An officer prepares to board a surveillance flight over Romania. A restricted internal NATO assessment of the situation states: "Russia's ability to undertake significant military action with little warning presents a wider threat to the maintenance of security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area. Russia can pose a local or regional military threat at short notice at a place of its choosing. This is both destabilizing and threatening for those allies bordering or in close proximity to Russia."
Unprotected In The East: NATO Appears Toothless In Ukraine Crisis -- Spiegel Online
If Russia were to engage in military aggression in the Baltics, NATO would be unable to defend the region using conventional means. An internal report highlights weaknesses in the alliance.
They were big words, spoken almost as if they had been written in stone. "Our commitment to collective defence is rock solid, now and for the future," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said more than a week ago, first in the Polish capital Warsaw and then, on the same day, in the Estonian capital Tallinn. Before that, the US ambassador to Latvia, speaking to local and American soldiers at a military base in the country, had sounded equally forceful when he insisted that the NATO partners and Latvia are standing "shoulder to shoulder."
Rasmussen's remarks were well intentioned but relatively toothless -- little more than whistling in the dark. The Balts and Poles sense it, and the NATO secretary general knows it.
Read more ....
My Comment: The major NATO powers have always threaded carefully when it came to the countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. I have always believed that there was always an unwritten but defacto understanding between NATO and Russia that these NATO member states will be treated differently .... hence that is the reason why there are no major NATO bases in these countries. Ukraine has naturally changed the dynamics of this relationship .... but before there are any major changes in NATO policy .... there will be a period of time where these Baltic states will be vulnerable to any Russian aggression and there is nothing that NATO can do about it.
2 comments:
From a ground war perspective... I agree with the piece. I do however believe that Russia would have to deploy their mobile air defensives and control the air completely before it could just waltz right into these states. That is a lot easier said than done
My thoughts on NATO's air and mid/long range stike capability to defend would be quite hampered if it was not immediate. If the politicial and corporate powers in NATO are unwilling, unsure or slow to respond..... Then I think Russia advances at the pace expected in tthis piece.
Post a Comment