Defending the Baltic states

Sunday Telegraph:

Fred Kagan, the intellectual author of the successful US "troop surge" plan in Iraq, believes Nato's presence in the Baltics must be massively strengthened to pre-empt the risk of them being invaded in the same way as Georgia.

Such measures would infuriate Moscow, which last week warned that the installation of a US missile defence shield in Poland would ignite a new "arms race" between East and West.

But Mr Kagan, an expert on the Russian military who has the ear of hawks within the US administration, said that the West needed to match words with deeds if it was to stop Russia turning into an "intolerable, aggressive imperialistic" power.

"We need to help these countries develop sophisticated air defence and anti-tank capabilities that don't pose any offensive threat to Russia, but promise the possibility of very high casualties were they to attempt what they did in Georgia," said Mr Kagan in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph.

"Nato has to make a fundamental decision here about its legal and ethical obligations, and the only way we can really fulfil them is to help these countries defend themselves in advance of an attack."

His comments follow growing concern within the Baltic states - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - that Russia could engineer confrontations with them as it has with the government in Tbilisi.

Like Georgia, they are all home to large and restive populations of Russian speakers, who were moved there during Communist-era "Sovietisation", when Moscow sought to consolidate its influence in its "near abroad".

The fear is that Moscow could agitate separatist feeling within those Russian minorities in the same way it has done in the breakaway Georgian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, generating a pretext to send tanks in to protect what it would claim were in effect "Russian citizens".

At present, Mr Kagan points out, there would be little do prevent them rolling across the border as they did into South Ossetia - despite all three now being members of Nato, the alliance has done little to help them build up robust anti-tank capabilities, sophisticated air defence systems, or large reserve armies.

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The Russians showed a lack of sophistication in attacking Georgia losing some of its better aircraft to Georgia's primitive antiaircraft weapons. We are providing Poland with the upgraded Patriot system to help guard the missile defense system. We should look at doing the same for the Baltic states. They can also probably use the Javelin anti tank system. It is relatively light and much harder to spot than tanks would be. They also need to dig anti tank traps to slow a Russian advance.