Prospects for War in the Baltic: A modular analysis of Russia's growing aggression in the Baltic.

Prospects for War in the Baltic: A modular analysis of Russia's growing aggression in the Baltic. Modern War, Issue #26 - Magazine (Nov-Dec 2016)
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The broadening conflict in I Ukraine in recent years has brought frequent comments noting that whenever a NATO member state is attacked the others are required to come to its military defense. As this line of reasoning continues, therefore, we can safely surmise Russia’s Vladimir Putin would never send his military to war against a NATO member state, as the costs would immediately be too high and result in a conflict of transcontinental proportions.

In reality, Article V of NATO’s founding document was carefully worded to keep it limited. This was due to demands from the US Congress to preserve its unique constitutional prerogative to take America into war.

Article V actually ensures all NATO member states are able to make their own decisions about if, when, and how to respond to an attack on another member state. According to the text, if an “armed attack occurs... each [member state] will assist the party or parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

It is also commonly suggested any member state under attack can individually invoke Article V. In realty while any member state may announce it supports the article’s invocation, only the treaty organization’s own North Atlantic Council can formally and collaboratively call for an Article V response. In sum, NATO intervention actually requires collective agreement The only time Article V has been invoked was following the 11 September 2001 terrorist strikes against the US. Given the less than satisfying outcomes achieved by those efforts, no one is eager to see the alliance strained politically again. Similarly the applicable security article in the European Union’s enabling security document item 42.7 within the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon, reads "if a member state is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other member states shall have toward it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power. " in practice, that doesn’t oblige any signatory nation to do anything specific, as the phrase “by all the means in their power“ is again left to the separate member governments to define. The EU article goes onto state the mutual assistance obligation “shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defense policy of certain member states.”

The perception of the defense articles means Putin: and therefore Russia, is not automatically blocked from launching and prosecuting at limited war of the kind he’s alteady fought in Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine -against a NATO member state. As long ashe picks the right one(s) against which to do it, and times it optimally in the broader political sense (perhaps while another major crisis is going on elsewhere), he stands at least some chance of getting away with it. Viewed from the kremlin, the oiaeiN ‘ NATO states” refraining from} permanently stationing lhéiimiits in the new territories east ofthe Oder-Neisse line (in the (owner; satellites of the USSR) ”leaves open, the possibility naked aggression won’t automatically brim? on. their collettive intewehnonesinhe the literally have ‘36 skin in the game? 3%
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