So what if Russia can conquer a few roads in the Baltics within a few days?

Estonian army firing a Javelin anti-tank missile. Photo: mil.ee

Another bleak assessment of NATO's ability to protect the Baltic states from a Russian aggression was published today. Foreign Policy has a short version of it, Rand Corporation has published a longer one.

This analysis gets the basic geopolitics right. It assumes Belarus will remain neutral and thus an attack against Lithuania is unlikely. It also assumes Sweden will allow NATO to use her territory but won't get involved herself. Now the weak part.

What about Kaliningrad?

This analysis doesn't see Russia establishing a land corridor to the Kaliningrad enclave. Yet establishing that corridor would be a major goal of any Russian attack against the Baltic states. If this analysis saw that Russia can't establish that corridor then they have just established that Russia has a big unsolved problem when they think about attacking the Baltic states.

Russia inevitably has to think about Kaliningrad in such a scenario. What if NATO tries to conquer it? Or simply to bomb all the infrastructure in Kaliningrad to rubbish while defenders run out of ammo? And how will they solve the long term supply problem of Kaliningrad if Lithuania remains independent and hostile to Russia and NATO rules the Baltic sea?

Baltic states are bigger than 3 roads

Now, let's look more closely to what is Rand predicting. Rand's analysis assumes that Russian forces can get to the outskirts of Tallinn and Riga within 60 hours or faster. That's actually not very much. There are few major Latvian or Estonian city's on those roads. Large areas of Estonia and Latvia would remain effectively outside Russian control even then. I'm not talking about isolated villages but about cities with hospitals, factories, ports and even small international airports.

Estonia and Latvia have a combined territory of more than 100 000 km2. Rand doesn't specify how big those 22 Russian battalions are but let's assume they are 1000 men each. That's 22 000 men to control a territory of more than 100 000 km2 with more than 3 million people. There's no way Russians can establish anything similar to an occupation regime with such a small force even when there would be little resistance. Rand actually stops that analysis halfway because in addition to conquering the capitals Russians have to move 200 more kilometers to Ventspils and Liepaja, while they have 300 km of hostile territory to conquer between the roads that lead to Riga and Tallinn. Do you see on the map below the large unconquered territories in Southern Estonia and Western Latvia? Russia would need large additional forces to capture those territories.

Russian attack as seen by the Rand Corporation

Local conditions and defences

Rand criticizes the Estonian and Latvian battalions which are "extremely light, lack tactical mobility, and are poorly equipped for fighting against an armored opponent". So why haven't the Baltic states invested more in armor when they know they have to face heavily armored Russian army?

This is partly so because 10 years ago NATO told the Baltics to get rid of conscription and stop planning for a war against Russia that NATO considered impossible. Latvia and Lithuania did exactly that and now Latvia especially is militarily much weaker than the size of her population and GDP would allow. 

The other reason is that the Baltic states have developed armies meant to fight Russia in local terrain in local conditions. This means Baltic armies are not much worth in a fight in a Middle Eastern desert but on home terrain they are much stronger. 

Firstly, it's hard to understand why anyone would call them poorly equipped for fighting against an armored opponent. All Baltic armies have powerful anti-tank weapons: Estonia and Lithuania have Javelins, Latvia Spikes. Recent years have brought large additional purchases of powerful anti-tank weapons. 

What about limited mobility that led to destruction of whole units in that war game? The study notices that the terrain in the Baltic states is varied with open terrains, forests and wetlands. What they don't notice that the Baltic states are not a random patchwork of fields, forests and wetlands but that forests and wetlands tend to cluster in some areas, thus creating choke points where attacking armored units don't have much space to manoeuvre. 

One such choke point is in Eastern Virumaa where Russians can cross the Narva river only in a 10-km stretch of land north of Narva because to the south of Narva there are large wetlands on both sides of the river. The other is in Tartu, where two large lakes, a river, two large wetlands and a city create a large defensive barrier. Tallinn is bolstered to the east by a 200km belt of forests and swamps. In Latvia crossing the river Daugava would be a serious challenge. 

One should not forget that the Baltic states are not in a desert. Forest plays an important part in the defences of the countries. I have always seen Estonian army training defence either in forest or with their backs against forest. The logic is simple - armored units struggle in a forest so defenders can always simply escape to the security of the forest to avoid destruction. These local conditions have convinced the local commanders to prefer light infantry units with powerful anti-tank weapons over small armored units. 

Paramilitaries

All three Baltic states have paramilitary units. Western analysts often don't seem to understand why they are necessary, while Estonia is prioritizing them. NATO has almost no similar units to Estonian Kaitseliit but NATO know well a similar organization - Afghanistan's Taleban. Estonia's Kaitseliit has pretty much the same goal as Taleban - it is a force that is made to deny the opponent control of the territory. In fact Estonia has already done most of the things Rand advises in another policy paper on unconventional defense. 

Kaitseliit is a decentralized organization units of which are meant to function in isolation if necessary. Yet it has much better weaponry than Taleban ever had, for instance Kaitseliit is promised to get at least some Javelin missiles that Estonia recently bought. It is also meant to decentralize the question of war and peace. Rand's study questions whether the Baltic states should keep fighting after the initial Russian success. Yet in war the different units of Kaitseliit are meant to be almost independent of the central control so they will cease to fight when they want it, not when the government in Tallinn orders them. 

Conclusion

Rand's study is right to say that the balance of forces in the Baltic region is not in NATO's favour but I'm not sure if it's so clearly in Russia's favour as they say. Baltic states need support but they need advanced weapons more than large land units. If NATO can guarantee dominance in the air and in the Baltic sea that in itself would be an almost decisive advantage. Additional anti-aircraft and armored units would also help but I doubt if it actually takes 7 brigades to secure the Baltic states. 

Russia is indeed strong in the Baltic region but I'm not sure if it is right to call the current situation Russian superiority. It would be more correct to call it an absence of balance. We really have no idea of knowing how a war in the Baltic states would develop.