Not an alarmist, but the notion of a limited attack on NATO as part of Putin’s end-game is more credible than many think.
Biggest mistake you can make in war is assuming your enemy thinks like you and wants the same things you do. Most rational thinkers understand NATO vs. Russia would be short, nasty affair that Russia would lose badly. At least on a military basis.
But if you’re Putin - you already have fallen short of your goals and want to salvage something other than total conquest of Ukraine. Formally annexing Belarus and fragmenting NATO is MAYBE a prize that the average Russian would accept, or at least keep them from calling for Putin’s head.
What does that mean? Poland is too strong, you can’t get to Romania, thus the Baltics are the obvious target. Small, right on your border, has water access, and Trump would no doubt refuse to honor Article 5 based on their limited stature. The military outcome is perhaps irrelevant to the real prize - punching NATO’s fringes in the face, having a muddled response and thus showing Article 5 to just be words on a page. Even if you don’t capture the Baltics, and lose militarily, if NATO doesn’t respond overwhelmingly, then he might consider that a victory in itself.
Hell - invading NATO countries and watching the U.S. thrash and get even further divided over their lack of response is probably at least as valuable as any slice of Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia. And they very well could be thinking that an isolationist stance over a ‘far-off’ war in the Baltics is perfect ammo to energize struggling Trump’s base for midterms.
The risk:reward is suprisingly high for Russia, in a world where they’ve painted themselves into a corner surrounded by bad choices. Trump’s likely to be weakened significantly in the midterms. All of their options suck - but the circumstances to get SOMETHING they can point to as a win will probably never be better than it is now. A last, insane move primarily for the sake of damaging NATO & US unity. They could possibly take that back to the Russian nationlist crowd as a minor consolation prize for getting their asses handed to them by inferior little ukraine.
Trump is their last best hope, and he may never be more useful than he is while he still controls the GOP majorities. It’s easy and fun to dunk on Russia’s struggles - but that only increases the chance that they do something even more desperate and crazy, like invade the Baltics. It’s not that unlikely, big picture. Thoughts?
I can’t see them doing anything to Poland, as it’s the strongest country they could possibly choose to mess with, and it would require a massive build up thorugh Belarus that would be easy to spot. Estonia seems the softest target, they hold grudges and would like to flex on Kaja Kallas if they felt they could get away with it.
Likesay - the military outcome of a test of NATO is almost irrelevant - the victory would be to show that article 5 doesn’t really exist if you’re not one of the big members. I expect there would be a European response independent of however the US weaseled it’s way out of a committed response, though.
We keep talking about what ‘the US’ would do, when people really mean what Trump would do. Trump is special, he’s clearly a russian asset and once he dies, it seems highly likely that whatever follows won’t be as personally invested in the russian corruption project. That’s frankly what makes me think it’s likely that the russians try some fuckery sooner than people think - Trump is their once-in-a-millenia prize and his window to help them is closing, maybe as soon as the midterm elections in the states.
European NATO leaders aren’t morons. They probably know a lot more of the specifics of how Trump works for the Russians more then average muggle does, and have prepared responses ready independent of the United States.
Oh that part is already a known fact. When that orange turd somehow sleezed his way back into the white house, several EU Nations were already tightening their alliances with each other and ramping up their own military because they saw the writing on the wall