Strategic toughness toward Russia the key to keeping Baltic allies safe

by Ulrich Kühn
9 April 2018

In his latest piece for The Hill VCDNP's Ulrich Kühn argues that Washington should help to increase conventional deterrence in the three Baltic states (though on a modest scale) while, at the same time, supporting civilian resilience of the Baltics and engaging with Russia on imminent risk-reduction measures.

Expert from the column:

We saw an impressive show of Baltic unity when the presidents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania recently visited the White House. All three states share common history of decades of Soviet occupation, and they have all been NATO members since 2002. Today, each of them face the constant threat of Russian intimidation and meddling in their internal affairs.

Since the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014, things have gotten worse up to a point where NATO members decided to reassure the Baltic states by deploying roughly 5,000 military service personnel from different NATO allies, split across the three countries. Their goal was to deter Russian aggression. Even though most NATO officials consider the possibility of an outright Russian invasion or land grab in the Baltics to be remote, the three countries see it as a high-risk scenario, based on low probability but with high potential consequences.

Read the full contribution here.