Reply to post: Re: I disagree with the rationale here

Re: I disagree with the rationale here

MarineTech,

I can't see NATO making any military response in defence of Ukraine. Had we allowed them to join, things would have been different. And Russia would have known upfront that they were attacking a country covered by a nuclear umbrella. But we didn't, so they aren't.

Since Russia has invaded Ukraine, and is seemingly bent on capturing large parts (maybe all) of the country - if we get involved at this stage we're risking war which could go horribly wrong and/or horribly nuclear.

Also Russia has been mobilising for 4 months for this. More if you count the mini-surge of forces to Ukraine's borders in April last year. So we couldn't put serious boots on the ground in a timely manner - we deliberately haven't forward based major NATO facilites in Eastern Europe, as part of the NATO Russia founding act from the 90s. Something I hope we'll now scrap, telling the Russians that if they want to be a threat, we'll defend. Obviously we could do some serious damage to the Russians with air support, but I doubt we could get the numbers of aircraft deployed in time to overwhelm the Russians, so we'd have to take large risks and accept losses. Plus how would Russia react to our aircraft from bases in the UK, Romania, Poland, Germany etc destroying their tank columns? At the least there'd be missile (and maybe special forces) attacks on some of our air bases. Maybe lobbing a few tactical nukes around, given they've only limited numbers of cruise missiles, and you need a lot of cruise missiles to take out a large airbase. Especially if they're not that accurate. The risks are too high.

What makes the nuclear threat work is not just us promising to protect the Baltic States. But us having troops there. So for the Russians to conquer the place, they've got to kill lots of our troops. That means NATO has skin in the game, a reason to reinforce or counter-attack - and maybe a reason for defensive tactical nukes. And then the full horrors of MAD. Of course modern NATO doctrine doesn't really involve massive nuclear strikes on Soviet tank formations in the Fulda Gap, so I don't quite know how we expect the nuclear dimension to work. Presumably the strategic nuclear shield is there to defend NATO from Russian tactical nuclear strikes, and superior airpower is there to break up the tank formations for the outnumbered ground troops. Given how little space there is to trade for time in the Baltic States, and how small our garrisons are, I think we're going to have to do some serious thinking about this in the next few months. I'm not sure small tripwire forces is enough anymore.