The Growing Tensions Between NATO and Russia Raise Concerns About Potential Conflic
As tensions continue to simmer between NATO and Russia, both sides are taking steps to bolster their military readiness and capabilities. NATO is strengthening its force posture in Eastern Europe, while Russia is modernizing its armed forces and enhancing its nuclear deterrent.
This heightened military posturing on both sides reflects the deteriorating diplomatic relations and growing geopolitical rivalries. Experts warn that the risk of miscalculation or unintended escalation is rising, raising concerns about the potential for a wider conflict erupting between the two sides.
The article examines the key military developments and strategic calculations driving NATO and Russia's actions, providing insight into the complex geopolitical dynamics at play and the implications for regional and global security."
This description tries to capture the essence of the topic - the military preparations and heightened tensions between NATO and Russia - without using the specific phrase "total war." Instead, it focuses on the broader themes of deteriorating relations, military posturing, and the risks of escalation. Please let me know if you would like me to modify the description further.
This heightened military posturing on both sides reflects the deteriorating diplomatic relations and growing geopolitical rivalries. Experts warn that the risk of miscalculation or unintended escalation is rising, raising concerns about the potential for a wider conflict erupting between the two sides.
The article examines the key military developments and strategic calculations driving NATO and Russia's actions, providing insight into the complex geopolitical dynamics at play and the implications for regional and global security."
This description tries to capture the essence of the topic - the military preparations and heightened tensions between NATO and Russia - without using the specific phrase "total war." Instead, it focuses on the broader themes of deteriorating relations, military posturing, and the risks of escalation. Please let me know if you would like me to modify the description further.
Transcript
00:00As the war in Ukraine is entered into its third year, the conflict continues to appear having no immediate end in sight.
00:05While Ukraine has largely defeated the Russian Navy at sea, the war on the land appears to be slowly shifting against Kiev,
00:12while Moscow appears to be increasingly emboldened.
00:14In February of 2024, the Russians finally capture the city of Avdivka,
00:18a major suburb of the city of Donetsk that had a pre-war population of more than 31,000 people,
00:23and Russian forces have been making a slow, creeping advance beyond Avdivka ever since.
00:28An American foreign aid package for Ukraine worth $61 billion continues to be held up in the U.S. Congress,
00:33while in March, Vladimir Putin secured his re-election in Russia for a fifth term as the nation's president,
00:39meaning that he will continue ruling in the Kremlin at least until 2030,
00:42with a possibility of getting extended even further for a sixth term until 2036,
00:47by which point he will be 83 years old, not too much older than Joe Biden is today.
00:52Putin is already the longest-serving head of state in Russian or Soviet history since Joseph Stalin,
00:57and by the end of his current term in 2030, he will surpass Stalin.
01:00And if he serves out through 2036, he will even surpass the reign of Catherine the Great,
01:05to become the longest-serving head of state in Russian history since Peter the Great himself,
01:09the founder of the Russian Empire.
01:11With his political position as Russia's leader now secured for the rest of the decade,
01:15his greatest political opponent, Alexei Navalny, dead and silenced,
01:19and with a major terrorist attack in Moscow that his government is attempting to pin on the Ukrainians,
01:23there are whispers that the Kremlin is already preparing to roll out a second round of military mobilization in the country,
01:29that'll seek to call up an additional 300,000 men for the war in Ukraine.
01:33Even without the mobilization, the Russian armed forces have been able to offer up
01:37attractively high enough salaries to poor Russians in the country,
01:40and to even poorer foreigners enlisted as mercenaries,
01:43that they're still seeing a fairly consistent stream of around 30,000 newly recruited soldiers a month to the front line in Ukraine,
01:50according to the website Ukraine Conflict Monitor.
01:52Despite suffering massive casualties in Ukraine,
01:55the Russian ground forces numbers present on the front line have been continually increasing with time.
02:00According to the Royal United Services Institute, a major UK think tank,
02:04the Russians have greatly grown their troop numbers in Ukraine up from only around 360,000 soldiers at the beginning of 2023,
02:11to around 470,000 soldiers only a year later at the beginning of 2024.
02:16Putin himself has openly stated earlier this year,
02:19that his plan is to raise the Russian troop levels in Ukraine up to approximately 600,000 strong,
02:24which will be more troops in Ukraine than the United States had present in Vietnam during the peak of the war in April of 1969.
02:31And in addition to raising its manpower for the war,
02:34Russia has also radically transformed its entire economy into a wartime economy,
02:39relentlessly refocusing most of its entire economic output on the war effort now.
02:43For the first time in its modern history,
02:45Russia's new updated military budget for 2024 has soared upwards to a whopping 7.1% of the nation's total GDP,
02:54coming out to roughly 12.8 trillion Russian rubles, or approximately 140 billion US dollars in nominal terms.
03:01This places military spending at roughly 35% of the entire Russian government's budget now,
03:06and this massive new annual military spending has been signed into Russian law to last at least through 2024, 2025, and 2026.
03:15This is a huge 29% increase in Russian military spending from the year before in 2023,
03:21and it shows that Russia is deadly serious about shifting its economy to a wartime footing,
03:25and pursuing all of its military objectives in Ukraine to the bitter end.
03:29In purely nominal terms, the Russians are now spending nearly as much on their military as Germany, France, and Italy all are combined.
03:36But adjusted to purchasing power parity or PPP terms,
03:39the gap between Russian and European military spending is vastly closer together this year,
03:44with the Russians spending approximately $372.3 billion on their military,
03:49and every single European member state of NATO combined spending about $380 billion on theirs,
03:56placing Russian and European NATO defense spending on about an equivalent scale for 2024 in PPP terms.
04:02As a result, Russia's military production levels are soaring.
