NATO Must Prepare to Defend Its Weakest Point--the Suwalki Corridor

[Celerity]

On the Polish-Lithuanian border, the West must respond to Russia’s actual capabilities rather than making assumptions about its intent.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/03/nato-must-prepare-to-defend-its-weakest-point-the-suwalki-corridor/

https://archive.ph/TC0Qc

As the Biden administration monitors Moscow’s reaction to dramatic U.S. and allied increases in assistance to Ukraine as well as the punishing Western economic and financial sanctions on Russia, it should turn its focus to a relatively small corner of northeastern Europe that is familiar to military strategists but often overlooked by most policymakers and the general public.

The Suwalki corridor (also known as the Suwalki Gap) separates the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea from Belarus, now host to thousands of Russian troops and soon home to permanently stationed Russian forces, including advanced fighter jets and nuclear weapons. It is also the only way to get by road or rail from Poland and Central Europe to the Baltic states—arguably NATO’s most exposed members.

A Russian move to seize control of the corridor may seem far-fetched, as it would explicitly involve an attack on NATO territory, triggering a U.S. military response. Nonetheless, if Moscow’s reinvasion of Ukraine has any central lesson to offer at this point, it’s that U.S. and allied officials must prepare now for worst-case scenarios by focusing on actual Russian military capabilities in the region, rather than the Kremlin’s announced intent, considered estimates of Russia’s strategic logic, or intelligence assessments of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s outlook.

Forty miles wide as the crow flies, the Suwalki corridor isn’t much of a corridor, at least in terms of natural boundaries such as rivers, coastlines, or mountains. Driving through the area last October while on a research trip to NATO units, I found it a wide-open rural region, predominantly characterized by rolling farmland interspersed with forests and small villages. Much of it is ideal terrain for tracked vehicles like tanks, given the very limited roadways and the gentle hills.



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[panader0]

1. I was struck with the fact that the Suwalki Corridor is only 40 miles wide.

I looked up the sq miles of Poland and it's 120,726. That's just slightly smaller than New Mexico.
I'm also surprised to learn of the Russian state of Kaliningrad, cut off as it is from Mother Russia.
Belarus may as well be Russia, so Putin wants another, more southerly, port in the Baltic. Too bad Vlad,
the Corridor is NATO land.

[Celerity]

6. the geographical quirk of Kaliningrad as Russian territory was always a post-WWII ticking time bomb

[gab13by13]

2. Putin can go ahead and run tanks into that corridor,

but he assuredly understands there will be a no fly zone imposed on Russian planes but not one for NATO planes.

Send in the tanks Vlad.

[atreides1]

3. But

All Putin has to do is to activate his nuclear forces...and everyone will back down!

Now that Putin knows that the threat of nukes worked...he won't hesitate to continue to use it...until he has gotten everything he wants!!!

Putin will never have to use his tactical nukes...all he has to do is make NATO believe he will...and to avoid escalation NATO will back down!!!

Just my opinion!!!

[BGBD]

4. Except it wont.

won't. Also threatened nukes for sanctions which has done what????

NATO jumping in to fight in Ukraine is not the same as defending Poland or Estonia. Making the argument that it is is ignoring the most important fact in geopolitics.

[LiberalArkie]

9. Ukraine has shown the world that it does not know what maintenance on military hardware is.

The Russians built a highly encrypted military communication system - but it relied on 3G 4G, LTE cellular radio. One of the first thing the military did was destroy the Ukraines cellular network.

It has to make a person wonder how many of their nukes will go boom.

[BGBD]

10. Their nukes

Are older on average. They have new ones but I'd imagine plenty that wouldn't work as well..... and probably one somewhere that would blow up during launch.

[Chainfire]

5. The poor performance of Putin's "mighty army" may have cooled his ambitions to expand his

borders any further. He will be lucky to get out of Ukraine with his hat on.

Of course, NATO needs to expand it's capabilities to deal with anything that the rogue state of Russia could attempt because we have seen that Putin is unpredictable and probably unstable.

[Lonestarblue]

7. It's time for the US and NATO to acknowledge that Putin will not stop with Ukraine.

If he fails to take Ukraine, it will be a loss that he may not survive as head of Russia. But he will not fail unless the US and NATO stop telling him that no matter what he does they will not interfere militarily—and he is hearing that the West is weak and will not act against him with the refusal to give Ukraine planes or to establish a no-fly zone or to give Ukraine the weapons to take out anti-aircraft batteries, which is needed even to establish a no-fly zone.

