing military power
and stronger tendencies to demonstrate it" that remained, "in the close
security environment of Lithuania." It would also note the
threat of growing authoritarianism in unnamed neighbouring eastern countries,
and the increasing military power of those states. Now I don't know if you remember your maps
from earlier, but if you are talking about a mil
itarily powerful, increasingly authoritarian state
in Lithuania's close security environment to its east, you probably don't need to be
a GeoGuessr genius to figure out they probably weren't talking about the
Mongolians going back on the war path. But you get the picture. Some of these documents
were cloaked in the language of deniability, they were a little bit coy, and you'll occasionally
see references to things like building trust between those eastern
neighbours and NATO. But if you j
ump forward to 2024, you might notice a
subtle change or two in the language now being used. Latvia's Defence Minister
has outright said, "Our international threats will not
change, they are based in Russia." He also referred to the danger of Russia
restoring its military potential after Ukraine, which meant "increasing threats and risks for
the Baltic region and NATO's eastern flank." Latvia's Foreign Minister by contrast is reported to
have said in reference to Russia's war in Ukraine, t
hat "Russia will not stop,
Russia can only be stopped." Estonia's National Defence Concept from 2023
went a step further and used the language of existential threat, saying "The greatest security
threat to Estonia is the Russian Federation, whose objective is to dismantle and
rewrite Europe's security architecture and the rules-based international order and
to restore the politics of spheres of influence. The threat to Estonia based on
these objectives is an existential one. The Russian Fe
deration has repeatedly
carried out acts of aggression, occupying, annexing, and committing war crimes
on the territory of neighbouring countries. The threat the Russian Federation
poses to Estonia is a long-term one." As far as official documents go, that is
about as blunt as it is possible to be. But in military terms, what might that
threat be and how might it manifest itself? If you're trying to assess the potential
existence of a hypothetical military threat, sometimes I think you cou
ld do worse than to
borrow a framework from of all places, criminal law. By asking first whether a potential attacker
has a motive to launch some sort of operation. And secondly, whether
they have the means to do so. After that you can start trying
to assess potential deterrence or model their strategic calculus, but let's
stick with the first two at the moment. First, are there potentially
motives for Russia to attempt some sort of military action in the Baltic states?
The answer is almo
st certainly yes. Firstly, these are territories that were once part of
the Soviet Union and before that the Russian Empire. We know Putin is very big on historical
claims, so I am personally looking forward to Crimea being returned to
the Tatars or the Greeks. While Mongolia gets ready for
some serious territorial expansion. But jokes aside, we still sometimes
see Russian political leaders use the language of ownership
with reference to the Baltic states. In 2023 for example Medvedev repo
rtedly
described the Baltic states as "ours". And Poland as "temporarily occupied." Yes, that might be bravado,
but so too were a lot of the claims on Ukraine until
suddenly they weren't. Taking over one or more of the Baltic
states would enlarge Russia's economy, expand its borders, and generally align with
a vision of Russia "reclaiming" its old borders. The Baltic states also have a
significant ethnic Russian minority. With ethnic Russians making up more than
20% of the population in E
stonia and Latvia. If you remember the reasons Russia gave
for its various military operations in Ukraine, the "protection" of ethnic Russians and Russian
speakers was often near the top of the list. So even if ethnic Russians in the
Baltic states have absolutely no interest in joining the Russian Federation,
their existence might provide a motive or a casus belli for a
potential Russian operation. Finally, another motive might have very
little to do with the Baltic states themselves, with
the goal instead being able to
find a way to militarily challenge NATO by picking on what Russia might
perceive to be a relatively soft target. And it's that part of the discussion where
you start to shift from motive to means. A fight in the Baltic states would in many
ways play to Russia's military strengths. It would be launching an attack relatively
close to some of its major supply bases, within range of a lot of its pre-sited
long-range missile and air defence systems, and not have
to go too far from
that air defence or logistics bubble in order to overrun
the potential objectives. Information warfare and diplomacy are
also an aspect of any potential campaign, and there, there might be reasons for Russia to sense
some weakness when it comes to the Baltic states. And mostly these revolve around what you
might call the post-Soviet status problem. In terms of language, describing the
Baltic states as "post-Soviet states" is in some ways useful shorthand,
I use it mysel
f sometimes to delineate a state that used to be under
the control of the Soviet Union. But you'll find more than a few people in Latvia,
Lithuania or Estonia who aren't big fans of the term. In the same way some of the Balkans might object to
the term "former-Yugoslav" or "post-Yugoslav" states. Part of the potential objection
is that you're defining a country with reference to an old geopolitical structure
where a foreign capital was at the centre. And that might lead to concerns
that yo
u are selling short the sovereignty and independence
that these states now enjoy. In 2023 for example there was a significant diplomatic
incident when the Chinese ambassador to France basically appeared to undermine the
sovereignty of the Baltic states in a TV interview. The ambassador was quoted as saying
"even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have effective status as
we say under international law, because there's no international accord to
[cement] their status as a sovereign coun
try." The Chinese government basically
immediately walked back those comments and confirmed their recognition of
the sovereignty of the Baltic states. But if you were planning a Russian
information warfare operation, you might look at circumstances like this and think
that there might be something to leverage here. And one fear of planners in the Baltic states
might be that leaders in other countries would be less likely to stand up and
help defend them if they think of them less as truly
independent
and sovereign states and more just post-Soviet entities over
which Moscow still has some sort of interest. So while a lot of militaries,
think tanks, and research groups have generally come to the conclusion
that even before the invasion of Ukraine a Russian attack on the Baltic
