Doom-mongering western analysis of north-eastern Europe is patronising and potentially harmful
Do the Baltic states and Poland actually exist? Or are they just features of an interesting board game? That is the question raised, unintentionally one hopes, by a new paper from the Belfer Center, a think tank at the Harvard University Kennedy School, looking at Russian threats to Europe; and in a new podcast series, “Ernstfall”, by the German newspaper Die Welt. Both feature Russian attacks on the “Suwałki Gap”: the corridor that links Poland and Lithuania.
True, military command and control in the region is (put politely) still a work in progress. True, NATO and the EU are divided and may move too ponderously. But the countries under this putative attack have agency. Poland has the biggest army in the European Union. Is it really likely to stand by while Russian troops mass on its borders, let alone allow them to cross the frontier? Lithuania has a small but capable regular army of around 17,000 in peacetime, rising to 58,000 ready with immediate mobilization. Both countries are more than ready to fight for their freedom. Both have the means to hit Russia hard. Yet neither Polish nor Lithuanian national decision-making features in the Belfer Center paper, perhaps because the authors include nobody from the Baltic states and only a second-year post-graduate from Poland. (Ernstfall briefly features one Pole, and no Lithuanians)
The Belfer paper has other weaknesses. It is sketchy on the topography of the Suwałki area (try visiting: it is hilly, full of ponds and streams, hard to navigate, with only two highways, neither of them convenient for invaders). The central contention is that a“fast-moving Russian operation to seize a symbolically significant border area could result in a fait accompli before NATO can reach political consensus.” The word “could” is doing a lot of work here. If I leave my house unlocked a robber “could” come and steal my stuff. But I won’t.
Ernstfall’s five episodes are based on a wargame, set in the autumn of this year, in which Russia attacks Lithuania and (spoiler alert) quickly succeeds in building a “humanitarian corridor” from Belarus to Kaliningrad.
To be fair, wargame scenarios are not meant to be realistic. Their aim is to test communication and decision-making. The Germans would, I think, have been just as alarmingly clueless if dealing with a Russian seizure of some other bit of NATO territory (the Åland Islands, Bornholm, Gotland or Svalbard for example). For Germans, and for anyone dependent on them, the podcast usefully shows weaknesses in the country’s strategic culture. The decision-makers (played by retired but knowledgeable senior officials) are slow to react, fearful of escalation and flounder without American leadership.
Die Welt’s podcast is innovative for Germany, but belated. Other European countries have been exploring this genre for years. The Norwegian TV series Okkupert, (2015) shows democratic institutions and the rule of law salami-sliced by local Kremlin collaborators. The Finnish TV series Konflikti (2024) begins with Russia-backed “little green men” occupying a peninsula in southern Finland. A doughty band of conscripts (the country’s defence forces helped with the production) leads the resistance until Helsinki gets a grip. In the Sky News five-part “War Game” podcast (2025) Russia starts by actually attacking Britain.
Freedom of speech includes the right to be unfair and ignorant. But Die Welt, and the Belfer Center, are both reputable organisations. If they and others repeatedly depict Poland and the Baltic states as pushovers, that can harm trade, investment, tourism — and allied resolve.
Don’t worry about the vigilant, hard-bitten countries in NATO’s east. A much more pressing question is the sleepy and patronising ones further west.
