If Russia Started a War in the Baltics, NATO Would Lose – Quickly
If Russia Started a War in the Baltics, NATO Would Lose – Quickly by Dan De Luce, Foreign Policy
If Russian tanks and troops rolled into the Baltics tomorrow, outgunned and outnumbered NATO forces would be overrun in under three days. That’s the sobering conclusion of war games carried out by a think tank with American military officers and civilian officials.
“The games’ findings are unambiguous: As currently postured, NATO cannot successfully defend the territory of its most exposed members,” said a report by the RAND Corp., which led the war gaming research.
In numerous tabletop war games played over several months between 2014-2015, Russian forces were knocking on the doors of the Estonian capital of Tallinn or the Latvian capital of Riga within 36 to 60 hours. U.S. and Baltic troops — and American airpower — proved unable to halt the advance of mechanized Russian units and suffered heavy casualties, the report said…
Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO's Eastern Flank: Wargaming the Defense of the Baltics by David A. Shlapak and Michael Johnson, RAND Corporation
Russia's recent aggression against Ukraine has disrupted nearly a generation of relative peace and stability between Moscow and its Western neighbors and raised concerns about its larger intentions. From the perspective of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the threat to the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — former Soviet republics, now member states that border Russian territory — may be the most problematic of these. In a series of war games conducted between summer 2014 and spring 2015, RAND Arroyo Center examined the shape and probable outcome of a near-term Russian invasion of the Baltic states. The games' findings are unambiguous: As presently postured, NATO cannot successfully defend the territory of its most exposed members. Fortunately, it will not require Herculean effort to avoid such a failure. Further gaming indicates that a force of about seven brigades, including three heavy armored brigades — adequately supported by airpower, land-based fires, and other enablers on the ground and ready to fight at the onset of hostilities — could suffice to prevent the rapid overrun of the Baltic states…
Read the key findings and the entire report.
Winning first battles does not guarantee one will win the resultant war any more than losing first battles (as we tend to do) is predictive that one will lose the ensuing war.
So while I believe this assessment to be accurate, I do recommend it be placed into a more strategic context.
By coincidence last night BBC 2 broadcast a ‘war game’ on a crisis in Latvia, with ten “talking heads” of various backgrounds and abilities (including one with none): http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zpm8xsg
The full broadcast is on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06zw32h
I could spot a fair amount of film footage from the Ukraine, notably the Maidan Square and what appeared to be drama filmed elsewhere.
And Russia would want to do this against a nuclear armed NATO? If they are that delusional, then we have bigger problems than the Baltics and corrupt money grubbing NATO contractors. So, how exactly is this NATO Russia Cold War fantasy big tank battle going to happen with nuclear weapons on both sides?
Thank you very much for reading and debating our report.
A more difficult question is, would the US really use nuclear weapons as the first response to a Russian invasion of the Baltics I think JFK was right to move from massive retaliation to flexible response. The problem is, there is no credible local conventional force that can prevent the rapid fait accompli and initiate the uncertain process of escalation and the manipulation of risk.
We did not assess the probability that Russia would attack NATO. Rather we conducted an analysis of Russian military capabilities and the consequences of conflict to inform strategic choices. NATO could rest its defense strategy on an assumption of Putin’s intentions. Or it could aim to avoid provocation at all costs, if it believes the most effectual means of preserving peace is to remain completely unprepared for war. But that would be like leaving West Germany defenseless during the Cold War because we didn’t want to provoke the Soviets, but promising to take 6 months to deploy decisive forces to liberate our ally if attacked. Would that really have been seen as credible deterrence? Thus losing the first battle may lose the war because of the risk in applying the Desert Storm model of reversing aggression to a great power with no clear weapons.
I agree winning the first battle does not mean you will win the war, and we identified the need for additional forces to relieve the early-entry forces and restore territorial integrity. There would also be the need for simultaneous stability and special operations to counter irregular threats that would continue after conventional operations ended. We just chose to write a tight 16 page analysis on a narrow question of posture and deterrence so that it would be read. More to follow…
Returning to the provocation argument, 3 US ABCTs is not an offensive threat to 9-18 Russian brigades in the Western Military District, backed up by significant advantages in long-range SAMs and rocket artillery and a quck finger on the nuclear trigger. So there is no imperative for Russia to conduct a pre-emptive attack. They are already improving their force posture and modernizing their forces as fast as their resources permit. It may provoke political and economic coercion, but our Baltic allies much “prefer deterrence to liberation.”
PS, before joining RAND I served as an Army strategist, SAMS planner and Armor/Cavalry officer.
v/r
Michael Johnson
Is this really how “wargaming” works?
You use the form of an operational-level wargame, which is fine–but then you basically give the national leadership a single policy option to respond. No discussion of operational logistics or much else. It works, or it doesn’t. Are there really no other options?
Sorry, not saying Russia gets a veto–but this COA has to account for how you’re going to mitigate the Russian view and response on a number of levels. If you’re wargaming at this level and you basically say, “let the State Department figure that out” we return to the outstanding efforts we saw from the Department of Defense in 2002-03.
Using a wargame to pile on to the policy proposition that the Army needs 500 more ABCTs is out of the lane of this tool.
If President Obama has, indeed, adopted the “Nixon Doctrine” as his strategy, then will he (President Obama) not require that the EU NATO members (who recently REDUCED their defense budgets?) will have to — re: “NATO losing,” etc. — (a) reverse course, (b) determine a way forward themselves and (c) act, themselves, primarily as the ones that must address these problems?
http://thediplomat.com/2014/05/obamas-nixon-doctrine/
The role of U.S. thus, and then as now, to be seen, not so much as “leading,” but more as simply providing a strong helping hand?
