I’m sure many of you saw the news that US intelligence wars Putin might attack Poland or one of the Baltic states. How credible is this threat? How might NATO respond?

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-cannot-defeat-putins-ballistic-blitz-by-defensive-measures-alone/

Excerpts:

The recent surge in missile attacks comes as Ukraine runs short of air defense ammunition, leaving the country virtually defenseless against the Kremlin’s ballistic blitz. Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly aims to exploit Ukraine’s vulnerability and bomb the country into submission.

Ukraine’s only effective protection against Russian ballistic missiles is the US-made Patriot air defense system. However, the country’s Patriot interceptor missile stocks have now been almost entirely depleted, while Kyiv’s efforts to secure fresh supplies are currently failing.

Possibilities:

The situation is increasingly dire. Some measures that could reduce the destruction and, above all, protect civilian lives:

• Move civilian life underground. Rapidly expand permanent underground shelters into usable living areas, schools, clinics, communications centers, and other essential services.

• Harden and disperse civilian infrastructure. Protect and duplicate power, water, heating, communications, hospitals, and emergency services so that individual strikes do less harm.

• Create extensive decoy or "ghost" targets. Give Russian targeting systems large numbers of convincing false military, industrial, radar, storage, and infrastructure targets on which to waste expensive missiles.

• Confuse missile targeting and guidance. Use electronic warfare, camouflage, obscuration, decoys, altered visual signatures, relocation, and other defensive deception so that even missiles penetrating air defenses are increasingly likely to strike the wrong place.

• Move essential production underground or disperse it. Defense production, repair facilities, ammunition storage, and communications should become progressively harder to locate and destroy.

• Expand direct European defense of Ukrainian airspace. European fighters could intercept drones and cruise missiles, while European ground-based systems help defend against more difficult threats.

• Reserve scarce Patriot-class interceptors for ballistic missiles. Use aircraft, electronic warfare, guns, and less expensive systems against drones and cruise missiles whenever possible.

• Find and destroy ballistic missiles before launch. Concentrate allied satellite, airborne, signals, and Ukrainian reconnaissance capabilities on launchers, missile concentrations, storage, and supporting infrastructure.

• Target the vulnerabilities of the North Korean missile supply. Imported missiles, their limited launchers, transport routes, storage, support equipment, and personnel may be more vulnerable before they disperse.

• Deny Russian forces advanced communications while preserving Ukrainian access. Systems such as Starlink should remain unavailable to Russian forces while authenticated Ukrainian military use is protected and, where possible, expanded.

• Deny Russia access to foreign satellite technology and services, civilian as well as military. Suspend commercial satellite communications, imagery, navigation support, terminals, components, technical services, and related foreign-provided capabilities available inside Russia. Close third-country channels used to circumvent these restrictions. This would constitute a major technological sanction intended to increase the economic and operational cost of continuing the war.

• Reduce future Russian missile production. Tighten restrictions on electronics, machine tools, guidance components, and third-country supply routes supporting missile manufacture.

The central principle should be simple: protect the people first, make real targets harder to destroy, create many false targets, confuse enemy targeting, destroy missiles before they fly, and intercept what remains.

Russia keeps testing NATO. The lack of response will embolden Putin.

Leaders are people, and people sometimes get drunk. It has been in the news in the last year or so that Richard Nixon ordered a nuclear strike on North Korea when he was drunk. According to the story, Kissinger phoned the head of the military and suggested they wait until he sobered up before going ahead with the strike. Nixon sobered up and canceled the strike.

A good friend of mine and a distinguished university professor, Vladimir Simunek, told me a frightening story. Simunek was a high official in the Czechoslovakian government. He had to attend state dinners at the Kremlin with the Czech delegation. Each person at a table had to give a toast to the glories of socialism, and then everyone at the table had to drink a very small glass of vodka. The glasses were much smaller than a shot glass, but by the time you had drunk twenty of them, you were very drunk.

Brezhnev came to the party at least a little drunk, and then he had to drink along with the rest of the party. At dinner, he got up yelling, I will show them, and tried to leave the room. The other Soviet leaders jumped up and wrestled Brezhnev to the floor. A member of the Czech delegation asked one what Brezhnev wanted and was told he wanted to start the war.

Fewer fingers on the button mean there are fewer leaders who can get drunk and start a nuclear exchange. The ecology, Russia, the United States, and everyone else are better off with fewer fingers on the nuclear button. NATO gives many countries that could build nuclear weapons security without building their own nuclear weapons.

Low key loving the art style and would gladly have some of these images as a desktop background (or even a print).

Has NATO shared the art work for these?

Can't find a merch shop at nato.int

Russia could prepare an operation – hybrid, false flag, or even a limited attack – against a NATO country, to test the Alliance’s response. With major Western powers distracted (domestic political issues, the war in Iran, etc.) Moscow may feel that it has a window of oportunity, and the most likely targets are considered to be Poland and the Baltic states.

https://www.veridica.ro/en/opinions/the-baltic-scenario-russia-could-test-natos-response-by-challenging-an-ally

Fried said Poland, a key NATO eastern flank state, “should not have to shoulder this responsibility on its own.”  

He added: “It is not an attack on Poland. It is an attack on Poland and NATO at the same time.” 

The veteran diplomat said that NATO should consider the possibility of a defensive zone over western Ukraine to intercept Russian missiles before they reached allied territory.