04:05According to the Royal United Services Institute,
04:07the Russians are now on track to produce about 1,500 tanks for their army this year alone,
04:13about half of the total number they're estimated to have lost in Ukraine since the invasion began,
04:17and more tanks than are within the armed forces of the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden all combined.
04:24According to the Estonian Ministry of Defense,
04:27Russia is currently projected to produce roughly four and a half million rounds of artillery in 2024 alone,
04:32and is also producing about a hundred long-range missiles every month.
04:36On the 11th of March, CNN reported that the Russians were on track to produce three times more artillery munitions in 2024
04:43than the United States and European NATO allies combined.
04:46And in addition to rapidly ramping up their own domestic production of munitions,
04:50the Russians are believed to have imported millions of additional rounds of artillery from North Korea,
04:54and thousands of explosive kamikaze drones from Iran,
04:58with hundreds more being produced every month, which is how, according to the Estonian military intelligence,
05:03the Russians have begun to outfire the Ukrainians in artillery along the front line by a ratio of 7 to 1.
05:09Ukraine is currently struggling with acute shortages of both ammunition and manpower,
05:13a fact represented by the average age of the Ukrainian soldier on the front line being 43 years old right now.
05:18Historically, the Ukrainian government has only drafted men for the war between the ages of 27 at a minimum,
05:23and 60 at the oldest, in an attempt to conserve their smaller, younger generation as much as possible,
05:28for the sake of the country's future and economy.
05:30But, as a result, Ukraine's draftable manpower pool has been made artificially smaller
05:35by effectively exempting men between 18 and 26 from conscription.
05:39And according to the AP, there's only around 300,000 heavily experienced but tired Ukrainian soldiers
05:45currently manning the front lines up against potentially twice as many Russian soldiers
05:49who have significantly more ammunition available to fire.
05:52In order to prepare for a widely expected renewed Russian offensive on the front lines in the summer,
05:56the Ukrainians recently amended their conscription law to lower the draft age for men from 27 down to 25,
06:02which will hypothetically open up a pool of an additional 400,000 new 25 and 26 year old men for the war
06:08who can be conscripted from.
06:10But as Ukraine struggles to acquire more ammunition and manpower,
06:13and as Russia surges their own munitions and manpower onto the front line to potentially overwhelm them,
06:18there is increasingly an amount of concern building that the summer of 2024 could end up becoming decisive,
06:24and potentially disastrous for the Ukrainians.
06:27Putin and Russia's ultimate objectives in Ukraine and strategies to pursue those objectives
06:32remain uncertain in the dense fog of war.
06:34Nobody in the world, least of all myself, really knows what's going to happen next in Ukraine,
06:39and anything could end up potentially happening.
06:41But, as it stands now, it seems fairly clear that Russia's priorities have changed very little
06:46since the opening days of the invasion more than two years ago.
06:50As a minimum goal, the Russians will almost certainly seek to expand their territorial control in Ukraine
06:54over all four of the Ukrainian provinces that they unilaterally declared to annex into Russia back in 2022,
07:00encompassing the entirety of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson provinces.
07:05Putin's signed into Russian law recognizing all of these provinces as core integral territories of the Russian Federation,
07:11meaning that according to Russian law and the Russian perspective, as baseless as it seems to everyone else,
07:16the continued Ukrainian presence in these provinces is perversely viewed as a hostile occupation of Russia.
07:22And so the Russians will continue to try and drive them out as much as possible
07:25and force the Ukrainians into recognizing their total loss.
07:28In addition to demanding that the Ukrainians recognize the cession of these four provinces,
07:32the Russians will also want Ukraine to accept the previous laws of Crimea and Sevastopol as well.
07:37While it also even further appears that Russia will likely try and demand through military force or threats
07:42the additional annexations of the Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Odessa.
07:45Russian missile and drone attacks on both have sharply escalated in 2024,
07:49while Putin himself has frequently claimed them each to be supposedly rightfully Russian cities
07:54and labeled them both as priority war aims.
07:56As of the most recent 2001 census in Ukraine,
07:59both cities had majority of Russian-speaking populations and significant ethnic Russian minorities
08:04that Putin's Russia now appears bent on directly incorporating.
08:07It therefore follows that in order to secure control over Kharkiv and Odessa,
08:11Ukraine's second and third largest cities no less,
08:14the Russians will probably also try and demand the further annexations of the Kharkiv, Mykolaiv,
08:18and Odessa provinces as a condition for peace as well.
08:21And all of them will probably see increased Russian military assaults eventually.
08:25It also stands to reason that if Russian advances on the battlefield are particularly successful,
08:30they will also likely attempt to demand the annexation of parts or all of the Dnipropetrovsk province as well.
08:35The final province of Eastern Ukraine that has a large Russian-speaking and ethnic Russian minority
08:40that Putin would likely attempt to claim as being supposedly rightfully Russian territory.
08:45Assuming that Putin is successful in his apparently maximalist objective of directly conquering, occupying,
08:49and annexing the eastern half of Ukraine with large Russian-speaking minorities,
08:53Russia's likely demands for whatever remains of the landlocked Ukrainian rump state will be no less neutering.
08:59The Wall Street Journal recently released an analysis of a 2022 proposed peace agreement
09:04that the Russians came up to enforce on Ukraine two years earlier that went nowhere,
09:08but its main points will likely still come up in the future if Russia manages to force a peace on its own terms.
09:13They will likely demand now as they did two years ago
09:16that whatever remains of Ukraine will be a permanently neutral state when it comes to military alliances,
09:21meaning that it will never be allowed to join NATO.
09:24The current administration of Volodymyr Zelensky would almost certainly be removed
09:27and all new governments in Kiev would have to be expressly approved by the Kremlin,
09:31essentially turning the remnant of Ukraine into another Belarus-style puppet or client state,
09:36highly dependent on Moscow for support.
