The West won’t fight Russia itself. Eastern Europe may have to

NATO’s eastern flank demands stronger guarantees against Russia, but escalation could turn Eastern Europe into the battlefield of a wider war We have come to regard the countries of Eastern Europe as the most conflict-prone and volatile part of the political landscape surrounding Russia, and there are grounds for this view. Immediate neighbors often have the most difficult relationships because the more points of contact there are, the more opportunities for friction, and in Russia’s case, geopolitical logic is reinforced by considerable historical experience of invasion, which means Russia has traditionally sought to ensure that no serious threat can emerge from neighboring countries and that its immediate surroundings remain predictable. This predictability has been secured in different ways over the centuries, sometimes through direct annexation and sometimes through indirect forms of control. Russia’s western neighbors are small in comparison with it, and their policies have often been driven by fear of their much larger neighbor, whether justified or not. The acute military and political crisis that began in 2022 seems to confirm that stability between Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe shouldn’t be taken for granted, as countries that joined NATO and the EU in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are now pursuing the most intransigent course, seeking not merely to contain Russia but to marginalize it. Their own capabilities are limited, so they have increasingly used international institutions, above all an increasingly militarized EU, to push larger member states towards a tougher position. A recent example is Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski’s rhetoric concerning the Baltic region and Kaliningrad. Read more Mearsheimer: There’s no diplomatic way out of the Ukraine war The militarization of Eastern Europe is, in this sense, a continuation of a policy pursued since the 1990s, which rested on the conviction that the expansion of Western military and political institutions was an objective historical process, and that enlargement itself would provide security without ever requiring serious military action.

This assumption was convenient for everyone as the new member states regarded NATO membership as a guarantee of their security, and the veteran members in Western Europe and the US were confident that these guarantees would never actually have to be tested. Nobody seriously expected to fight Russia over the states along its borders. Let us leave aside for the moment the role NATO expansion played in creating the conditions for the conflict over Ukraine, because whatever one’s interpretation of how we arrived here, the question of military guarantees has now moved from theory to practice. This creates a fundamental problem for NATO. On the one hand, it can’t simply abandon its security commitments, because if these guarantees cease to be credible, NATO loses much of its purpose. On the other hand, Article 5 of the Washington Treaty is less automatic than is commonly assumed and it doesn’t mechanically send every member of the bloc to war. Eastern European governments understand this ambiguity. They lack confidence that the larger powers would come to their aid, and history gives them reasons for doubt and encourages some of them to push both Russia and their own allies toward firmer positions. The objective is to bind the major Western powers ever more tightly to their security, which raises the question: What role would Eastern European countries actually play if a direct military conflict with Russia did occur? Read more Zelensky’s political endgame has begun An impartial assessment suggests that they would most likely become both the battlefield and the vanguard, sent into the confrontation ahead of the major Western powers, and elements of this arrangement can already be seen in Ukraine