states wasn't particularly likely. In significant part because if Russia were
to attempt it, there was a non-zero chance of the Baltic states hitting the Article 5 button
and Russia getting its face ki
cked in by NATO. This is a scenario that has received
a lot of public study and speculation. Some of that speculation has focused on
points of potential geographic vulnerability. The Suwałki Gap for example
is a narrow band of territory that links the Baltic states to Poland in the south. And so were Russia ever
to seize control of that strip it would both sever the Baltic states from
quick land-based reinforcements from the south, while also linking Kaliningrad to Belarus. Russian state TV
basically
showed off a plan to do exactly that. With retired Colonel Igor Korotchenko showing off
a plan that involved the occupation of the corridor and also the landing of Russian troops
on the Swedish island of Gotland. That scenario as presented obviously
ended in a complete Russian victory. But that general subject of a
Russian move against the Baltics has also been subject to some more
grounded writings and simulations. In 2014 and '15 for example, RAND ran a series of wargames simu
lating
a Russian attack on the Baltic states. Those games were obviously built around
certain assumptions as to the capacity of Russian military formations
that were in vogue at the time, as well as the strength of NATO forces in the region,
which were much lower than they are today. For example, in the modelled scenario Russia had
a nearly 2:1 advantage in manoeuvre battalions and a crushing advantage
in armour and fires, with not a single NATO
main battle tank being present. Now those w
argames weren't uncontroversial, and
they represent the assumptions of a different time. But the unambiguous conclusion
of most of RAND's simulations was that Russia would be able
to make significant progress, reaching the capitals of some of
the Baltic states in at most 60 hours. An interesting note here
is that when you see news coverage of the potential of a Russian invasion in the
Baltic, whether that be on Russian state TV or in Western media, often it
does focus on that Suwałki Gap.
With the underlying assumption being
that Russia would launch a rapid offensive trying to link up with Kaliningrad,
and then go from there. But I think there's a chance here to make
a quick and potentially timely reminder that just because a scenario
is the most discussed, that doesn't mean it's
the only one to plan for. The Russian invasion of
Ukraine looked very different to what most observers
were publicly anticipating. And there's no reason to think that a Baltic
scenario couldn't
likewise flip the anticipated script. When RAND ran its wargames,
sometimes the Red Force commanders did attempt a Suwałki Gap strategy.
But as the write-up on those wargames observed, over time the Red Force commanders
actually came to favour attacks against Estonia and Latvia rather than
a strike through Lithuania. Yes, that meant that Kaliningrad
had to operate without a land bridge, but at the same time there
were a lot of other advantages. Russian forces were operating
very close the
ir supply bases and jumping off points.
St Petersburg was right there. NATO forces would have to operate further
away from their centres of gravity in Poland, and NATO aircraft would have considerably
further to fly to impact the battlefield. Russian forces could also effectively operate under
the umbrella of their existing air defence systems. And the result as the report described it,
was usually that Russian forces were knocking on the gates of
Tallinn and Riga in 2 to 3 days. From ther
e as the report writers noted, Russia
would have something valuable to bargain with. And from there potentially
by ramping up the pressure, perhaps announcing annexations of the new
territory or threatening nuclear annihilation, the Russian military could put NATO, which was
still pulling together its forces, in a difficult position. Because while NATO in this scenario would
no doubt have the overall military resources to defeat Russia if it chose to do so, what it might
be missing is a wa
y to do it quickly and cheaply without significantly damaging the
Baltic states or risking escalation. And that basic quandary applies to some extent to all
of the three basic responses that the report explored. NATO could call the Russian bluff so to speak,
and launch a costly conventional campaign to blast the Russians out of the Baltic
states and back into Russian territory. But that would rely on the cohesion
of the alliance holding together and power centres like Berlin, Paris and Wash
ington
being willing to risk potential Russian escalation in order to honour that Article 5
commitment with concerted offensive action. Another option would be to channel some
Cold War-era or modern French nuclear doctrine. Basically threatening Russia with a nuclear
escalation if it didn't withdraw from the Baltics. That strategy played on the point
that after all NATO has nukes too, more of them than Russia in fact,
but in order to work it would depend on Russia perceiving
that nuclear
threat as credible. Meanwhile, the final option
would be to let things settle down, have a cease fire, and essentially freeze
or bake in at least some Russian gains. That would obviously then spare the risk of
further military escalation right there and there, but it also might represent a Russian
victory of sorts in more ways than one. Take a step back for a moment and think
about this in terms of rational strategic calculus. And I know it's always folly to assume
that national leaders wi
ll always be rational, there are significant parts of human
history that stand as direct evidence to the contrary, but let's
leave that aside for a moment. If you are Russia and thinking
about invading the Baltic states just to get the land bridge to Kaliningrad,
the risk calculus just doesn't make sense. If NATO chooses to respond,
then effectively you have a choice between conventional military
defeats and nuclear annihilation. And in exchange for taking
that massive strategic gamble yo
u get to maybe save yourself a customs
check every time you drive to Kaliningrad. Frankly, choosing to
base jump into a minefield probably has a better ratio between
risk and reward at that point. But that statement ignores the fact that the
real prize might not be the territory taken, but the weakening of Article 5 itself. If NATO backs down, hesitates, or
leaves the Baltic states to their fate, then the credibility of the organisation as a
defensive alliance is pretty much done at that p
oint. Creating effective deterrence
using an alliance structure usually relies on pledging to
defend each other's countries. Not pledging to do so if it happens
to be easy and convenient. A successful challenge to NATO's Article 5
might be a threat to the integrity of NATO, American alliance
structures in the Asia-Pacific, and potentially an incentive for countries to
cease their reliance on the US nuclear umbrella and instead favour the development
of their own domestic nuclear weapons.