09:38The original 2022 Russian proposed peace offer would cap Ukraine's post-war numbers of troops to only 85,000,
09:45while further limiting their tanks to just 342 and their artillery pieces to just 519,
09:51while outright banning Ukraine from importing any foreign-made weapons from abroad.
09:55The only notable concession that Russia has appeared willing to give the remnant of post-war Ukraine
10:00is allowing them to join the European Union, but never, ever NATO.
10:04None of this is at all a guarantee of what will end up happening in Ukraine,
10:08but it is what Russia likely wants to ultimately accomplish,
10:11and with the momentum of the war currently on Russia's side,
10:14it is likely what the Kremlin is attempting to push for.
10:16With their massive new military budget approved through 2026,
10:20the economy shifted to wartime and a potential new round of mobilization coming.
10:24It appears that the Kremlin is setting a target date for victory in this war
10:28with most or all of these objectives accomplished in Ukraine
10:30by the end of 2026 and about two and a half years from now.
10:34Over these next two and a half years,
10:36the Russians will continue trying to grind the Ukrainians down at a brutal, demoralizing, and costly war of attrition
10:42in the hope that they will either steadily advance their own front lines militarily,
10:45or that the Ukrainian government will eventually concede for peace or get overthrown
10:49when the costs of the war become too great to bear.
10:52At the same time, Russia's special services will continue attempting to erode support for Ukraine in the West,
10:57so that the Ukrainian armed forces continue struggling with sources of ammunition and equipment.
11:02As the Russians dump more and more of their own ammunition and equipment onto their own side.
11:06And of course, even if this kind of a harsh peace was forced upon Ukraine by 2026,
11:11there is no guarantee that Russia would not seek to invade or further incorporate the rest of Ukraine
11:16into the Russian state in the future at a later time after it is rearmed and recovered.
11:21There is also no guarantee that Putin or Russia's territorial ambitions would suddenly just end with the total subjugation of Ukraine.
11:28Just like how they didn't stop with the previous seizure of Crimea in 2014,
11:32or with the previous invasion of Georgia in 2008,
11:34or with the previous subjugation of Chechnya in 1999.
11:38Vladimir Putin now rather infamously said back in 2005
11:41that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.
11:47At the time when he said it, there were very few people who actually believed that he would ever do anything about it.
11:52But here we are nearly 20 years later,
11:54with Putin still in power in the Kremlin,
11:56and with his regime spearheading Russia's fourth war in the former Soviet world since he took over control.
12:02There is a clear established pattern that Putin's ambitions in the former Soviet world will likely not end,
12:07even if Ukraine is completely subdued in its entirety.
12:10And with a Russian economy now fully shifted to a wartime economy,
12:13the Russians will be economically incentivized to continue the wars after Ukraine too.
12:18If Russia were to eventually manage taking over full control of the Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Odessa provinces in Ukraine's south,
12:25it would establish a continuous land bridge from the Russian mainland to Transnistria,
12:29a deeply pro-Russian separatist region of Moldova
12:32that controls a narrow strip of land between the Ukraine border and the Dniester River
12:36that has a population of around 365,000 people,
12:40about 30% of whom are ethnically Russian.
12:42Transnistria has requested direct annexation into Russia on multiple occasions
12:47since it secured its de facto independence through force and with the help of Russian troops
12:51that killed hundreds of people back in 1992.
12:54Around 1,500 Russian soldiers remain in Transnistria to this day as occupiers or peacekeepers,
13:00depending on your point of view.
13:01And the Russians even went so far as to set up polling stations in Transnistria in March of 2024
13:07that allowed Transnistrian residents to vote in the Russian presidential election for Putin,
13:11which sparked outrage in Moldova.
13:13As Moldova is neither a member state of the EU or NATO
13:16and was itself a former Soviet Republic for decades during the 20th century,
13:21Moldova is a highly vulnerable next target for Russia in the event that Ukraine collapses.
13:26The country has a very small population of only about 2.5 million people
13:30that is majority Romanian and a tiny standing army of only 6,500 personnel.
13:35Russia could end up repeating the same playbook that they've done previously in both Ukraine and Georgia
13:40by recognizing the independence of Transnistria
13:42and then sending in the army with the excuse of protecting the ethnic Russians in Transnistria
13:47that ends up with a complete Russian occupation of the whole of Moldova again,
13:51like back during the Soviet era.
13:53And in the process, the Kremlin will have restored its geographic frontier
13:56to the Carpathian mountain range in the south,
13:59securing its southern flank against NATO who it perceives to be hostile.
14:03Moldova's current president is so alarmed by this possibility
14:06that she has openly stated that the Ukrainians are not just fighting for the future of Ukraine,
14:11but for the future of Moldova as well.
14:13Anticipating the risk, the United States has upped their defense assistance to Moldova
14:17by more than tenfold from pre-Ukraine war levels,
14:20from only $3 million a year in 2022 to more than $30 million a year in 2024.
14:26The US and France have also invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Moldova
14:30since the Ukraine invasion began to shift the country's energy connection westward,
14:34away from Russia to be more integrated with the EU instead.
14:37While France took things a step even further in March of 2024,
14:40when they signed a separate defense cooperation agreement with Moldova,
14:43which will establish a French defense mission in the Moldovan capital this summer
14:47and provides the framework for French military training of the Moldovan armed forces
14:51and intelligence sharing related to Russia.
14:53France's president Emmanuel Macron has even recently threatened to send French troops themselves to Ukraine
14:59in the event that the Russians appear to be imminently about to take over major Ukrainian cities again,
15:03like Kiev or Odessa.
15:05And Russia's probable ultimate ambitions extend beyond Georgia, Ukraine, Transnistria and Moldova as well.
