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.
NATO assumption is that the Baltics will be largely overrun
That WAS (past tense) the assumption. After the showing in Ukraine, both the ineptitude and the atrocities, you can be certain they’re planning on defending the Baltics from the start.
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.
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?
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.
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.
That WAS (past tense) the assumption. After the showing in Ukraine, both the ineptitude and the atrocities, you can be certain they’re planning on defending the Baltics from the start.
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.
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?
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.