[ivan_gammel]

>Russia's chances against the Baltics are pretty good, I would say 1 in 3. And for Putin it's a proposition with no downside: at worst he loses another few hundred thousand subjects.

Article 5 is still in effect, even if America won’t take its part. Attack of Baltics will trigger response from all neighbors including Finland, Sweden and Poland. Kaliningrad won’t last long, St.Petersburg will be within reach of artillery etc. It will be suicidal to do that.

One thing that Westerners do not understand is that people in small towns or rural areas of Russia may be expendable, but population of St.Petersburg and Moscow is a protected class. If they suffer, the regime may actually collapse before reaching military goals. For this reason Russian mobilization barely touched both capitals.

[pmontra]

If I were Putin I'd attack some very minor NATO state to check if NATO will really send soldiers to defend it. Example: is really somebody willing to die for Estonia? (Sorry HNers from Estonia, but you are just in the worst possible place of all of NATO.) If not, NATO will crumble into pieces. If yes, let's see who's sending soldiers and who won't, and how they will react to the first week of casualties. Keep going or fold?

Maybe before getting there, if I end up controlling the next parliament of Ukraine I'd take over Moldova, and before that let's teach a lesson to Armenia. That's to keep the army busy and not let soldiers back home where they could cause troubles or, god forbids, create a pacifist movement like after the Afghan war (the Russian one.)

[sofixa]

> If I were Putin I'd attack some very minor NATO state to check if NATO will really send soldiers to defend it. Example: is really somebody willing to die for Estonia

Even if nobody else, the other Baltic states and Poland will defend them. Very decent chance of Finland, Sweden, UK, France joining as well.

[pmontra]

Finland and Sweden yes, because they are the next ones in line on that front. UK probably but not 100%. France, it depends who'll be the president, who controls the parliament and what they'll have to say to get the votes to win the next elections.

[ivan_gammel]

But you are not Putin and he is not you. Attacking Ukraine wasn’t a gamble for him, it was a presumably easy win, like Georgia in 2008. Attack on NATO on Baltic shore isn’t an easy win, it’s a gamble. And what is this test for? America has already learned the lesson and is withdrawing from Russian periphery. Europe has no interest in power games, UK is in irreversible decline. NATO is not going to expand anymore in foreseeable future, primary military goal achieved and Russian authoritarianism is secure. Why he would attack Baltics?

[varjag]

You are trying to hypothesise a rational actor except you model the actor on ordinary people.

An aging authoritarian is not concerned with long term security, well being of his subjects or boring diplomatic minutae. Seeing his days vanishing, he is intent on leaving a mark in history. What matters is not how pretty the mark is going to be but how visible shall it be through centuries. And since the authoritarian's strength is more often brutality than intelligence, the role model would inevitably be Stalin, Genghis Khan or Ivan the Terrible.

Within their framework the dictator is entirely a rational actor but on a very different vector than what think tanks usually muse about.

[ivan_gammel]

You are describing a fantasy fiction, but reality is not that simple. Putin’s actions were very rational by Western standards of reasoning (NB not moral standards). His invasion had a point, but was based on bad intelligence and some logical flaws, just like American invasion to Iraq two decades before. He is no more crazy than Chinese or Iranian leaders and probably more sane than current American administration. He is absolutely ordinary man, a grandpa who accidentally came to power, is afraid of retirement and whose views were influenced by external factors. He is not a philosopher, he had not written lots of books on his ideology etc. He is not on a mission, even if he may dream about it. He just steers the wheel and seizes the opportunities. If you look further in the past, the whole Ukrainian conflict may have started from a single naval base in Sevastopol, loosing which would be a major blow in the chess game. And then one escalation followed another, leading into current quagmire. And he was just carried in the stream. He has no exit strategy but to wait for something to happen. NATO just need to hold firm and have enough presence on borders to make blitzkrieg impossible.

[varjag]

There was no threat of losing Sevalstopol, which was leased until 2049 in non-aligned and then substantially pro-Russian Ukraine. You build your whole chain of reasoning on a faulty premise.

[ivan_gammel]

>There was no threat of losing Sevalstopol, which was leased until 2049 in non-aligned and then substantially pro-Russian Ukraine.

