NATO, US unable to defeat Russia in Baltic: RAND Corp.

… from Press TV,  Tehran

[ Editor’s Note:  These NATO moves are playing out just VT has been expecting, and not something that was hard to do. The Baltic States are indefensible and without their NATO chains they could sit out a war as neutrals refusing to get involved, which would be a smart play.

But someone in those countries bought into the big brother program while ignoring that Russia could never allow the Baltics to become a staging base, or Ukraine for that matter a forward operating region on Russia’s border.

The Baltics would be sacrificed to buy time to mobilize Western forces. Ukraine will then be the big cannon fodder. But with interior lines of communication and defense in depth Russia would have the defensive edge, and would have to go nuclear if faced with any conventional military operation deemed able to break it’s western border.

That is what nuclear forces are for, but by that I mean the large numbers of tactical mini-nukes that would be used in this combat scenario, something I doubt the RAND study whispered a work of. So what we have here is a classic trip wire double tap. Because they are “clean nukes” the likelihood of their being used is 100%.  Russia would have to use them in defense to prevent major NATO forces getting up to its border, an untenable situation, and then the NATO (the US) would, and then the big ones would be the next step.

NATO moves major forces into the area which it claims is a defensive move because of Russian aggression in “taking Crimea”, after a 90%+ vote to break away from the puppet coup government in Kiev. Remember all of the NeoCon and NATO talk of Putin wanting to re-establish the old Soviet Union? And none of these officers were put under medical leave for a mental disability, unless we are to understand that a country with 8% of the NATO country’s military budget thinks that is enough to take and hold Eastern Europe. The threat claim is a hoax.

And then we have part two, the RAND report which states the obvious and I would hate to learn what the government paid for it as I would have done it for a lot less. The Baltic States are a cannon fodder trip wire in the next war. And to prevent that a large reinforcement have to be put in, to “defend” NATO’s eastern flank. 

All of this is wanton aggression without any substantive justification except embarrassing propaganda slogans. Left out of the story is the US and NATO attack on Ukraine with the violent coup which has destroyed the country economically and put Western lenders in a cannon fodder situation. This is not leadership, this is gangsterism. There is nothing honorable about it… Jim W. Dean ]

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– First published  …  February  03,  2016 –

Russian military forces will swiftly defeat the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the US in less than three days should a war break out in the Baltic region, says a US military think tank.

The RAND Corporation, comprised of American military officers and civilian officials, made the projection Tuesday, in an analysis of NATO’s war games in Eastern Europe.

“The games’ findings are unambiguous: As currently postured, NATO cannot successfully defend the territory of its most exposed members,” the report read.

It said that during several war games conducted between 2014 and 2015, American forces and troops from Baltic States — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — proved unable to stop the advance of mechanized Russian units, suffering heavy casualties.

The scenario involved Russian forces knocking on the doors of the Estonian capital city of Tallinn or the Latvian capital of Riga within 36 to 60 hours.

“Such a rapid defeat would leave NATO with a limited number of options, all bad,” the report continued.

According to the analysis, the US-led alliance could attempt to mount a deadly counter-attack that would be met by a dramatic escalation by Russia, as Moscow deems the coordinated effort as a threat to its homeland.

The second option would be resorting to Cold War tactics where NATO would threaten Russia with a massive retaliation involving nuclear weapons.

A third option for NATO would be to admit a temporary defeat and appear toothless, while embarking on a new Cold War with Moscow.

However, RAND suggested that NATO could set pre-emptive measures in place by deploying about seven brigades in the area, including three heavy armored brigades backed up by air and artillery support, “to prevent the rapid overrun of the Baltic states.”

US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter unveiled plans on Tuesday to deploy more heavy weapons and armored vehicles to NATO’s eastern frontier.  He added that the new Pentagon budget aims to increase spending on Eastern Europe operations from about $800 million this year to $3.4 billion in 2017.

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Jim W. Dean

Jim W. Dean is VT Editor Emeritus.  He was an active editor on VT from 2010-2022.  He was involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews.  He now writes and posts periodically for VT.

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