And now Putin is using more false-flag propaganda about chemical weapons. I remember the horrendous use of chemical weapons in Syria, which likely came from Russia. Are we truly prepared to stand back and watch atrocity after atrocity in Ukraine?

The US keeps saying that they don’t want to escalate to a broader war to prevent Putin from escalating. My God, he escalates every day! I believe that the Biden administration did a masterful job at the beginning of this debacle, but they have gotten cold feet. I remember the phrase from old Soviet Union days, “don’t poke the bear.” It’s time to turn the tables and warn Putin not to poke the US-EU alliance.

Putin doesn’t care how many soldiers or civilians he kills. Nor do I think he cares about the cities or infrastructure of Ukraine. If it became a complete wasteland with no people, he would not care. He simply wants Ukraine as a notch in his belt. And once his army occupies, they will likely execute every male they can find for fighting against him.

I may be wrong, but I believe this is Putin’s final push to recreate his version of Imperial Russia. Once Ukraine has been decimated, he will be moving on to the Baltic states and most likely Moldova. Putin has squirreled away billions and perhaps trillions to try to outlast sanctions. He will not care what happens to Russian citizens so long as he has the money to pay the police to control them and to pay the military leaders to keep fighting—his soldiers are just cannon fodder.

No one wants a broader war, but I see our resistance to providing Ukraine with all the weapons they need, including more modern ones we’ve held back, to fight Russia as guaranteeing that the broader war will be inevitable. The US doesn’t need boots on the ground in Ukraine when we can assist in other ways.

I wish I could be more optimistic about where this conflict is going. Sanctions will help, but Putin expected at least some level of sanctions and prepared for them. By the time they have a severe impact, he may have started WWIII.

[HUAJIAO]

8. I agree 100%. I have agreed with your assessment of Putin's aim since trump got elected..

[jaxexpat]

11. Yet there is no alternative.

WWIII cannot happen. It is unthinkable. May as well promise the moon, or better yet, howl at it.

[LiberalArkie]

13. That is the same thoughts the British were having before WWII about Hitler. "If we just don't bother

Adolph, he will be satisfied with what he has gotten". They were doing everything they could to avoid WWII including giving in to Hitler.

[jaxexpat]

15. Totally wrong.

There is no legitimate comparison with the Austrian giveaway of 1939 and the current horror in the Ukraine. EVERYTHING is changed by the hydrogen bomb. Those that refuse to see that FACT provide dangerous encouragement for a violence never before seen. A more horrible choice that can be made only once. The very idea that nuclear war is survivable is , at best, Trumpian. For starters, consider this: all the dead from WWII will be matched in the first couple of hours of a nuclear exchange in a US vs Russia conflict. That being said, there are actions that can, possibly, change the future. I believe the Biden folks are on it already. Whatever it is, there is no good outcome or purpose to come from nagging about , "we've got to do something" to a society so immature and unaware that they happily invited a scam like Trump to lead them.

[BGBD]

12. Russia doesn't have the military capability

To fight a multi front war with extended supply lines while also holding territory already taken....especially against the most powerful military alliance in history.

And in a NATO country, Russia wouldn't have air superiority, so their entire military doctrine wouldn't work.

[Gore1FL]

14. It strikes me that it would be infinitely easier for NATO to take Kaliningrad.

It would appear Russian logistics are better than in WWI, but I doubt they are good enough to hold NATO air power at bay.

[roamer65]

16. Who said Konigsberg is going to stay Russian?

I have read of rumblings of secession from Russia. The way out of sanctions for them would be to secede.

https://www.refworld.org/docid/589d96fa4.html

[marie999]

17. Do any of you really believe that Russia and I mean any president of Russia not just Putin

wouldn't use strategic nuclear weapons if Russia was invaded by NATO? Russia knows it can not survive as a country if invaded by NATO unless it destroyed most of Europe. Whether or not it attacked the US would depend on what the US would do. If NATO forces were sent into Ukraine, the Russian people would believe that NATO forces would continue into Russia.

[Celerity]

18. all I can say about anyone suggesting things like 'cruise missile Moscow and Putin's 'palaces' ' or

'we need to send in US/NATO troops and directly fight the Russians' or 'do a no-flay zone NOW!' or the truly bonkers 'nuke 'em before they nuke us' is:

I am SO grateful that they have zero actual power to determine US military action, because they are on a one-way ticket to WWWIII-ville