The regional nations — such as the EU, however — calling our bluff on these matters; this, by doing next to nothing (budget, military) to address these threats and problems.
Thus, the region(s) go to hell.
In this game of “chicken,” each side (the U.S. and the regional powers) expecting that the other, when things get bad enough, will be forced step in, will be forced to take charge and, accordingly, will be forced to pay the price/pick up the tab?
Thus, those that cry for American leadership, and for American’s to take the lead, and for America to, accordingly, pay the price and bear the burden of what might/should be seen more as regional responsibilities — these folks to reconsider, in the light offered above, their such point-of-view?
(Q: In the case of the richer nations of the EU, the question becomes just how long are the American people required to carry these, now very rich nations, with magnificent social programs, on our back?)
President Obama’s thinking?: “Your (the EU) the one’s who are primarily getting screwed (think Russian aggression and ME refugee crisis) — and these matters are far from our shores — so you better get off your ass and get more in the game; this, before this stuff comes to cost you more than it already does.
It is hardly a coincidence that this report has been published at the same time the national commission on the future of the army has released its findings, and the chiefs and service secretaries deliver their posture statements to congress. The former two are reinforcing fires to the latter. The Rand Survey, commissioned by an Army seeking to boost its share of defense spending, is what critical reasoning would call confirmation bias, an ‘unbiased’ source justifying expansion of U.S. ground forces in Europe, as the national commission also recommends. Russia is hardly worthy of a reapportionment of U.S. forces. Between their commitments in Crimea, Donets Basin, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, the Arctic and now Syria, not to mention the plunge in oil prices, the very last thing on Russia’s mind is a massive land invasion of the Baltic 3 that would trigger a world war. Let’s also not forget that Russia has fought a second rate Ukrainian Army to a stalemate in an area adjoining Russian supply bases and dominated by ethnic Russians. That’s about the best it can do. It’s air force has expended most of its stock of precision guided missiles. Strategically, its economy and ageing population are undermining any modernization efforts. None of those efforts deal with expanding its strategic reach, but rather enhance ballistic missile capabilities and ship building (which it is now considering privatizing to raise capital). The idea that Russia has intentions of conquering the Baltics is absurd.
the political and economic conditions under which one would suppose Russia would conduct a ground war to seize the Baltic 3 is absurd. I fail to see how such an operation would be in their interest, nor generate enough benefit to outweigh the risk of triggering a global war. Added to that is their abysmal readiness levels and laundry list of other military commitments, and the ever present risk of war with China. I think it is far more likely the Russians will continue to exhaust themselves in areas of more meaning to them, rather than take on a pointless adventure in the Baltics. Certainly not a grave enough risk to justify additional forces. And yes, I think our leaders are exaggerating the threat to scare congress into a larger appropriation. Lastly, if additional forces are the answer, why not European forces? If we continue to subsidize their defense, they’ll never get off the security teat. Let Germany activate a few of the panzer battalions it recently axed. America isn’t the solution to Europe’s problems.
Is it so that this war game did not take into account nuclear weapons? I don’t know how to read parts of the report. What is meant by “escalation” and “escalatory” in this war gamed paper? Fears of that would put a stop to many of the war gamed aspects of this paper.
The deterrence package is not deterrence although I understand what the planners are doing. Their hands are tied.
At the height of the discussion about sending weapons to the Ukraine, Angela Merkel made an almost emergency visit to Washington. When the Turks shot down a Russian plane recently, what was the reaction of NATO, especially given the chances of starting a world war? Russia too?
Trump and Sanders and low voter turn out are a consequence of the failures of the Washington establishment, an establishment that has not taken any responsibility for either phenomenon. How is RAND a non-partisan think tank when it receives funding from the Army?
Why did RAND exclude the South Asian cross border insurgencies/proxy wars in its studies? Was RAND or its scholars politically pressured in any way? Or was this simply against the culture of RAND, where South Asian insurgencies have long been ignored because they are not politically popular as a subject, even with Afghanistan?
From Mike Lofgren’s Deep State:
I began commenting on milblogs on the old Abu Muqawama site, a conduit for COINDinistas within the Deep State. I was too naive to understand and now these same people are seeded as contractors or political operatives within the Deep State.
Ryan Evans of War on the Rocks and Andrew Exum, a deputy something or other I believe, never have (or had in Abu Muqawama’s) anyone disclose their financial interests in promoting a policy. Their is great talk of civility but never any financial disclosure.
RAND products are contributing to the creation of a line of control in Eastern Europe, the same sort of militarized nuclear backed line of control as that between India and Pakistan. There is not other logical way to look at any of this.
It is dangerous. A conscience is a real thing to be examined.
There are only three ways this blog can survive: to ban commenters and stay within the confines of a Strategy Page, War on the Rocks, or other purveyor of the Deep States propaganda but without allowing a greater latitude in its comments, serving as a kind of collector of experience from veterans, or to survey peer reviewed academic literature, the kind of literature never really seriously considered by any of the Deep State military “journals”.
A soul seems a very easy thing to sell in Washington or London.
I want to apologize for not making clear in my earlier comments that I am responding to a larger complex of factors within which think tanks are embedded. I don’t mean to be disrespectful.
From Mike Lofgren’s Deep State:
“The Deep State is the big story of our time. It is the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism and the militarization of foreign policy, the financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy, the rise of a plutocratic social structure that has given us the most unequal society in almost a century, and the political dysfunction that has paralyzed day-to-day governance.”
My comments in this thread are directed at the institutional structure and its group think, a structure within which I know many good people are embedded.