We must listen to the Baltic States. The Russian hybrid threat is growing
During his visit to London last week, Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte issued this dire warning about the threat of Russian aggression: 'Russia could be ready to use military force against Nato within five years. Let's not kid ourselves, we are all on the Eastern flank now.' Rutte warned that Russia produces more ammunition in three months than Nato manufactures in a year and spotlit Chinese technology's critical role in reconstituting Russia's military arsenal.
Rutte's stark warning aimed to snap European countries out of their state of complacency but received a mixed reception on the continent. As Russia helplessly watched the destruction of some of its most-prized strategic bombers and struggles to gain a decisive offensive advantage in eastern Ukraine, Rutte's framing seemed hyperbolic to many in Western Europe.
For the Baltic States, however, Rutte's rhetoric was not nearly strident enough. Due to his past support for the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline and sluggish approach to increasing defence spending as Dutch Prime Minister, Rutte was already an unpopular figure in the Baltic States. Rutte's latest comments reawakened those critiques as they depicted Russia as a long-term danger rather than an urgent threat to Nato's security.
The Baltic States have compelling reasons to be frustrated with Rutte's incrementalism. By illegally transiting its shadow fleet of oil tankers through the Baltic Sea, weaponising migration across land borders and carrying out disruptive cyberattacks, Russia has demonstrated that it is on a war footing with the Baltic States. By dismissing these aggressive actions as mere hybrid threats, Nato risks trivialising an existential threat to the cogency of its alliance.
The mood of frustration in the Baltic States is especially pronounced because of the long build-up to Russia's current escalations against them. When I spoke to senior Estonian officials last month, they argued that Russia never truly viewed the Baltic States as sovereign after they restored their independence in 1991.
As Estonia pushed for Nato membership during the 1990s, Russian ultranationalists began issuing apocalyptic threats. After earning a plurality of votes in the 1993 legislative elections, LDPR leader and ultranationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky warned Estonians to flee to Sweden on fishing boats and threatened to deport the Estonians who stayed home to Siberia.
But instead of being recognised for presciently warning about the Russian threat, the Baltic States were all-too-often accused of crying wolf.
Even after Russia displayed its true hand by illegally annexing Crimea in 2014 and launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Baltic States still struggled to get their message heard. In response to tightening sanctions against Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko warned in May 2021 that he would allow drugs and migrants to flood into European Union (EU) territory. Lukashenko's threats came to pass as illegal migrants overwhelmed Latvia and Lithuania's border defences in the autumn of 2021. Despite the scale of this threat, the EU refused to finance the construction of a border wall on Lithuania's frontiers.
In response to the unresponsiveness of key Nato countries to their concerns, the Baltic States have taken matters into their own hands. From announcing 5 per cent of GDP defence spending targets to Lithuania's investment of $1.2 billion in border security with Belarus and Russia, three of Nato's smallest member states are setting a positive example for the rest of the alliance.
These states are also trying to steer Nato towards committing to a firmer response to security threats that fall below the threshold of conventional war. Their argument is that Russia's hybrid threats are steps on an escalation ladder that could lead to full-scale war. Lithuanian officials justified this contention by arguing that shadow-fleet ships could escalate from cutting undersea cables to destroying liquefied natural gas terminals and use disruptive GPS jamming to down civilian aeroplanes. Based on its track record, Russia would maintain a level of deniability around these aggressive actions and any Baltic retaliation could lead to an invasion.
As Nato's Article 5 security guarantees do not clearly extend to hybrid threats, former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves and former Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis recently called for the creation of a new permanent discussion forum on hybrid threats and the potential construction of a Baltic regional security organisation with robust military capabilities.
In the European Parliament and Nato gatherings, Baltic officials are calling for European countries to re-evaluate their risk aversion in confronting Russian aggression head-on and to more thoroughly sanction the financial infrastructure that supports the shadow fleet. The efficacy of Ukraine's cross-border operations and the limitations of Russia's retaliatory capacity has caused some Baltic officials to view an exclusive focus on deterrence as obsolete.
Ahead of the Nato summit in the Hague later this month, there will be a major focus on Ukraine's future within the organisation. Time should also be devoted to addressing the concerns of the Nato alliance's three most vulnerable and committed participants.
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