Even a fragmentation where some NATO
countries chose to respond to a threat and others didn't might not destroy the
credibility of the organisation in the same way, but it might effectively shrink it
and its military capacity. And if you are Russia and the
prize potentially on the table is undermining the very cohesion
and integrity of NATO itself, maybe a potentially idiotic decision
just becomes a stupidly foolhardy one. And if you are the Baltic states
and have been watching all of Rus
sia's strategic decision-making
for the last decade or so, you might be reasonably concerned
that stupid is a long way from impossible. OK, so that's the potential threat,
and not a particularly small one. The next strategic question then is how do you, as
three very small nations, try and defend against it? And here, even though these
are three distinct countries, I think it makes sense
to look at them together. Because they all face broadly
similar threats and limitations, you could arg
ue they are all playing
basically the same challenge scenario. And as a result you see some
common themes and answers. The need for conventional military capability, societal
and economic resilience in the face of a threat, and the embrace of the
idea of collective defence. Expressed another way, they need guns, they need
friends, and a society that's ready to face the storm. And here we'll start with conventional defence,
because while each of these countries puts a lot of emphasis on col
lective
security which we'll get to in a moment, they are also major spenders (in percentage
of GDP terms) on their own domestic militaries. In each case that aligns with
their public strategy documents. Latvia says it has four pillars of
national defence: the armed forces, the social aspects of total defence,
collective defence, and international cooperation. For Estonia there are different aspects of security
policy, with military defence being one of them. And you can find no shortage o
f strong
language in some of the Lithuanian documents. And the results of that spending,
reflective of that focus, are some pretty punchy
home defence militaries. If you've watched some of my
previous videos, the Estonian military bears at least a passing
resemblance to the Finnish model. The standing force is comparatively
tiny, about 7,000 personnel, with the majority being in the army.
But a lot of that structure is just there to provide training for new conscript
intakes and cadre fo
r mobilisation. In the event of mobilisation, the initial
mobilised strength for the force is about 43,000. And then, according to the Estonian
government, beyond that 43,000 there's a further 40,000 reservists
who have undergone training but aren't assigned to
a specific wartime posting. So think people who might be readily available
to serve as replacements or to stand up new units. While the wider mobilisation pool
of everyone who's liable to be called up is about a quarter of a million
people,
roughly 20% of the overall population. Which, to put that in perspective,
would be equivalent to the US mobilising
something like 66 million people. In terms of equipment and structuring, this is
primarily an infantry or mechanised infantry force. The Estonians reportedly have 44 of the
excellent CV90 infantry fighting vehicles, about 140 APCs, some short-range air defence
systems and a small park of artillery. As a side note here, I know I promised
that I would use the Military
Balance equipment estimates as is, to enable
better comparisons between videos. But here I am going to tack on a
significant asterisk, because it matters. Military Balance 2024 says
that Estonia has 56 howitzers, 18 Korean K9 self-propelled guns
and 36 old D-30 howitzers. But Estonia reportedly
pledged those D-30s to Ukraine has publicly stated that at least some
of them have already been transferred, and has even claimed
cash reimbursement from the European Peace Facility
for some of th
ose howitzers. So I think it's fair to estimate
that, as of now, those figures are probably an overestimate of
Estonia's available artillery firepower. As for the navy, that's patrol
and coastal combatants only, while the air force doesn't
have any combat aircraft. Basically this is a force that can mobilise
quickly, dig in, and hold until relieved. The Latvian military has some similar
themes to it, although it is somewhat smaller. Like Estonia, the country already spends
considerably mo
re than 2% of GDP on defence, 1.1 billion US dollars equivalent in 2023,
and that figure is expected to grow. That spending supports an
active strength of about 7,000, a 16,000 strong reserve component,
and a broader mobilisation pool that is expected to expand now that the country
has brought back military conscription. In terms of military equipment
you've got 170 FV107 fighting vehicles, 34 APCs, 59 M109 self-propelled guns. A navy that once again has to content itself
with patrol and c
oastal combatants only. And an air force that once again
doesn't have any combat aircraft. Finally, Lithuania is the largest of the three
countries, it also has the largest defence budget, about $1.9 billion in
US dollar terms in 2023. Their expenditure is about 2.5%
of GDP on its way towards 3%. And that supports an active
duty strength of about 25,000 with, depending on what you count,
about another 25,000 in reserve. Military Balance gets that figure
by counting the active army reserve
, the Riflemen's Union and the
State Border Guard Service. In terms of military equipment, at this
point you might be starting to suspect that all the Baltic states basically
downloaded the same military template and then applied slightly
different cosmetic packs to it. Because once again
this is a predominantly mechanised infantry force with
a little bit of supporting artillery. Lithuania has about 90 infantry fighting vehicles,