15:10In early 2023, a 17-page internal strategy paper related to Belarus
15:15allegedly produced by Putin's presidential administration
15:18was leaked by an international team of journalists.
15:21The paper details Russia's various strategies to essentially absorb and fully integrate Belarus
15:25into a so-called union state of Russia and Belarus by no later than 2030
15:30at the end of Putin's fifth term in office.
15:33The paper details out the increasing Russification of Belarusian society,
15:37which has long been underway for decades now
15:39under the dictatorial regime of Aleksandr Lukashenko,
15:42who has continually remained in power in Belarus for 30 years now ever since 1994.
15:47In the decade between 2009 and 2019,
15:50the most commonly spoken language by district in Belarus dramatically shifted from Belarusian to Russian,
15:55while Russian has emerged as the country's most dominantly spoken language over Belarusian,
16:00with fewer than 20% of Belarusians today citing the Belarusian language as their primary language spoken at home.
16:06While both Russian and Belarusian remain as the co-official languages of the Belarusian state,
16:11about 95% of the Belarusian government operates in Russian today,
16:15while the Belarusian language is almost totally absent in the state's education and media.
16:19Since the Russians helped to crush anti-regime protests that erupted in Belarus in 2020,
16:24Lukashenko's regime there has found itself heavily isolated
16:27and increasingly dependent on Russia for its very survival.
16:30Belarus already effectively functions as a Kremlin satellite state
16:33with Russian military bases on their territory,
16:36and since 2022, they've allowed the Russians to move their troops through the country to attack Ukraine from the north,
16:41and they've allowed the Russians to station tactical nuclear weapons in their territory as well.
16:46And as of early 2024,
16:48the Russians are believed to have amassed around 40,000 of their own troops in Belarus with an unclear purpose.
16:54They could be there just to create a threat to Ukraine
16:56that forces Kiev to keep troops deployed in the north and away from the actual front line in the east.
17:01They could also be building up to launch raids into northern Ukraine,
17:03or they could even be building up to launch another major offensive on the Ukrainian capital Kiev,
17:08just like they did in the opening days of the invasion in February of 2022.
17:12If Russia is successful with effectively annexing Belarus by 2030,
17:16like the paper leaked in 2023 suggests they are trying for,
17:19then the Russians will effectively incorporate the entire Belarusian military
17:22and all of its equipment and munitions into their own.
17:25Russia's military presence in Belarus will be dramatically expanded.
17:28The Belarusian intelligence service, still called the KGB,
17:31will be fully incorporated into Russia's FSB intelligence network.
17:35And Moscow will fully unlock Belarus's military, industrial,
17:38and manpower potential for the Russian war machine.
17:41There is therefore a potential scenario emerging that by sometime later in the 2020s,
17:46the Russians will have occupied and directly annexed much of eastern Ukraine
17:49and turned the rest into a Quistling-style puppet state,
17:52occupied and effectively annexed Transnistria and potentially Moldova,
17:55and effectively absorbed Belarus.
17:58If this all comes to pass,
17:59then whatever remains of Ukraine will be almost encircled
18:02by Russian-controlled territory in Belarus and Moldova.
18:05And the amount of people directly under the control of the Kremlin
18:07will increase substantially more than what it's estimated to be today.
18:11Russia's population is presently estimated to be 144 million people without Crimea,
18:16and about 147 million people when including Crimea.
18:19Even though it's estimated that about 1 million Russians have fled the country
18:22since the invasion of Ukraine began,
18:24and US sources estimate that roughly 120,000 Russian soldiers
18:28have been killed in action in Ukraine.
18:30The Russians have also already absorbed millions of additional people
18:34from their conquered territories in Ukraine,
18:36including the estimated transfer of at least 700,000 Ukrainian children back to Russia.
18:41If the Russians gain more of their desired territories in Ukraine,
18:44in addition to incorporating Moldova and Belarus,
18:47it's not inconceivable that Russia could emerge from this conflict in the later 2020s
18:51with a de facto population of between 160 and 170 million people under their control.
18:58Which is not very different from the population of the Soviet Union
19:02at the beginning of World War II in January of 1940.
19:05If it emerges like this,
19:07this is a geopolitical entity that should not be underestimated by the West.
19:12If Russia emerges victorious in Ukraine by 2026,
19:15it will come out of it with by far the most battle-hardened
19:18and combat-experienced army in the 21st century world.
19:21With a significantly increased pool of manpower, resources,
19:24better geographic positioning,
19:25and a wartime economy that may not wind back down afterwards.
19:29And with Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, and Chechnya all potentially secured by this point,
19:34will Putin's ambitions end?
19:36Or will their victory in the failure of the West to stop them
19:40encourage the Kremlin's eyes to turn to the remaining lost fragments of the old Soviet Union
19:45and what they refer to as the Russian world?
19:47The millions of ethnic Russians remaining in Central Asian states
19:50like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan.
19:53Or, more ominously,
19:55the roughly 900,000 ethnic Russians
19:57who continue to live in the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
20:02All three of these Baltic states have a complicated and troubled history with their larger neighbor.
20:06All three emerged as independent republics after the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917.
20:12But then, two decades later in 1940, during the Second World War,
20:15the Soviet Union invaded and conquered all three of them
20:17as a part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed with Nazi Germany.
20:21Each was then forcefully incorporated at gunpoint into becoming a Soviet Republic,
20:26before the Nazis then invaded and conquered the region themselves the following year in 1941.
20:31The Germans then transformed the occupied Baltic states
20:33into their so-called Reichskommissariat Ostland,
20:36before the Red Army's major counteroffensive three years later in 1944
20:40took them all back over again for the Soviets.
