‘Obsolete’ NATO Force Presence in Baltics Needs Upgrade, Estonian Defense Leader Says – By Jacqueline Feldscher (Defense One) / June 15, 2022
“It’s a joke” that Russia would be deterred by a battalion, secretary says.
NATO must station more forces in the Baltic nations to provide a more credible deterrent after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Estonian defense secretary said Wednesday.
Kusti Salm, the permanent secretary of the Estonian Ministry of Defense, said the number of NATO troops in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia today, which is intended to act as a “tripwire” for Russian aggression, is too small to deter Russian aggression or quickly push back troops from Moscow. In the time it would take for a large enough NATO force to respond, Russia would have already destroyed cities and killed civilians, leaving the alliance with the tougher task of liberating land rather than defending it in the first place, Salm said.
“The current NATO strategy of tripwire defense or deterrence by punishment…is clearly politically obsolete,” he said at a Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments event to roll out a report on Baltic security. “We need to shift from tripwire…to deterrence by denial.”
