[TeMPOraL]

The history of my country (Poland) tells me that military alliances are worth shit when someone decides to call the bluff. The Second World War started with France and Britain failing to fulfil their obligations when Hitler invaded Poland. Somehow I don't expect NATO troops to show up if Russian forces cross the Polish-Ukrainian border.

[GlennS]

Wait, what?

Britain and France declared war on Germany two days after it invaded Poland.

[kgabis]

They declared war and did nothing (hence names like Sitzkrieg or Phoney War). Since Polish defense strategy was based on assumption that UK and France will fulfill their obligations it was a much easier win for Germany than it could've been otherwise. I'm suprised it's not talked about more outside Poland, but this betrayal cost millions of lives.

[antientropic]

What betrayal? The UK and France did go to war against Germany, but they were not in a position to invade Germany in 1939. France suffered more than 4 years of German occupation as a result of its decision to declare war on Germany, a pretty high price for honoring its obligations to Poland.

[kgabis]

France did not honor it's obligations and if it wasn't in position to attack Germany then France shouldn't have made those guarantees (Maurice Gamelin's "bold relief offensive"). Thinking that Germany wouldn't have attacked France if war hadn't been declared is a bit naive.

[bad_user]

I think the current situation with NATO is different than the alliances of WWII.

Lets say that Russia invades Europe. If NATO doesn't respond, then the alliance is null and everybody fights for themselves. Which isn't a good situation to be in, given that countries in Europe don't have the capacity to take on Russia by themselves, I mean given our experience from WWII.

We learn from mistakes and history teaches us that an invader will not be conservative about where to draw the line. The world also thought Germany will stop at Czechoslovakia too and they were wrong.

And nowadays we also have nuclear weapons and during the Cold War the presence of NATO troops in an area was enough to deter the advancement of the soviets and vice versa.

[alkonaut]

> Lets say that Russia invades Europe.

Russia can't (and doesn't want to) really "invade Europe". What they can do is effectively bring small parts of the baltics, perhaps a whole baltic state as a maximum, under the russian umbrella, and e.g. replace the government with a russian friendly one, put a military base or two there etc.

They don't have the resources to hold "unfriendly territory" (their economy is bad enough as it is). So what would happen is things that would confuse the international community. Fraudulent elections. Violence in the streets. Politicians and journalists murdered. And then suddenly that state is Russian friendly i.e. "effectively part of Russia".

What happened? Was it war? Was someone invaded? When? Is Article V invokable? Is Article V even written to cope with such a scenario? What if there was a proper democratic turn towards Russia? It's Ukraine all over again.

We can't expect (even with Trump) to see massive use of force just because a few green men are shouting in a square somewhere. Or because an election seems dubious in Riga. But wait long enough, and it's fait accompli. The Russian friendly government installed will reject any offerings of military help, because now you are asking the russians whether they want the russians out of the Baltics!

This is why the only working deterrent is to simply have massive Nato ground forces permanently in the Baltics. When you get Maidan square like things going on, you need OECD and NATO people on the ground already. They won't be admitted after a while. Article V should be explicitly clarified to include e.g. holding elections without a long enough notice, and doing it without OECD and NATO oversight.

[Grangar]

It would be a truly scary scenario either way. Vox explored a hypothetical invasion of Estonia [0], basically if military intervention happens both sides would be screwed (given that both sides will stick to their doctrine)

[0] http://www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8858909/russia-war-flowchart

[bluetomcat]

What the NATO expansion in Eastern Europe really did is that it disarmed these countries from their Warsaw-Pact era arsenal. We were forced to scrap a lot of missiles and reduce military personnel for a hypothetic defense from NATO.