20:43The Soviets would then forcefully reincorporate the Baltic states back into Soviet republics,
20:48and went on to continue occupying them for the next half a century
20:51until the collapse of the Soviet Union itself in 1991.
20:55During that half a century that the three Baltic states were occupied and controlled by the Soviet Union,
21:00they were effectively colonized and their demographics were severely altered.
21:04The period of Soviet rule included mass executions,
21:07deportations, and repression of the native Baltic populations.
21:10Between 1940 and 1941, and 1944 to 1991,
21:14it's estimated that roughly 605,000 residents of the Baltic states
21:18were either killed or deported by the Soviets.
21:21Much of their property and belongings were seized and handed over to new Soviet colonists,
21:25as Moscow pursued a policy of Russification in each of them,
21:28that included the suppression of the native Baltic languages and the promotion of Russian in their place.
21:33The Estonian city of Narva in particular,
21:36was almost completely destroyed by the fighting of the Second World War.
21:39And after it came under the reoccupation of the Soviets in 1944,
21:43Narva's original residents were all expelled and not allowed to return.
21:48While colonists from the rest of Soviet Russia were brought in and resettled to the city as it was rebuilt.
21:53Before the war, Narva's population was roughly 65% Estonian as recorded by the 1934 census in the country.
22:00But in the latter half of the 20th century,
22:03the city's demographics were completely changed to become overwhelmingly non-Estonian.
22:07As a result, today in 2024,
22:10Narva is an overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city in Estonia.
22:14It is the third largest city in Estonia overall.
22:16Roughly 96% of the city's population are native Russian speakers,
22:20and a whopping 88% of the city's population are ethnically Russian too.
22:25It's also pretty much immediately across the border from Russia proper too.
22:29But even after their independence from the Soviets finally became a reality in 1991,
22:34they were all left over with very large Russian minority groups that lingered on afterwards.
22:39The result of the past half a century of Soviet rule and Russian colonization and settlement.
22:44Estonia and Latvia have the largest remaining Russian communities today,
22:48with ethnic Russians representing roughly a quarter of the total populations in each of them,
22:52with large Russian demographics in cities like Narva and Dogofpils near to the Russian and Belarusian borders.
22:58One of Russia's primary arguments for invading Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022
23:03was based on the claim that the ethnic Russian minority in Ukraine
23:06was being supposedly persecuted by the Ukrainian government.
23:09And so it stands to reason that the same argument could be made at a later time
23:13for the large Russian minorities in Latvia and Estonia as well.
23:16Putin himself warned as much in January of 2024,
23:19when he said during a meeting that Latvia's treatment of their ethnic Russian minority
23:23constituted a national security threat to Russia itself.
23:26There is therefore a building fear rising that in the not-too-distant future if Ukraine falls,
23:31the Russians could come storming into the Baltic states next as they did before in 1940.
23:36Unlike all of Putin's invasion targets so far though,
23:39all three of the Baltic states are members of both NATO and the European Union.
23:43And so a Russian military attack on them could trigger a massive military retaliation
23:48from the rest of Europe and the United States.
23:50But there is also the chance that it might not.
23:53It's well known that the NATO Military Alliance Charter includes a clause known as Article 5,
23:57which enables any NATO member state who is attacked to call on the rest of the Alliance to defend them.
24:02But it is important to understand the very specific wording of Article 5, which reads verbatim.
24:28And in concert with the other parties.
24:33Including the use of armed force to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
24:38With the very important phrase there being,
24:43Which means that effectively if one of the NATO states felt that sending a few first aid kits or helmets to the attacked country
24:48met the criteria for action that it deemed necessary,
24:51then that's all that's technically required of them legally.
24:54All of the members of NATO could choose to respond as rapidly or as slowly,
24:58as decisively or as cautiously as they each deemed necessary.
25:01Essentially meaning that some would respond very strongly while others might hardly respond at all.
25:06And if Russia decided to test the solidarity of NATO and Article 5 with an attack on the Baltic states,
25:11it wouldn't have to be an all-out full-scale invasion of them, at least not at first.
25:16Russia could one day test Article 5 by conducting a very limited invasion into Estonia.
25:21Perhaps by stepping just over the border and seizing the Russian-speaking city of Narva.
25:26Or turning it into a de facto independent separatist state.
25:29Repeating their previous limited invasions to prop up separatist entities into Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova.
25:34Russian propaganda would flood the West with disinformation asserting that Narva,
25:38like Crimea and other parts of Ukraine,
25:40should rightfully belong to Russia on the basis of the city being predominantly inhabited by ethnic Russians.
25:45If Estonia were to then trigger NATO's Article 5 over the loss of Narva,
25:49how many other countries in NATO would really be willing to risk a major war with Russia
25:53over the fate of a Russian-speaking city like Narva?
25:56If most NATO countries didn't respond forcefully enough to the limited attack,
26:00then what would happen to NATO's credibility?
26:02If NATO's credibility as a defense alliance was eroded,
26:05then would Russia grow further emboldened to seize more of the Baltic states later?
26:09As they've done with Crimea and then more of Ukraine.
26:12If the Russians opted to initiate a full-scale invasion of the Baltic states instead before or after seizing Narva,
26:17they might be able to overrun all three countries within only hours or days.
26:22The Baltic states are not very big,
26:23and they're almost completely surrounded by Russian and Belarusian territory and the Baltic Sea.
26:28Russian forces could invade them by land from three different directions,
26:31and there's nowhere really for Baltic-based troops to retreat towards.
26:35In the opening weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022,
26:38the Russians managed to militarily occupy roughly 54,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory,
26:44which is about 80% of the same area as the three Baltic states combined.
26:48If the Russians decided to eventually invade the Baltic states,
26:51they would rapidly advance towards major ethnic Russian-majority cities like Narva in Estonia and Dagovpils in Latvia.