about 240 APCs (mostly older M113s), a small force of
Jave
lin-equipped Humvees, an artillery force composed of a couple
of batteries of PzHz 2000s from Germany. And this time not just short-range air defences,
but some medium-range ones as well. But there the distinction
once again collapses because the navy has only
patrol and coastal combatants and the air force doesn't
have any combat aircraft. And at this point you are almost
certainly starting to notice a theme. Namely these are armed forces that concentrate
very heavily on just a couple of
key capabilities. If you are a significant military power like
France, the United States, China or India you might be able to try
to do a little bit of everything. But the smaller and smaller
your nation and budget gets the harder and harder the decisions you
have to make when it comes to prioritisation. Just about everyone that isn't the US, Russia
or China skips out on strategic bombers. A nation like Finland,
focused on homeland defence, might skip on the blue-water navy and the
logis
tics required to project power overseas. But if you are dealing with
budgets so small they can all fit within a single Pentagon accounting
error, you have to get ruthless. So the Baltic states don't just ditch the bling,
they have to skip a lot of the basics too. None of them have long-range air defences:
price tag too big and country too small. And at the moment at least,
none of them even have tanks. Instead what they have is a lot of stuff
that answers three basic questions. What is the
stuff that is cheap, holds territory,
and can't be readily and quickly deployed by allies? And the predominant answer to
that question is a lot of infantry with some anti-tank weapons and artillery
that are able to quickly mobilise, dig in, and then
stubbornly refuse to move. Things like aircraft are too expensive,
but also too easy for allies to deploy. There's nothing stopping you flying combat missions
from bases in Germany or Poland for example, within minutes or hours of some
sort o
f Baltic crisis breaking out. But getting infantry and armoured formations
to the Baltic is probably going to take longer. You need to ready the units,
organise the logistics, tell the Poles to stop celebrating the fact they are about
to go fight the Russians, and then make it all happen. So it makes sense for the Baltic states to
invest in making sure they have at least some of those ground combat elements
in place and ready to mobilise at short notice. Since February 2022 however, all the
Baltic
capitals had a little bit of an "oh shit" moment and as a result the militaries have
just a bit more budget to play with. And a lot of that will go into scaling existing
capabilities, and also adding new ones. In terms of scale, Latvia wants to significantly
increase the size of its active and reserve forces. And there's also finally some room in these
budgets for a few more interesting capabilities too. The Lithuanians might want to go back into tanks,
with the Lithuanian army rep
ortedly asking for 54. Estonia is buying anti-ship missiles, self-propelled
guns from Korea and HIMARS from the United States. There are joint procurements for
medium-range air defence systems in the works. And the only one of these three countries
which had phased out conscription, Latvia, they've now brought it back along with a plan
to increase the size of the country's military. And you can argue it will sort of
bring the Latvian military in line with another principle that sort of flow
s
through a lot of Baltic defence policy, and that's the idea, often presented in
different ways but commonly expressed, of total defence and mobilisation. If you are interested in
reading further into this concept, I have done a video on defence
strategy for small nations before. But the basic principle here is that when you
are a small nation under a significant threat, there is exactly zero room for chill
or restraint in your defence planning. You need to make sure that you are as painf
ul,
as unappetising, a target as possible. And that means making
sure that in the event of war all of your national resources are ready for,
and committed to solving that problem. Lithuanian policy probably
expresses the idea pretty succinctly, "The essential principle of
Lithuania's defence is total defence, which means that all resources
are mobilised for Lithuania's defence and all means,
both military and non-military, are used." It might sound fairly extreme, but the
idea is to make
sure that every citizen, every business, knows where they
fit into the country's defence planning. And that even if the country
can't quickly pull together an army capable of beating
the Russians head on, if you have a plan for putting enough anti-tank
weapons into enough hands quickly enough, then maybe the fear of
going through Kyiv syndrome all over again might provide
something of a deterrent. And if it doesn't, maybe being part of the most powerful military alliance that
planet eart
h has ever seen, just might. Which brings us to the next pillar
of Baltic security strategy: collective security and
the special role of NATO. NATO as a whole is a
pretty diverse organisation. The nations and the people within it have
different views as to its future and its importance. Bulgaria for example has a
relatively NATO-sceptic population, with 2023 survey results showing that
Bulgarians who wanted to stay in NATO only outnumber those who would
consider leaving by about 1.5:1. Wi
th that being the lowest ratio
of any nation in the alliance. In Latvia by contrast the ratio was 6:1,
in Estonia 9:1, and in Lithuania almost 11:1. Recognition of the alliance's
importance is also written into the strategic documents
of each of the three Baltic states. If you look at Lithuania's
strategic provisions, right under the importance
of maintaining a strong army is a section on the importance of
