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.
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.
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.