26:57While the primary objective of the Russian Baltic fleet based in Kaliningrad
27:01would be to quickly secure control over the sparsely populated Estonian island of Hiuma.
27:05There were only 9,000 people who live on this island,
27:08so if the Russians were able to seize control over it quickly,
27:11they could set up anti-access area denial or A2D2 weapon systems on the island like anti-air and anti-ship missiles
27:17and transform it into a military outpost between their separated territories of St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad,
27:22with the intent of keeping their own maritime supply lines open
27:25and denying NATO the ability to intervene with airpower or naval assets from Finland, Sweden, or Poland.
27:31Meanwhile, Russian ground troops would attempt to rapidly advance from Kaliningrad and Belarus
27:35in a pincer attack to seize control over the highly strategic Sualki Gap.
27:40The roughly 100 kilometer wide choke point between Kaliningrad and Belarus
27:43that is the only geographically available land connection between the Baltic states and Poland,
27:48and therefore between the Baltic states and the rest of NATO and the EU.
27:51If the Sualki Gap was seized quickly by the Russians, in addition to strategic islands like Hiuma,
27:56then the Russians would effectively encircle the Baltic states
27:59and cut them off from being easily resupplied or reinforced from the rest of NATO.
28:03In 2016, the RAND Corporation, an American think tank,
28:06ran several simulations that concluded with the availability of NATO troops in the area at the time.
28:11A surprise Russian offensive on the Baltic states could see Russian tanks
28:14rolling through the streets of the Estonian and Latvian capitals
28:17within only 36 to 60 hours after the invasion began,
28:21while Lithuania's capital is only a mere 30 kilometers away from the border with Belarus.
28:26If they were successful with taking over the Baltic states this rapidly,
28:29then the Russians would attempt to present NATO with a situation known as a fait accompli.
28:34The Russian occupation of the Baltic states would already be accomplished,
28:37and there would be no reversing this fact unless NATO decided to go to war with Russia over the issue,
28:42which would have the potential to escalate into a nuclear confrontation.
28:45And then would come the decision for the people living in NATO countries.
28:49Would they be willing to go to war and potentially die over the status of the Baltic states?
28:54Or would they more or less accept the new reality?
28:57If Article 5 of NATO wasn't resoundingly heated by many of NATO's members,
29:01then the European Union contains a separate mutual defense clause within its own Treaty on the European Union
29:06that is arguably even more strongly worded than NATO's mutual defense clauses.
29:11Article 42.7 of the Treaty on the European Union reads,
29:24That phrase,
29:25by all the means in their power,
29:27is substantially more strongly worded than NATO's Article 5.
29:30That only reads,
29:34All three Baltic states are also members of the EU.
29:37And so, in theory, a Russian attack on them would also trigger the EU's built-in mutual defense pact as well.
29:43But the problem is that the EU is a significantly less formidable military power than NATO is.
29:48In comparison to NATO, the EU excludes the United States, Canada, Iceland, Norway, Turkey, North Macedonia,
29:54Albania, Montenegro, and since Brexit, the United Kingdom as well.
29:57As a result, the defense budget of all EU member states is a whopping 80% less than the defense budget of all NATO member states.
30:05Largely because the EU excludes the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Turkey.
30:10On its own, the EU will be significantly less capable of responding to a Russian attack on a member state than NATO will be.
30:16And while a Russian attack on the Baltic states is almost certainly nowhere near imminent,
30:20there is a substantial amount of growing alarm that if Russia emerges victorious in Ukraine,
30:24it could only become a matter of time.
30:26How much time it might be is open to a significant degree of speculation.
30:30In January of 2024, Germany's defense minister, Boris Pistorius,
30:34warned that Europe could face a direct war with Russia within 5 to 8 years after the conclusion of the war in Ukraine,
30:40if it ends on Moscow's terms.
30:42The next month in February, Denmark's defense minister gave an even more dire warning,
30:46claiming that Russia could test Article 5 and NATO's solidarity with an attack on a member state within 3 to 5 years from the present.
30:53General Sir Patrick Sanders, the chief of staff of the British Army,
30:57warned in January of 2024 that Britons and Europeans today may be a part of the pre-war generation,
31:03and that Britain must be prepared for a potential war with Russia in the future.
31:07The outgoing chief of the Estonian Military Intelligence Agency
31:10recently estimated that the Russians could be prepared for a war with NATO
31:13within only 4 years after wrapping up their current war in Ukraine.
31:17While Poland's National Security Agency is even more aggressively estimated
31:21that Russia could attack a NATO member state within only 3 years after the conclusion of the war in Ukraine.
31:26These various estimates from senior European military and intelligence agencies
31:29suggest that a potential Russian assault on the Baltic states,
31:32limited or full scale,
31:34could take place within the next 3 to 8 years from today.
31:37Or, in other words, sometime between 2027 and 2032,
31:42during Putin's current or next term in office.
31:44A timeline that roughly lines up with Russia's own apparent goals of wrapping up the war in Ukraine by 2026,
31:50and annexing Belarus by 2030.
31:52And which also roughly lines up with the expected window of opportunity
31:55that China will have to launch their own invasion of Taiwan,
31:58projected to be between 2027 when the People's Liberation Army completes its modernization reforms,
32:03and 2032 when the 22nd National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party will be held
32:08and Xi Jinping will be approaching 80 years old.
32:11With these largely aligned timeline of opportunities,
32:13it's not inconceivable that if Russia emerges victorious in Ukraine,
32:17the Russians and Chinese could later choose to coordinate simultaneous invasions of the Baltic states and Taiwan
32:23to divide NATO and the West's response and give them each the best possible odds of success.
