We, in the United States, have little understanding, and even less real knowledge, of the constant, nagging fear that Russian aggression imposes of virtually all aspects of life in the Baltic States. People in the U.K. have a better idea but, again, it is nowhere near the same as living with the threat on your doorstep. The increase in that threat, as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has pushed Sweden and Finland to join NATO, despite years of neutrality. In the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia it has merely brought justified paranoia to the boiling point. The latest activities of Russia’s “shadow fleet of ships” in sabotaging undersea cables has only exacerbated the fear.
NATO has significantly increased its patrols in the area and, recently, a BBC reporter interviewed the Deputy Commander of the NATO Airborne Early Warning and Control Force (AWACS) while they were on one of those patrols. The conversation gives us all a better understanding of “Baltic realities”.
“I joined the air force 35 years ago, aged 18, and went straight to Germany, based on a Tornado aircraft,” says British Air Commodore Andy Turk. “It was towards the end of the Cold War, and we had a nuclear role back then. After the War, we hoped for a peace dividend, to move on geopolitically, but clearly that’s not something Russia wants to do. And now my eldest son is banging on the door to join the air force, wanting to make a difference too… It does feel a little circular.”
We (the reporter and Commodore Turk) are chatting at around 30,000 feet above the Baltic Sea, on a Nato surveillance plane equipped with a giant, shiny, mushroom-resembling radar dome, enabling crew members to scan the region for hundreds of miles around, looking for suspicious Russian activity. Air policing missions like this – and NATO membership more broadly – have long made tiny Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia feel safe. But U.S. President Donald Trump is changing that, thanks to his affinity with Vladimir Putin, which has been evident since his first term in office.
Trump has also been very clear with Europe that, for the first time since World War Two, the continent can no longer take U.S. military support for granted. That leaves the Baltics nervously biting their nails. They spent 40 years swallowed up by the Soviet Union until it broke apart at the end of the Cold War. They are now members of both the EU and NATO, but Putin still openly believes the Baltics belong back in Russia’s sphere of influence. And if the Russian president is victorious in Ukraine, he almost certainly will turn his attention towards them – particularly if he senses that Trump might not feel moved to intervene on their behalf?
Ian Bond, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, thinks that if a long-term ceasefire is eventually agreed in Ukraine, Putin would be unlikely to stop there. “Nobody in their right mind wants to think that a European war is around the corner again. But the reality is an increasing number of European intelligence officials have been telling us that. “Whether this is coming in three years or five years or ten years, what they are saying is the idea that peace in Europe is going to last forever is now a thing of the past. We can see what the Russian economy is being retooled to do,” observes Mr Bond, “and it ain’t peace.” Russia’s economy is currently on a war footing. Roughly 40% of its federal budget is being spent on defence and internal security:
More and more of the economy is being devoted to producing materials for war.
In a dramatic indication of the growing anxiety, Estonia, alongside Lithuania and Poland, jointly announced this week that they’re asking their respective parliaments to approve a withdrawal from the international anti-personnel mines’ treaty which prohibits the use of those mines, and which has been signed by 160 countries worldwide. This was to allow them “greater flexibility” in defending their borders, they said. Lithuania had already withdrawn from an international convention banning cluster bombs.
Dr. Marion Messmer, a senior research fellow on the International Security Programme at Chatham House, thinks the most likely trigger for a war with Russia would be miscalculation, rather than design. “One of the risks I see is that an accident could happen in the Baltic Sea that’s completely inadvertent, but that is essentially a result of either Russian grey zone activity or Russian brinkmanship where they thought they had control of a situation, and it turns out they didn’t. That then turns into a confrontation between a NATO member state and Russia that could spiral into something far more dangerous.”
Voters living in the Baltics don’t need persuading to devote a large proportion of public money to defence. Estonia, for example, is introducing a new law that makes it mandatory for all new office and apartment blocks of a certain size to include bunkers or bomb shelters.
This new and nagging sense of insecurity, or at least unpredictability, in the Baltics and Poland – what NATO calls its “eastern flank”, close to Russia – is evident in the kind of legislation being debated and introduced around the region. Poland recently announced that every adult man in the country must be battle ready, with a new military training scheme in place by the end of the year. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has also expressed interest in a French suggestion that France share its nuclear umbrella with European allies, in case the U.S. withdraws its nuclear shield.
So, Estonia is taking nothing for granted. That’s why it is busy stress-testing new army bunkers on its border with Russia and investing in drone technology. Though its armed forces wouldn’t be powerful enough to repel an attack by Russia, Estonia is studying lessons learned from the Russia/Ukraine conflict.
This report will, hopefully, shed some light and understanding of the day-to-day threat to the Baltics and Poland in the short term, and to Europe in general in the longer term, of Russia’s plans and threat, to those of us living outside of the immediate threat area. It should also be a wakeup call to U.S. voters who are allowing Trump’s obsession with Putin to fuel Putin’s blatantly obvious ambitions.
