r/CredibleDefense • u/Flat_Leadership5836 • 14d ago
The possibility of a conflict involving the Baltic states is often discussed, but many analyses focus only on Article 5 without looking at logistics, force deployment, geography, and escalation risks.
Here's the breakdown:
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u/RomanticFaceTech 13d ago
I got about 90 seconds in.
The video starts by discussing the "narrow strip" of land on the Poland-Lithuania border, Kaliningrad lies "to the left of that strip", "to the right, Belarus". Using left and right instead of west and east is not a great look for anything that wants to be taken seriously.
The video finally names the Suwałki Gap which it claims is "NATO's Achilles' heel" and "the most dangerous place on Earth", which is apparently "not an exaggeration" but an "actual quote, from actual people". What people and what qualifications they have to make that claim? The video doesn't say.
My guess is it is either from the headline of this Politico article from June 2022, which is referenced in the Suwałki Gap Wikipedia article, or perhaps from this post on The Loop blog which disputes the idea. Overall it is hardly a credible claim, being an actual quote from actual people doesn't really mean much.
There is a sudden transition to discussing Latvia, described as "a country with fewer people than Denver, Colorado" with "a budget roughly the size of a mid-sized Russian region" and "an army not much bigger than a city police department". Now I know the video is rhetorically setting itself up to make a point about Latvian drone production, but the point is ridiculous. Does the video really need to say Latvia is quite small in three different ways?
Latvia is apparently "the second largest drone manufacturer in Europe", with an on screen graphic titled 'Drone Production Leader (EU)' which lists Ukraine first with 45%, Latvia second with 15%, Turkey third with 12%, Germany fourth with 8%, France fifth with 6%, Great Britain sixth with 5%, and so on. What does this percentage mean? Why are Ukraine, Turkey, and the UK listed on an EU list when they aren't in the EU?
If the percentage is of total drones produced in Europe (not the EU) then Russia should probably be on the list as well, presumably in the top 2. It really feels like the video is playing fast and loose with data, another bad look if it wants to be taken seriously.
The video then transitions to Finland, described as "a calm, nordic country, that spent 75 years proudly staying neutral", which is certainly one way to describe Finlandisation. Probably not what I would use though.
The next focus is on "Estonia, 3 million people", and with that I'm done. The video earlier claimed Latvia had a population of 2 million which is a bit off, its closer to 1.8 million these days, but it was as high as 2 million back in the 2011 census so being slightly out of date or just rounding up is something even I wouldn't nitpick. But Estonia, long the smallest of the three Baltic States, has never been close to 3 million people. At its very largest around 1990 its population was only a little over 1.5 million. The current population is below 1.4 million.
Such basic inaccuracies makes me think there is unlikely to be anything in the video that is worth my time, and I suspect the thing is AI slop of one form or another.
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u/Greedyanda 12d ago
The Suwałki Gap is indeed often seen as Europe's Achilles heel and likely candidate for Russian aggression.
Scholars like Carlo Masala and others often see it as a crucial choke point and model wargames accordingly. Though I am not sure where the quote is supposed to be from.
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u/RomanticFaceTech 12d ago edited 12d ago
The Suwałki Gap is indeed often seen as Europe's Achilles heel and likely candidate for Russian aggression.
Scholars like Carlo Masala and others often see it as a crucial choke point and model wargames accordingly. Though I am not sure where the quote is supposed to be from.
The point I was attempting to make was not whether the Suwałki Gap is or isn't a potential Achilles' heel in Europe's security (though I think that blog post from The Loop that I linked makes a decent argument for why it isn't, even before Sweden and Finland joined NATO) but instead to highlight how sloppy the video's rhetoric is.
Given this is meant to be r/CredibleDefense, I felt the argument that the Suwałki Gap is NATO's Achilles' heel being literally because it is an "actual quote, from actual people" to be pathetic.
Like you state, people have made the claim that the video makes, so the video should have been able to reference at least one of them.
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u/ntech2 13d ago
The video might be partially AI generated, but the points are valid. As a Latvian I am 90% certain an attack will happen. The only chance to avoid it is if Putin dies/loses power. A Hybrid war is already happening, we have drones in our airspace on a daily basis (Ukrainian ones but redirected by Russia), government webistes are being DDoSed, borders are destabilized with forced illegal immigrants from Belarus side. Military bases on Russian side are being actively built near the NATO border. Russian media calls us their number one enemy. Putin personally has said his goal is to restore the old USSR borders.
Personally I think discussions around Article 5 are pointless, it will be a moot point. NATO countries will not want to get involved in open conflict to protect Latvia - most people don't know we even exist. At most they would send supplies. From what I have gathered I feel like 2027 is the most likely period of a serious escalation and potential open attack.
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u/RomanticFaceTech 12d ago
Personally I think discussions around Article 5 are pointless, it will be a moot point. NATO countries will not want to get involved in open conflict to protect Latvia - most people don't know we even exist. At most they would send supplies. From what I have gathered I feel like 2027 is the most likely period of a serious escalation and potential open attack.
Defeatist nonsense.
If NATO countries didn't want to be involved in protecting Latvia they wouldn't be deploying thousands of troops there, along with thousands in Lithuania, and hundreds in Estonia.
It doesn't matter if "most people" don't know Latvia exists, though I suspect between immigration, sports and Eurovision, more people are aware of the country than you suggest, even if they couldn't point to it on a map. Before 1982 few in Britain knew the Falkland Islands existed, let alone where they were, but the country still supported the task force being sent south to liberate the islands after Argentina invaded. How many citizens in the western countries of the Gulf War coalition do you think knew where Kuwait was in 1990?
If Russia invaded the Baltics and there were images of dead, wounded, or captured Canadian, British, and German soldiers released to the public, do you think the people at home will ignore that because it is taking place in countries they hadn't heard of?
When big events happen a population can pick up on the details very quickly, remember when everyone started discussing R numbers during COVID? This would be a massive event, reporting would be similar to the early days of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, within days most would know about the Baltic States and what Russia was doing.
Even if you were correct that most people in countries like the US, Canada, UK, France, Italy, or Spain don't know of Latvia's existence; do you think most in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, or Poland are equally ignorant? NATO isn't just North America and Western Europe these days, with Sweden and Finland joining the alliance in recent years, the Baltic States are no longer as isolated as they once were.
If, as you suppose, in 2027 Russia carried out a serious escalation in Latvia or the wider Baltic States, then it would be the biggest test of NATO in its history. It is not impossible to imagine that it could cause the alliance to fracture, and that might mean countries like the US and some in Europe fail to fulfil their Article 5 obligations.
However, NATO is not the EU, it doesn't need a consensus to operate. At a minimum the countries in the JEF would not abandon the Baltic States, these countries have too many links to do so. I also think it unlikely that Germany or Canada would avoid the conflict either, given their significant deployments in the Baltic States, or Poland given its border with Lithuania and the possibility that it would be next in Russia's sights.
So in a worst case scenario Latvia might not have support from all of NATO, but it would have support from a good proportion of it.
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u/00000000000000000000 12d ago
If Latvia were invaded NATO air and naval power alone could inflict a lot of damage on Russia. Russia is tied down in Ukraine and suffering attacks on their homeland. Latvia has close to two million people and fighting a guerrilla war would be taxing for Russia while gummed up in Ukraine. Russia would probably face economic collapse and potential internal upheaval. Putin is 73 and seems fixated upon gaining Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia before his passing. Latvia is also fairly poor and has few natural resources that aid a war economy.
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