RUSSIA FOREIGN POLICY PAPERS NATO IN THE BALTICS: Deterring Phantom Threats? ROBERT E. HAMILTON FOREIGN POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOREIGN POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. © 2018 by the Foreign Policy Research Institute COVER: Deployment of Raytheon Standard Missile-3 (Source: NATO) July 2018 FOREIGN POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE MISSION The Foreign Policy Research Institute is dedicated to bringing the insights of scholarship to bear on the foreign policy and national security challenges facing the United States. 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RUSSIA FOREIGN POLICY PAPERS NATO IN THE BALTICS: Deterring Phantom Threats? By: Robert E. Hamilton U.S. Army Colonel (retired) Robert E. Hamilton is a Black Sea Fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. His current assignment is as a professor in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College. He has served as a strategic war planner and country desk officer at U.S. Central Command, as the Chief of Regional Engagement for Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan, as the Chief of the Office of Defense Cooperation at the U.S. Embassy in Georgia, and as the Deputy Chief of the Security Assistance Office at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan. Colonel Hamilton was a U.S. Army War College fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., where he authored several articles on the war between Russia and Georgia and the security situation in the former Soviet Union. Colonel Hamilton holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Virginia. The views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not reflect the policy or position of the U.S. Army War College, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. 4 Foreign Policy Research Institute Executive Summary The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is right to focus on the security of the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, its most exposed members. However, the idea that deterring Russia in the Baltics requires the deployment of significant additional NATO forces there is misguided. First, Russia will perceive additional NATO forces in the region as present- ing an offensive threat and is likely to respond by increasing its own level of forces in western Russia. In this dynamic, known as the security dilemma, an actor's attempts to increase its own security by strengthening its military capabilities are seen as threatening to an adversary, and a spiral of arms racing often ensues, making war more likely. Next, in deploying additional forces to the Baltics, NATO would be attempting to deter Russia from doing something there is no indication it plans to do. Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has tread lightly in the Baltics, perceiving them as part of Europe, and therefore subject to a different set of geopolitical rules than places like Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. Rather than attempting to equalize the military balance in the Baltics, NATO should take a page from its Cold War playbook. It should station enough forces there to leave no doubt of its resolve to defend them, but not enough to pose an offensive threat to Russia. Additional forces should be stationed where they can reinforce the Baltics in a crisis, and NATO should periodically exercise this reinforcement. In this way, NATO can defend its most exposed members without raising the risk of inadvertent war with Russia. 5 Russia Foreign Policy Papers Wargames in the Baltics to the Baltics as presenting an offensive military threat to itself. In response to the By now, the story is depressingly familiar to perceived threat, it would deploy more of its anyone who follows the North Atlantic Treaty own forces. In this environment of mutual Organization (NATO): a series of wargames mistrust and military escalation, known in run by RAND and other organizations over the political science literature as the “security last several years concluded unambiguously dilemma,” the risk of inadvertent war grows that “as presently postured, NATO cannot significantly. So, deploying significant NATO successfully defend the territory of its most forces to Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia might exposed members.”1 In other words, whenever make war more, not less, likely. it decides to, Russia has the military capability to overrun Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in a Next, there is no indication that Russia plans matter of days. Such a scenario would present to attack the Baltics. Quantitative analyses NATO with a dilemma: accept a Russian fait that focus on the imbalance in force ratios in accompli or escalate to general war, with the the Baltics ignore the fact that—even putting looming threat of that war ending in a nuclear NATO’s Article 5 commitment aside—Russia exchange. plays by a different set of rules there than it does in other former Soviet republics. The ground forces used in the wargames Therefore, it is a mistake to assume that Russia’s approximated those available to the two interventions in Georgia and Ukraine tell us sides: 22 maneuver battalions for Russia anything meaningful about the likelihood of a to 12 for NATO. Further tilting the balance similar intervention in the Baltics. in Russia’s favor was the fact that many of the NATO forces were lightly armored and Instead of deploying significant combat power lacked mobility. The result of the wargames, into the Baltics, NATO should posture its the RAND report concludes, was “a disaster forces so that they can access the region given for NATO,” with Russian forces reaching adequate warning. Forces stationed in the Baltic capitals in 36 to 60 hours.2 Much of Baltics should be sufficient to signal to Russia the analysis of how NATO should respond that an invasion means war with NATO, while to this problem focuses on the amount of not presenting an offensive military threat to additional military capability it should deploy Russia itself. to the Baltics. RAND’s analysis concludes that “a force of about seven brigades, including The Security Dilemma, Miscalculation, and three heavy armored brigades—adequately War supported by airpower, land-based fires, and other enablers on the ground and ready to The potential for war is not and never was a fight at the onset of hostilities”3 might be an math problem. Attempts to reduce it to that adequate deterrent. by fixating on force ratios can make war more likely, not less. NATO’s focus on redressing There are two problems with the idea of the imbalance in force ratios in the Baltics projecting significant additional NATO combat is understandable from the perspective of power to the Baltics. First, Russia is likely to a military planner, but makes less sense if see the deployment of seven NATO brigades approached from a broader political-military perspective. Military planners often argue that 1 David A. Shlapak and Michael Johnson, “Reinforcing they must focus on a potential adversary’s Deterrence on NATO’s Eastern Flank,” RAND Corpora- capabilities, not his intentions, since the tion, 2016. Internet resource at: https://www.rand.org/pubs/ former are fixed in the short term while the research_reports/RR1253.html, accessed May 22, 2018. latter may be unknowable or subject to rapid 2 Ibid. change. This focus on material capabilities 3 Ibid. 6 Foreign Policy Research Institute Soldiers from the British Army’s Royal Welsh regiment stand in front of their Warrior armoured fighting vehicle near a base in Tapa, Estonia. These troops from part of the NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence in the East of the Alliance. (Source: NATO) leads military planners to insist that a certain European stare; this expansive definition will ratio of friendly to adversary forces is required make Russia difficult to reassure and easy to to deter aggression.