32:27And, worst of all from Europe's perspective,
32:30they may have to face this nightmare scenario of defending the sovereignty of the Baltic states without the help of America.
32:35Donald Trump could very well become re-elected as the next president of the United States in the upcoming election this November.
32:41Trump has long been critical of NATO as an organization and of America's continued membership in the alliance.
32:46He rattled European NATO members in February of 2024 when, during a campaign rally,
32:51he openly stated that he would encourage the Russians to do, quote,
32:55whatever the hell they want to any European NATO member that he deemed to be not spending enough on defense.
33:01Back in 2006, NATO adopted a non-binding guideline
33:04that member states of the alliance should aim to spend at least 2% of their national GDP on defense per year.
33:10But for years, hardly any countries in NATO actually followed that guideline.
33:14When the Russians invaded Crimea in 2014,
33:17only three members of NATO met the theoretical 2% of GDP on defense minimum.
33:21Military spending in NATO gradually increased from there
33:24and then accelerated rapidly after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
33:29By the summer of 2023, 11 members of NATO had increased their defense spending to more than 2% of GDP,
33:35with a notable difference in military spending between European countries closer to Russia than those further away.
33:40Now in 2024, it appears that potentially 20 of NATO's 32 total members will hit the theoretical 2% of GDP on defense minimum.
33:49But the decades of Europe's underspending on defense since the end of the Cold War
33:53has left a huge gap in European nations' military stockpiles.
33:57Had the European NATO countries followed through with a 2% of GDP defense budget continually since 1991,
34:03they'd have an estimated $600 billion worth of additional weapons, munitions, and hardware
34:08available today in stockpiles that they don't.
34:11So how would Trump, assuming he returns to the American presidency in 2025,
34:16define a European NATO state not spending enough on defense?
34:19Would he define even NATO states currently spending 2% of GDP on defense
34:24as still being delinquent anyway because they had spent decades before 2014 and 2022 underspending on defense?
34:31The US Congress quietly passed in a law as a part of the 2024 US defense budget,
34:36a restriction on any US president from being able to unilaterally withdraw the United States from NATO
34:41without the approval of the US Senate or an act of Congress first.
34:45This was widely viewed as a means of Trump-proofing Washington's commitment to NATO.
34:49But many also argue that Trump could be even more dangerous to NATO while keeping America within the alliance
34:54because he could undermine NATO from within.
34:57The alliance requires unanimous consent of all its members for just about any significant decision,
35:02which Trump could just refuse to give.
35:04If Estonia or Latvia were attacked, he could simply choose to respond with only a token gesture
35:09like first aid kits or helmets rather than actual American boots on the ground.
35:12And with Trump potentially back in charge in Washington again from 2025 through 2029,
35:17it roughly lines up with the various European defense ministers' warnings of a Russian timeline
35:22for an assault on the Baltic states and a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
35:26And if more European countries see nationalist parties rise to power
35:29that prioritize their own national interests first over Europe's collective interests,
35:33then even more NATO states may essentially refuse to answer an Article 5 call.
35:38If Trump's America declines to intervene,
35:40then Viktor Orban's Hungary will almost certainly decline to intervene as well.
35:44While the incoming nationalist president of Slovakia has already openly stated as recently as April of 2024
35:50that he would oppose sending the Slovak armed forces to assist an attacked NATO member state who triggered Article 5.
35:56Large percentages of the populations in many European countries like Hungary, Greece, Italy, Romania, and Austria
36:02are already of the opinion that Ukraine should be pressured into suing for peace with Russia.
36:06And if Trump wins the US election in November,
36:09Putin could likely count on invading the Baltic states after the war in Ukraine is wrapped up
36:13without any significant interventions coming from America, Hungary, and Slovakia at a minimum
36:19and likely from many others as well.
36:21So how is Europe preparing to deal with the prospect of a potential Russian invasion of the Baltic states in the future?
36:27The Baltics themselves are taking the threat extremely seriously.
36:30With the memory of the half a century of Soviet occupation in the 20th century still fresh in their minds.
36:36Estonia and Lithuania have continually maintained a system of military conscription ever since their 1991 independence.
36:42While Latvia has recently confirmed that they'll be reintroducing their own conscription system.
36:46In January of 2024, the defense ministers of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania
36:50all jointly announced that their countries would begin the construction of the so-called Baltic defense line
36:55across the entire length of their borders with Russia and Belarus.
36:59Estonia has already confirmed that they'll build 600 fortified bunkers along the entire length of their border with Russia.
37:05While Latvia and Lithuania are expected to construct thousands of additional bunkers along the entire length of their own borders.
37:11The bunkers on the border will be complemented by fortified trenches, dragon's teeth, anti-tank obstacles, and anti-tank mines.
37:17Initially, Latvia even publicly considered laying anti-personnel landmines across the entire length of their border with Russia and Belarus too.
37:24Though, this idea appears to have been shelved for now out of concern for the future of civilians in the border area.
37:30The Baltic defense line isn't meant to stop a Russian invasion dead in its tracks like the 21st century version of the Maginot Line.
37:36Instead, it is being designed to slow a potential Russian invasion of the Baltic states down just enough
37:41to buy enough time for the Western allies to hopefully arrive and stop them from getting overrun completely.
37:47Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have all pledged to increase their military spending to at least 3% of their GDP.
37:5450% higher than the theoretical minimum required by NATO, while their neighbor Poland is spending even more aggressively.
38:01Poland is already up to their own defense spending to about 4% of their own GDP,
38:05making Poland the highest military spender in all of NATO based on percentage of GDP.
38:11Poland's defense minister has openly stated that Warsaw's goal is to build out nothing less than the largest conventional ground force in Europe.