reliable collective defence commitments. A section which starts with the words,
"T
he security of NATO members is indivisible. A threat to the security of one member of the alliance
is a threat to the security of the alliance as a whole. A strong and united alliance ready to ensure
the security and defence of its members is an important interest
of Lithuania's defence policy." You'll find a similar focus
in Latvia and Estonia. And indeed in Estonia's
2011 defence strategy, when describing the two pillars
of Estonia's defence strategy, the promotion of international secur
ity and the
credibility of NATO's collective defence mechanism actually came before the strengthening
of Estonia's own initial defence capability. And in part that's because when you dig into
the practicalities of Baltic defence strategy, to a great extent NATO
is always is part of the answer. They can design armed forces
that might hold the Russian military for a while, but they
can't hold them forever. They can try and offer conventional deterrence,
but they rely on NATO for their nucle
ar umbrella. And their forces are so specialised in that
homeland-defence ground combat role, that they would almost certainly have massive
problems against an opponent like the VKS unless supported by allied air forces
and allied air defences. So let me ask you a question
from a strategic standpoint. If your defence strategy relies
on an alliance letting you in and then coming to help you
out if things ever get rough, firstly, how do you make
sure that they let you in? And secondly, how
do you make it maximally
likely that if you ever have a situation where the beacons have been
lit and the Baltics call for aid, the various heavy hitters of NATO are
quick and decisive with their answer? One method the Baltic states
seem to have leaned on is to try and get the team serious about them
by proving how serious they are about the team. Despite their limited populations and
resources, troops from the Baltic states have deployed on multiple
NATO exercises and missions. And after
the September 11 attacks in 2001 all three Baltic republics would commit
troops to the operations in Afghanistan. And as one report put it,
"When measured per capita, the Baltic states did suffer one of the highest ratios of
deaths per head among coalition partners." When talking about the casualties taken by
Estonian forces in Afghanistan, the report noted, "This is primarily due to the fact
that they had volunteered to serve with no operational caveats in some
of the most hostile combat
areas, a type of environment where few NATO members
wished to see their armed forces deployed." Basically in a situation where some contingents were
turning up and saying, "Hey, send us where it's safe." These guys rocked up and asked
to be sent where they were needed. And the contribution is all the more
telling when you take account of the fact that the deployments weren't
universally popular at home, and that the three Baltic states didn't
actually get to join NATO until March 2004. Me
aning they essentially went about honouring
alliance commitments before they actually had any. But the contribution was likely very much a
calculated one in order to build alliance cohesion. As the Estonian President
of the time put it when asked why Estonian citizens had
to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq, he reportedly responded that an Oklahoma
farmer might ask a similar question: why should their son fight if necessary
somewhere in Estonia or Latvia? Thus the logic as he
expressed it was
pretty clear, "If we want to be helped when we need help,
we must be ready to help our allies." The gamble essentially was that Americans
would remember the effort and sacrifice. Moving on to approach two,
many of the Baltic states have sought to closely integrate their
forces with other NATO ones. Not just by participating in training exercises
and practicing operating alongside each other, but actually writing each other
into the same force structures. Estonia for example is working tow
ards having a
regular division which features a British brigade. While Lithuania and Germany have
signed an agreement to have a permanently stationed German brigade
in the country by 2027, which will presumably be written
into the defence plan of the country. With Lithuania providing a lot
of the infrastructure and support. It feels like these sort of combined or intertwined
formations are becoming more common in NATO of late. Germany and the Netherlands for
example, maintain a combined c
orps. But pulling these sort of arrangements and
formations together isn't quick, painless or easy. Infrastructure needs to be established,
relationships need to be built, and then you just need time to get units
moved, based, and then training together. But if you get it right, it might start to
look like the Baltic states are defended less and less by units from those respective
countries and more and more by NATO formations. Which leads into point three,
where nations, like the Baltic s
tates, tend to advocate for more
forward positioned NATO forces. With the political spectrum there
ranging from Russia, which obviously doesn't want any additional
NATO troops in the Baltics, through to the Baltic states themselves
that would probably be happy if you decided to re-base the entire British
army in Estonia, the Bundeswehr in Latvia, and then maybe had France and Italy draw
straws to see who got to go to Lithuania. Conceptually, and note that
I am oversimplifying here, you ca
n think of NATO's force levels in the Baltic
states as falling into one of three main categories. During the periods of relatively
minimal NATO presence in the Baltics, the forces stationed there can basically
be described as tripwire forces. Where maybe you set up some
small forward logistics bases and continuously rotate
through small units. So that at any given time maybe
