Putin could attack Baltic states warns former Nato chief
Vladimir Putin has dangerous ambitions beyond Ukraine and aims to test Western resolve in the Baltic states, the former head of Nato has warned.Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former secretary-general of the Atlantic alliance, said the Kremlin’s true goal is to shatter Nato solidarity and reassert Russian dominance over Eastern Europe.
“This is not about Ukraine. Putin wants to restore Russia to its former position as a great power,” he told The Telegraph. “There is a high probability that he will intervene in the Baltics to test Nato’s Article 5,” he said, referring to the solidarity clause that underpins collective security.n“Putin knows that if he crosses the red line and attacks a Nato ally, he will be defeated. Let us be quite clear about that. But he is a specialist in hybrid warfare,” he said.
The fear is that the Kremlin will generate a murky conflict in Estonia or Latvia where there are large Russian minorities, using arms-length action or “little green men” without insignia to disguise any intervention. This may tempt weaker Nato members to play down the incident, either to protect commercial ties with Russia or because of pro-Kremlin sympathies as in Hungary or Greece.......
Article 5 states that a military attack on any one Nato country is an attack on all of them, triggering collective mobilization. It has been invoked just once in the 66-year history of the alliance, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York.
Nobody knows what would happen if one of the Baltic states invoked Article 5 protection but was turned down by the Nato Council. Failure to respond would devastate Nato’s credibility and undermine the principle of deterrence, though allies could still act as a coalition of the willing outside the treaty structure......