"[W]ere Russia to use force against the alliance by taking a small portion of land in, for instance, eastern Latvia, EFP forces, which are based far from the Russian border, might arrive too late to engage in combat (especially given that NATO’s decisionmaking process could be quite slow). Consequently, Russia might hope to get away with a military fait accompli.
To ensure the trip wire is pulled in a conflict, NATO should ask Washington to deploy a U.S. Army battalion, split equally among the three EFP deployments in the Baltic states and tasked with continuously patrolling and monitoring borders with Russia. Yet, to maintain alliance unity, NATO should avoid additional large-scale force deployments to the Baltics.
NATO must encourage civilian resilience measures to deny Russia the ability to escalate through nonkinetic operations, perhaps by making resilience-building expenditures count toward NATO members’ 2 percent goal for defense spending.
Allies must counter Russian propaganda and disinformation targeted at Russian minorities in the Baltic states. The alliance should consider a joint NATO/EU fund for financing Russian-language media outlets, journalists, and social media accounts.
NATO members should closely monitor the state of integration and representation of the Russian minorities in the Baltic states, perhaps through a reporting mechanism."
https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/03/2
"Currently, the Baltic states operate Russian-gauge railroad tracks, while other European NATO members utilize a standard European gauge (a single line from Poland to the Lithuanian city of Kaunas is the sole exception). This incompatibility means that trains carrying military equipment and supplies from larger NATO bases in Germany or Poland would have to transfer their cargo to Russian-gauge trains or proceed via ground convoys to their destinations.
Baltic rail infrastructure significantly lags behind other European nation-states. A north-south axis across the three countries is currently nonexistent. Plans to correct this are already in motion in the form of Rail Baltica, the largest EU infrastructure investment project in the Baltic states. Ultimately connecting the capitals of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania via European-gauge track (along with an additional connection to Helsinki via Tallinn), Rail Baltica would allow for a standardized and uninterrupted rail link to the rest of NATO, with freight service up to 120 kilometers per hour. Though broad commitments by the EU and Baltic states have been made, the project is not expected to be completed until 2025.
One potential source of conflict is Kaliningrad, or more specifically, the railway linking Kaliningrad to mainland Russia via Lithuanian territory. Kaliningrad transit was a political issue back in 2003 when Lithuania was preparing to enter EU. Moscow and Vilnius then reached an agreement that would allow Russian citizens to travel to and from Kaliningrad with a “facilitated transit document” instead of a visa. This document is easier to acquire than a visa, as it requires only twenty-four hours’ notice and far less scrutiny.
As a 2015 report from Center for European Policy Analysis argues, this might be a way to transport irregular militias to Lithuanian territory—similar to the “little green men” in Crimea or the Donbass. In August 2014 a Kaliningrad transit train halted midway near Kaunas, Lithuania’s second-largest city, and its hydroelectric power station. Seeking to prevent any unauthorized exits, the authorities scrambled to establish a perimeter around the train and to identify and address the causes of the interruption. Although the reason for the train’s halt ultimately turned out to be mechanical, the response to the incident underscores the concern that authorities have held regarding any irregularities.
Russia could also exploit Kaliningrad transit by staging a sabotage or “terrorist” attack on a railway, accusing Lithuania of deliberately failing to deal with the issue, and then pursuing an armed invasion masquerading as a humanitarian mission, thus cutting off Lithuania from Poland. Such scenarios may seem alarmist but are not without precedent: in 2014, the Russian government pushed a convoy of over one hundred trucks (ostensibly carrying humanitarian aid) into eastern Ukraine without Ukrainian or international permission.
In 2015, former CEO of Latvian Railways Ugis Magonis was apprehended by Latvian anti-corruption officials in a too-cliché-for-cinema scene involving a high-speed car chase and half a million euros in a trunk. Magonis was himself close to the head of Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin. (Yakunin was placed on a US blacklist after the 2014 annexation of Crimea, although he avoided EU blacklist due to Latvian lobbying.) Russian Railways has also increased its holdings over the Latvian rail carrier LNT. The deal itself was not transparent and reportedly involved multiple offshore dealings. All these cases indicate that the Baltic railway system may remain vulnerable to Russian influence.
The ability for Russian forces to rapidly airlift men and materiel within its borders (and its “near abroad”), the increasing force projection capabilities of the Russian garrison in Kaliningrad, and the proposed network of prepositioned munitions and weapons stockpiles will require a major review of how NATO intends to execute contingency plans from Tallinn to Varna."
https://mwi.usma.edu/baltic-trainspotti
"Russia has three motorized rifle brigades, one motorized regiment, and three airborne regiments based within close proximity to the Baltic states, according to open source reporting. Those forces are distributed within mainland Russia as well as Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave.
The special operations-heavy makeup of Russian forces within striking range of the Baltics telegraphs a readiness for the type of hybrid warfare assaults Russia conducted in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, the report by Harris and Kagan said.
“Russian military leadership, practice, and ad hoc deployment along the Baltic borders all suggest Putin is much more likely to pursue a hybrid approach in the Baltic over a conventional mechanized invasion,” they wrote.
Thus, to launch a conventional invasion of the Baltics, Russian commanders would have to shift mechanized forces from other locations in Russia toward the region, and expose Kaliningrad to a NATO counterattack.
With its constellation of spy satellites and other reconnaissance assets, NATO would notice Russia internally reinforcing its military forces on a scale required to mount a successful land invasion of the Baltics, thereby betraying the element of surprise.
“There are three mechanized divisions near the Ukrainian border compared to just one airborne division near the Baltic, which would not be optimal for large-scale mechanized offensives,” Harris and Kagan wrote.
“The West would be foolish to over-focus on any one form of possible future war with Russia,” Harris and Kagan wrote in their report, adding that the deployment of NATO armor and airpower to build a defensive bulwark against a Russian land invasion of the Baltics may not be an effective deterrent.
Many Western military analysts say that Russia’s war in Ukraine is a case study in Moscow’s contemporary “hybrid warfare” doctrine. Therefore, along that line of thinking, Western military leaders would be wise to study Russian tactics in Ukraine to anticipate how a hypothetical Russian hybrid assault on a Baltic country would play out.
When he was U.S. president, Barack Obama levied punitive economic sanctions against Moscow for its military aggression in Ukraine. Obama also kick-started the U.S. military’s pivot to Eastern Europe.
The Trump administration, however, has taken a tougher stance against Russia in both Ukraine and across Eastern Europe. Notably, it has approved the delivery of American anti-tank weapons to Ukraine and upped the budget for U.S. military operations in Eastern Europe to deter Russia.
The formidable U.S. Javelin anti-tank missiles—set for delivery to Ukraine this year—won’t be enough to tip the balance of power in Ukraine’s favor should Russia invade. Yet, the Javelins will increase the cost in blood and treasure that Russia would suffer in such a war.
More importantly, Trump’s decision to supply Kyiv with lethal weapons underscores both a commitment to Ukraine’s security as well as a commitment to deter Russia in Eastern Europe more broadly.
That’s a message, many believe, that Moscow is sure to consider when plotting its next move.
“Ukraine’s struggle against Russian revanchism is NATO’s,” Clark and Karber wrote. “It’s time the West recognize that.”"
https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/03/2
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