there are a couple of hundred American or British troops facing off against
the Russians in the Baltic states. And
that essentially is
your deterrence plan. This is not in fact because American, British
or French troops are meant to be so badass that a few companies of them are meant to
be able to hold off the entire Russian army with nothing more than bravado, pecs
and a Call of Duty headshot montage. Instead if you're in a tripwire force,
congratulations, your purpose in life is to deter an opponent by threatening them
with the prospect of you dying horribly. The idea here is that by putting troops
from major countries in the Baltic states, Russia would be aware that it couldn't invade
successfully without engaging those troops and causing American,
British or French casualties. Which would presumably cause outrage in
the countries that those troops came from and increase the odds that they
would then find some very painful and kinetic ways to
express that outrage. Tripwire forces were attractive
because they were relatively cheap, and also because it would be very difficult
to argu
e that they pose a security threat to Russia. If Putin were to stand up and say
that a couple of hundred NATO troops with no heavy equipment posed
a significant security threat to Russia, it would kind of be a bit of an indirect self-own
on the fighting qualities of the Russian army. The issue obviously with tripwire forces is they don't have much combat
value and they don't always work. The UK had a tripwire force in the Falklands in
the 1970s, but the Argentinians invaded anyway. So the n
ew standard as of
early 2022, which I've got on screen there, was called NATO's
Enhanced Forward Presence. Under this model the number of ready
reaction NATO forces was increased, the number of troops deployed to the
eastern flank of the alliance similarly increased, and total NATO forces
(not including host nation forces) in the Baltic states increased
to about 8,000 personnel. And for some unknowable reason,
there's been significant push in the Baltics to increase the scale
of deterren
ce forces further. To the point where you have those
permanently stationed NATO brigades, like the German brigade
we talked about earlier, permanently stationed and integrated
into the relevant defence plans. But you can argue the broader debate over
how many NATO troops and what NATO troops to station in the Baltic, and whether
they should be permanent or rotational, is really just a symptom
of a broader strategic debate over how NATO should deter
an attack on its Baltic flank. One schoo
l of thought,
basically deterrence by punishment, is that you don't actually have to defend the territory
of the Baltic states themselves from any initial attack. Instead the deterrence takes the
form of the adversary knowing that even if they take a lot
of this territory initially, eventually the NATO counter-strike
is going to arrive and it's going to hurt. The competing school of thought,
deterrence by denial, says that the way you deter an opponent is by preventing
them taking their o
bjective in the first place. And that what you have to do is
concentrate enough military force in the Baltic states, or nearby ready to
quickly reinforce, that Russian planners were never confident in their ability to quickly
overrun one or more of the Baltic states. Some political leaders, especially in Estonia,
have been very vocal in supporting option two. Estonia's Prime Minister for example came out
and said that under existing NATO planning essentially her country would be expected to
endure up to 180 days of Russian occupation before a NATO counter-attack force
could kick them out of the country. That would mean, both a
protracted Russian occupation and then additional battles being fought
potentially in Estonian urban centres. And as we've seen at places
like Marinka, like Bakhmut, when the Russian army fights a protracted
battle over an urban conglomeration you shouldn't expect a huge
amount to be left standing in the end. Leading to what she described as a situati
on
where Estonia was essentially wiped off the map. I should note that not all Baltic leaders
publicly endorse the idea that it could take 6 months to throw the Russians out of their
countries in the event that war broke out. But for planners in
Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, the strategic imperative of trying to
avoid an occupation is probably very real. In essence they don't want to be
avenged, they want to be defended. The other threat less
often talked about publicly, is that if the B
altic states were ever overrun,
there's always an admittedly small but non-zero chance that NATO
wouldn't actually come to the rescue. That maybe a combination of nuclear threats,
escalation risk, international pressure, and maybe an internal spoiler or two within
the NATO and European security architecture might lead to calls for a ceasefire
or accepting a frozen conflict that left all or part of one of the
Baltic nations under occupation. You've seen Baltic leaders take
some notice of v
oices within NATO saying that Ukraine for example should surrender
some of its territory in exchange for peace. And so if they have even the slightest fear that
in the future they might be asked to do the same, then there's a strategic imperative in place to
make sure they have enough forces available locally to make fairly sure that none of
their reasonably limited national territory ever ends up on the
wrong side of a trench line. Just about all the narrow range of scenarios that
might a
llow Russia to score a win in a Baltic scenario rely on it moving quickly, seizing territory,
and then negotiating from a position of strength. And so you'll generally see the Baltic
states advocate for defensive approaches that aim to stop any invasion or hybrid war
