The danger became particularly clear this week at the Defense 24 Days defense fair in Poland: “It has already been decided that the Baltic States will be attacked as soon as Ukraine is defeated,” says military historian Philipp Petersen of the Center for Studies of a New World Generation of Warfare, from Washington, DC (USA).
Estonia’s Chief of Staff, Martin Herem, also said: “Russia can use conventional force against us. There’s no point in trying to scare him or convince him not to attack.”
The Estonian general also says that Russia has the weapons, ammunition and soldiers to attack NATO: “Even after two years of war in Ukraine.”
Former Polish general Waldemar Skrzypczak even warns: “The question is not if Russia will attack us, but when and where.”
Lieutenant General Marek Tomaszycki, commander of the Polish Armed Forces Command, said Ukraine was currently “a testing ground for Russian weapons and tactics”. After that, there could be a “war between Russia and Belarus on the one hand and Poland and its partners on the other.”
In the event of a Russian attack on NATO’s eastern flank, Russian soldiers should be “killed in the greatest possible numbers,” says Justin Bronk of Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.
NATO has only one means for this: our “air superiority”. Bronk explains: “The prospect of a long war of attrition would not deter Putin’s Russia. In Ukraine, they lost 450,000 people, dead and wounded, and they keep going forward.”
Instead, an invading Russian army in the Baltic States must be “shocked” by airstrikes so massive that the Kremlin orders its troops to withdraw after hours or days. The best means to do that are modern fighter jets like the F-35 and cruise missiles like the Taurus, Tomahawk or Storm Shadow.
But currently, only the US has adequate capabilities. The three countries in Europe that could theoretically do so in two to three years are currently making no effort to achieve such massive air superiority, warns Bronk.
A statement that the head of the Estonian Armed Forces Martin Herem also emphasizes. His words of caution: “We are not ready for a war with Russia. Neither Estonia nor NATO!”
That is why he calls for additional spending: “Five percent of the gross domestic product of the next two years for the defense of all NATO states, to rearm massively. After that, the share could be reduced to three percent.”
Germany had 1.7 percent defense spending in 2023, Estonia 2.7 percent.
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