This is not correct. Kharkov agreements in 2010 extended the lease until 2042 in exchange for gas price discounts, but they would start working only in 2017 and Ukraina could cancel them (and may have cancelled them if anti-Russian opposition would be back in power - the threat of losing the base was real). After annexation of Crimea Russia itself cancelled the agreements and they effectively were never in place.

>You build your whole chain of reasoning on a faulty premise.

That was not the premise for the whole chain of reasoning. Premises do not start with "may". :)

[geoka9]

The latest expansion of NATO was barely a year ago (with Sweden joining).

Russian authoritarianism may be secure, but the current regime's power is not (not to mention their leaders' paranoia).

Their ambition is the control of continental Europe. It might sound crazy, but if you listen to people like Dugin, it is very clear. And it's not that unrealistic in the longer run, considering everything you listed in your post.

The onslaught on Europe will continue - first (already happening) on its unity through the financing and propaganda support of the right-wing populist candidates who don't know (or simply don't care) better and then, once every (relatively) little country in Europe is on their own, on their sovereignty through military threat and/or invasion.

I will also leave this here as I think it is pertinent to the discussion:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313258664_Putin's_R...

[ivan_gammel]

>listen to people like Dugin, it is very clear

Don’t be afraid of scarecrows. He is a powerless freak far away from the decision makers, not Rasputin. Says a lot, but doesn’t really matter. It is much more interesting what people in security council say and who gets the contracts. There’s zero indication of expansion but a lot of messages about not messing with “legitimate interests”. They protect what they think is theirs.

The ambition of the control over continental Europe exists only in imagination of people with no understanding of Russian internal politics. They need absence of threat and parking lot for the money, so they will play the game of influence, but war? Nonsense.

[geoka9]

> It is much more interesting what people in security council say

People in the security council were cowering with fear on 22-02-22 afraid to say the unthinkable and Putin openly gloating while forcing them to say it.

Dugin is a freak alright, but he has the ear of (and is privy to) the paranoid decision makers there; he was talking about the impending war long before anyone else.

> They need absence of threat and parking lot for the money

It will be much easier to park their money in any one of the small rich countries (e.g. Switzerland) once those are not encumbered by the KYC and AML rules imposed by the globalist word order. Same with their luxury properties and kids in private schools.

They don't need to invade every country to control the continent. Look at Finland prior to the collapse of the USSR - while staying mostly independent they still had to run their leadership choices by the Kremlin and did not even think about joining military alliances to avoid confrontation.

> so they will play the game of influence, but war?

Right, they played the game of influence with Ukraine until they lost all influence and and saw an opportunity for military success. On the other hand, they are not invading Georgia or Belarus because the governments are in their pocket and their security apparatuses are basically departments within FSB. For the same reason they won't be invading Hungary or Slovakia any time soon. But the Baltic countries? I'm not so sure.

[ivan_gammel]

>People in the security council were cowering with fear on 22-02-22 afraid to say the unthinkable and Putin openly gloating while forcing them to say it.

I think you are making up some stuff here. First of all, the war was declared on 24.02.2022, two days later, and that matter was not discussed on Security Council on 22.02. Watch the video, it's available on YouTube. On 22.02 they discussed the recognition of independence of Donesk and Luhansk People Republics and the only person who was seemingly uncomfortable was the director of foreign intelligence service. He may have known about what's going to happen, but it was just him. Maybe he has also known that his intel is either bad or was ignored in the decision-making process and the war is going to be something different than planned: he is certainly not the guy who would feel so bad because of a military operation. As a matter of fact, he may be the only guy in Security Council who whould be sympathetic to Dugin.

>It will be much easier to park their money in any one of the small rich countries (e.g. Switzerland). Same with their luxury properties and kids in private schools.

"Parking money" is not locking them in a vault. It's investing. There's a reason why Russian oligarchs prefer London and were trying to buy European assets. Small countries cannot absorb capital on that scale. If Russia controls the continent, why only small countries? If Russia does not, KYC rules etc apply to Switzerland too - they cannot resist the pressure.

>They don't need to invade every country to control the continent. Look at Finland prior to the collapse of the USSR

What a giant leap. I'm not sure this fiction is interesting to discuss. Russia is not USSR, EU is not Finland (which by the way is part of EU and NATO now and does not look at Russia when making foreign policy decisions for at least 40 years).

>For the same reason they won't be invading Hungary or Slovakia any time soon

If Hungarian or Slovakian opposition will win on next election they won't invade too. It's not the reason they don't do it. Just look at the map.