operation more or less at the starting line. And over the last 2 years we've seen that strategy
manifest in two distinct foreign policy positions. Strong support for Ukraine,
and a pretty firm stance on the topic of expanding
NATO's membership. I mean, it's impossible to be entirely sure
what the Estonian government thought of Finland joining NATO, but the fact
they lit up their government building with a Finnish flag might
provide us all a subtle clue. As might the fact that the Baltic states
were some of the loudest advocates of getting
Finland and Sweden into NATO once Vladimir Putin kicked off his
NATO recruitment campaign in earnest. The historical precedent here was
probably particularly strong for Eston
ia. Finnish volunteers
played a significant role in Estonia's war of independence
after the First World War. While a number of Estonians in turn fought with
the Finns against the Soviets in the 30s and 40s. Basically these are two nations,
two militaries, that go way back, and they are probably happy to finally
be in the same clubhouse together. And in terms of strategic impact on
the vulnerability of the Baltic states, Finland and Sweden joining is arguably
actually a very significant bo
ost. To illustrate the point, go back to that scenario that
was considered by those RAND wargames earlier. Russia sets up some sort
of covering circumstances and then tries to quickly overrun
the northern two Baltic states. Now reconsider that scenario,
but this time factor in Finland and Sweden
being parts of NATO and instantly you can probably see that
three major things have probably changed. Firstly, Russia now has a massive flank
open along the border with Finland. And so Russian mil
itary forces probably
want to make sure that flank remains covered, and account for the fact that you might have things
like air strikes being generated from Finnish airfields. In the RAND scenario, NATO aircraft
were probably taking off from runways in places like Poland, now the sorties could
be generated in Sweden or Finland as well. The second thing that changed was just
how many NATO forces are effectively based somewhere where they could meaningfully
influence a conflict in the Balti
c. For most NATO powers being able to
exert a military presence in the Baltic means going through the expense
of forward positioning units. But if you are the Finnish army
or the Swedish air force, you don't really need to forward
position to be relevant in that scenario. Your country, your permanent bases, are
already close enough to make an impact. And once you factor that in,
the numbers involved are far beyond what we've seen from NATO's Enhanced
Forward Presence in the Baltic states
so far. This isn't about Russia having
to consider the potential impact of an extra German or British
brigade on their plans, the Finnish Defence Forces have
a wartime strength of about 280,000. And when you are talking about air power, these
are countries that can deploy Gripen with Meteor, F/A-18 Hornets, and from roughly 2026
Finland is going to have an F-35 force as well. So from the point of view
of this sort of Baltic scenario, the impact of adding Finland and Sweden to the
alliance
isn't so much just about the military capacity they bring, it's the point that they
bring it in just about the perfect place. Which links into a third point that's
also tied to the deterrence picture. As we discussed earlier, the Russian
calculus in this sort of scenario isn't just about how powerful NATO is,
it's about how the alliance is likely to respond. And if you put countries on
a spectrum based on how likely they are to go and assist Estonia, Latvia
or Lithuania if they are ever a
ttacked by Russia, I'm going to go out on a limb here
and say that countries like Finland would be deeply invested in making sure that
that sort of Russian military operation failed. And that matters not just
for determining what forces are likely to be committed and make
a difference in any potential campaign, but also what some of the political and
diplomatic dynamics within NATO are likely to be. With every voice you add to the alliance saying that
every inch of NATO territory has to be
defended, the less likely it might be,
all else being equal, that the alliance chooses to
adopt a strategy of backing down. So taking all that together,
you could argue that by advocating for Finland and Sweden
to come into the NATO tent, you could argue the Baltic states
have done a lot to help make sure that if the Russian military is ever turned
against them, they are capable of resisting it. But at the same time, they are also investing
a lot of political capital, money and effort in
to making sure the Russian military
is never in a position to get to that point. Which brings to what the Baltic
governments probably regard as the greatest geopolitical crisis they are
currently facing, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And on that topic all three governments
have been pretty clear where they stand. The Latvian President has said that it is
important that Vladimir Putin fails in Ukraine. Estonia's Prime Minister has described
the conflict in essentially existential terms.
And Lithuania's Foreign Minister
is reportedly on record challenging a lot of the rhetoric that
has come out of many NATO countries. Reportedly saying, "It would be good,
speaking about the messages to Putin, to commit not just to 'as long as it takes',
but change it to 'victory and whatever it takes'. I think that's a very strong
deterring message to Vladimir Putin." In part that might be because the
Baltic states have expressed the view that were Vladimir Putin
to be victorious in Ukrai
ne, he would be highly likely to
set his sights a little further. Kallas has said that, "If Ukraine falls,
it's going to be all over for Europe." While the Lithuanian Foreign
Minister expressed it as follows, "Are we deterring, or are we inviting him?"