38:18They plan to double their military size to 300,000 personnel,
38:22and are purchasing tens of billions of dollars worth of hardware and munitions from the United States and South Korea,
38:27including 350 M1 Abrams main battle tanks, 96 Apache helicopters, dozens of HIMARS rocket artillery systems,
38:35700 K-9 artillery pieces from South Korea, and another 1,000 South Korean Panther tanks.
38:41Poland will undoubtedly be determined to use this new military might to keep the Suwolki Gap choke point open at all costs,
38:48in the event that the Russians end up invading the Baltic states,
38:51as it'll be Poland's primary responsibility to funnel NATO or EU reinforcements by land to the military front line.
38:58Meanwhile, Sweden and Finland's entries into NATO have been a true game changer,
39:02because their large air forces and navies so nearby to the Baltic theater of operations will be tasked with securing air and naval superiority.
39:09Sweden's control of the island of Gotland will be particularly important,
39:13as it could become transformed into essentially an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Baltic right off the shore of Latvia.
39:19They will battle against the Russian Baltic fleet headquartered in Kaliningrad,
39:23and try to sever the maritime connection between Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg,
39:27while the Finnish and Swedish air forces, including 64 cutting-edge F-35 fighters in the Finnish air force,
39:32will attempt to secure air supremacy over the Baltic states themselves.
39:36Russia will attempt to stop them by concentrating their anti-access area denial capabilities within Kaliningrad and along their borders with the Baltic states,
39:43while they will also try and set up more on the sparsely inhabited Estonian island of Huma in the opening hours of the conflict breaking out,
39:50which the Swedish and Finnish air forces and navies will do everything in their power to prevent from happening.
39:55Germany has even further announced their own plans to deploy a fully combat-ready brigade to Lithuania by no later than 2027,
40:02the first time that the German army will be permanently deployed to Lithuania since the Second World War,
40:07and a force that will all but guarantee the Germans' commitment to defense of the Baltic states as well.
40:12At the same time, even though 20 out of NATO's 32 member states are expected to finally reach the 2% of GDP on defense spending target this year, in 2024,
40:22the Baltic states and many other analysts have insisted that in order to make up for the decades of previous underspending on defense in Europe,
40:28and the massive rearming currently going on in Russia, and to hedge against a potential US withdrawal from NATO if Trump is re-elected,
40:36European NATO states should really be shooting to up their defense spending to at least 3% of their GDP instead for the foreseeable future, at least through 2030.
40:46European NATO states are essentially being faced with a difficult-to-answer dilemma.
40:50They can choose between increasing their defense spending for years in an attempt to deter the Russians from ever invading the Baltic states,
40:57and in an attempt to keep the United States actually committed to continue protecting them,
41:01which will necessitate higher taxes, higher deficits, and or austerity measures like cuts on social welfare spending,
41:07or they could not do any of that and risk the increased possibility of Russian tanks rolling through the streets of Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius again by the end of the decade.
41:16And nuclear deterrence will likely not be sufficient enough to deter the Russians on its own either,
41:21especially not if Trump effectively pulls the United States out of NATO and withdraws the American nuclear umbrella from Europe.
41:28France and the UK each have their own independent nuclear weapons arsenals, but would they actually threaten to use them over an invasion of the Baltic states?
41:36Is the fate of the Baltic states enough of a core strategic interest to Paris and London to risk civilizational-ending nuclear Armageddon over?
41:44The old Cold War logic of mutually assured destruction would once again apply here.
41:49France initially acquired their own nuclear weapons back in the 1960s out of their own calculus that the United States wouldn't ever risk New York for Paris.
41:57As in, the Americans wouldn't ever risk nuclear war over the fate of France.
42:01Paris reasoned that they needed their own nuclear weapons arsenal separate from the Americans to guarantee their own strategic autonomy.
42:08But the same logic would apply in reverse to a Russian attack on the Baltic states.
42:12Would France actually be willing to risk Paris for Narva, Tallinn, or Riga?
42:17If French and British nuclear threats over the status of the Baltics weren't considered credible enough by Moscow,
42:22and the continent's conventional military capabilities without the Americans, Hungarians, Slovaks, and potentially more were considered by Moscow to be weak enough,
42:29especially after a potential previous failure by the West to halt the Russian subjugation of Ukraine and Moldova,
42:35then European deterrence has a high probability of failure.
42:39And so the continent needs to have a strong and capable conventional military force
42:44to actually respond with to deter any invasion of the Baltic states from ever happening in the first place.
42:49In order to avoid this grim scenario across the European continent in the later 2020s and early 2030s from resembling the 1930s a century ago,
42:58the Europeans must do everything in their power today to ensure that the Russian war machine is stopped in Ukraine before the war has a chance to expand in the future.
43:07If the Russian army emerges completely victorious in Ukraine,
43:10then there is a high probability that by the end of the decade, Russian troops will be advancing through the Baltic states next,
43:16and the Europeans may be faced with a previously unimaginable decision,
43:20going into a full-scale war with Russia that will ravage Europe,
43:24or going down the path of appeasement that could lead to the collapse of NATO and the European Union as credible institutions forever.
43:33To date, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began more than two years ago,
43:36mostly Western nations have delivered more than $380 billion worth of financial aid to Ukraine,
43:42with nearly $118 billion of that amount being direct military aid.
43:46A massive amount of this aid was heavily concentrated by the Ukrainians and their major 2023 counter-offensive,
43:52an operation that was hoped to become a decisive turning point in the war,
43:56that would see Ukrainian forces driving across the Russian-occupied territory in the south of the country
44:00to reach the Sea of Azov and split the Russian occupation of Ukraine into two separate, tougher-to-defend halves.
44:06Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides took part in the operation from June of 2023 to the end of the year,
44:12and one of the largest military operations in Europe ever seen since the Second World War.