in reference to Putin, "And this is where the anxiety of the Baltic
states (and most likely Poland) comes from. The problem is we don't feel
Putin is being deterred enough." So essentially their
assessment seems to be that Russia needs to b
e defeated,
and it needs to be defeated in Ukraine. To make that happen, the Baltic
states have dug very deep when it comes to military
and financial aid for Ukraine. If you look at a leader board of the largest
donors to Ukraine in nominal US dollar terms, you won't see the Baltic
states at the top of that list. Donors with much broader financial shoulders
like the United States, European Union or countries like Germany are always going
to lead a list on those sort of measures. But in pe
rcentage terms, when measured
against the kind of resources they have available, according to the Kiel Methodology (which I've talked
about before and should come with some caveats) Estonia has donated 4.1% of its GDP,
Lithuania 2% and Latvia 1.7%. To put that into perspective, if the entirety
of the European Union and the United States had matched Estonia's bilateral aid
percentage share of GDP, 3.6%, then the total sum of aid to Ukraine would
have been something like 1.8 trillion US doll
ars, or about 100% of Russia's nominal GDP. It would also have left the Ukrainian armed
forces funded about as well as the US military, and I'm fairly confident saying
probably would have resulted in some very, very
different military outcomes. To put some numbers around the direct military
aid, noting I will link the source in the description, it's estimated that the Baltic states account for
just over 60 towed howitzers going to Ukraine, about 14% of the total,
18 self-propelled guns inc
luding Latvian M109s and
Lithuanian 120mm mortar carriers, a pair of surface-to-air missile launchers
and Mi-8 helicopters from Lithuania, hundreds of various ground systems,
plus ammunition, supplies and support. And all of this is before you
count initiatives by private citizens. Like the time Lithuanian citizens
essentially crowd-funded a Bayraktar TB2. Some of the Baltic states have also played
significant logistics and support roles. In 2022 Lithuania was at the forefront
of getting
PzH 2000 self-propelled guns that had been donated to Ukraine
repaired and back in action. And just about any time any of NATO's allies
have advocated for more support for Ukraine or fewer restrictions being
placed on the donated systems, almost inevitably you'd find the Baltic states
throwing their support behind the idea. When Paris faced opposition for suggesting they
couldn't rule out sending NATO troops into Ukraine, the Baltic states backed up that position. When Ukraine has asked for
new classes of weapon systems, the Baltic states have usually
suggested that they should get it. And figures like Estonia's
President are on record saying that when Ukraine is provided
with Western weapons systems, there shouldn't be any restrictions on those
systems being used against targets in Russia. In essence while you can have some
voices in the European Union or NATO, like Hungary for example, that always seem to be
pulling back on the idea of more assistance for Ukraine, the Bal
tic states have often been at the
forefront of pushing for more to be done. While some nations have been
relatively coy or non-committal about what they think NATO's objective
should be for the war in Ukraine, the Baltic states have generally been far clearer in
calling for a Russian defeat and a Ukrainian victory. Estonia actually went even further and published
a strategy on how they think it can be done. And it isn't a strategy based on
the hope that a new wonder weapon will come along
to win the war,
or the hope that the existing sanctions regime will be enough for Moscow
to call the whole thing off. Instead it relies on elements
like winning the industrial race, signalling the willingness
to fight a long war, and raising the pain level for Russia
until it becomes "intolerable for the Kremlin." Obviously the decision
to publish a strategy like this doesn't indicate that it's going to be
taken up by NATO or the European Union. But what it does give us is insight into ho
w
countries like Estonia see the war in Ukraine, how they want to see it end, and how they
view it as relating to their own security. As that strategy puts it, "Should Russia prevail
in this war within the next 12 to 18 months, it would validate its assumptions
about our collective weakness that can be militarily challenged
and exploited in the short term." The overwhelming security objective
for these states is to prevent another invasion
and another occupation. And while that touches on
elements
like investing in their militaries, reinforcing NATO's
membership and cohesion, and preparing their societies to
respond should the worst happen, it also expands to the
idea of the war in Ukraine essentially being the front line of
their own strategic defensive efforts. And so I think it'll be very interesting
to see how those interests manifest throughout the rest of 2024. The course of the war in Ukraine
might be dominated by decisions made in Kyiv, Moscow or Washington DC. Bu
t despite their limited resources, given their
rather unique historical and strategic motivations, I wouldn't want to underestimate the potential
impact of these three small states on the Baltic Sea. And OK, channel update to close out.
The video this week was originally going to be on a different
topic chosen by the patrons, but for various reasons
I did have to change it around. Frankly though I'm glad I did,
because I've been talking about discussing the Baltic states for
more than a y
ear at this point. I know people generally love it
when I talk about major military powers, but sometimes I think it's
important to look a little bit closer and see just how some of
the smaller countries out there sometimes really can move the
needle on major strategic issues. Regarding future releases,
there'll be a long-term topic poll going up for the patrons in the coming week.
But I will say that after serious consideration I've decided we probably won't be
doing an April Fool's Day
release. Perun Gaming is also going to be on
hiatus at least for a little bit longer. I should have a new system ready
to go relatively soon, but we'll see. As always, let me just extend
my thanks to all of you. And particularly thank you for all the support
the video on the arms sector got last week. A good reception always feels great, but it feels
even better when it's on a data-centric video. So with my thanks to all of you
and of course today's video sponsor, I hope you enjoyed today'
s episode
and I'll see you all again next week.
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