That’s a weird take. Ukraine is not a NATO member, NATO can choose to fight for them or can choose to not fight for them. Latvia is a NATO member. If Latvia is attacked and the NATO doesn’t fight for them NATO stops being a thing immediately. The 5th article is a cornerstone of the whole aliance. It is not an optional “and one more thing” but the reason to join the aliance at all, if it becomes shaky that undermines the whole thing.
I wouldn’t dare to guess what goes on in Putin’s mind, but I also don’t see any reason why he would think that.
I think you're being very optimistic here. Before the invasion, there were so many people in saying Putin was just bluffing. Certain US media, US political party. Ukraine tried downplay the risk. Even Germany had to get their arm twisted to do sanctions after it happened.
We draw a line, it's NATO. Russia steps right up to the line by attacking Ukraine, and NATO does nothing. Is he going to believe that the line is still there? Why not test it?
In my mind it's perfectly plausible that NATO squirms out if Latvia is attacked. Then the line is "core NATO" or something like that.
At the very least if he doesn't test article 5, he can take every country that isn't in NATO, and each time the question grows about whether NATO is actually a thing.
Be our guest. Test it.
It doesn’t start with “and then Russia attacked Latvia”. They are not the Fire Nation. They need time to line up their logistics which will give time for NATO to detect their moves and amass troops in Latvia. Heck they were only lining up to attack a non-NATO country (Ukraine) and NATO sent extra troops to Latvia.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-nato-military-moves-send-...
Because it's not a thing where you say "let's test this out today." It takes months or years to get to this point. I'm hoping NATO would respond to a build-up on the Latvian border with a build-up of their own. Making it clear that there is no easy win.
There's no reason to just sit there and wait for the tanks to roll across the line.
That's what he might be betting on. To be fair, a series of decisions[0] by the West over the last decades might have led him to believe the West may not have the stomach for war with Russia, especially when it comes to defending new NATO members.
[0]
- Invasion of Georgia in 2008: no meaningful response to Russia
- Obama's "red lines" in Syria
- Annexation of Crimea in 2014: no meaningful response to Russia
- Invasion of Eastern Ukraine in 2014: ditto
- Invasion of the rest of Ukraine (under way): response limited to sanctions for Russia and supplies for the Ukrainians
Keep in mind that Putin's mythos was blown to pieces, there's no way he can (politically, if not physically) survive this. And he probably knows it. This is the weakest position he can be in - if the west attacked him, he could at least mobilize the Russians to "defend against western aggression" and could even justify the nuclear bombs to his generals; As things stand, his rhetoric and position are very shaky (he's not being defeated by mighty USA, but by the "weak" Ukrainians who "aren't even a nation")
Unfortunately that's not true.
The previous US president (who still has significant backing with US Congress and Senate) said this when asked about Article 5:
> I want to keep NATO but I want them to pay. I don’t want to be taken advantage of… We’re protecting countries that most of the people in this room have never even heard of and we end up in world war three… Give me a break[1]
And he later refused speeches that included a commitment to article 5:
> The crucial nuance is that Trump did not say that NATO’s original mission of countering Russian power in Europe is no longer obsolete. Indeed, he has never acknowledged this. The closest he has come is a general statement of strong support with caveats attached for burden sharing and counterterrorism. Trump’s failure to endorse Article 5 is not an oversight. Members of his cabinet have unsuccessfully tried to insert this language into his remarks, including at his meeting with Stoltenberg.[1]
Now eventually, Trump did endorse Article 5[2], but that kind of reluctance would have been very well noted in Moscow.
> Keep in mind that Putin's mythos was blown to pieces, there's no way he can (politically, if not physically) survive this.
After 9 days of war you think there is no way he can survive? Are you not familiar with the origins of Putin's Chechen War?
Claiming that Putin is done because a war he is winning is unpopular in the West is naive. It's certainly possible he is in trouble, but there is a long, long way to go before he falls.
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/05/17/t...
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/09/politics/trump-commits-to...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War#Bombings_in...
How did Putin take that message? I think that's the only thing that matters at this point.
> Keep in mind that Putin's mythos was blown to pieces, there's no way he can (politically, if not physically) survive this.
_If_ that mythos was blown to pieces, in the eyes of the Russian public. That remains to be seen.
...and _if_ a viable alternative leader exists...
The link posted was from 2015.
I'm unable to find any recent writing in English that indicates that he thinks that is a belief in Moscow.
Instead, on Twitter he shared this Feb 27 story (not by him) that indicated Putin has a great fear of NATO forces:
But this underestimates Russian respect for NATO’s conventional military power, which is far greater than its own. The only language Putin understands is force, and Moscow did not retaliate after Turkey shot down a Russian military plane in 2015 or when the United States struck and killed Russian mercenaries in 2018
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-02-26/m...
For now, I can only find sources in Russian, e.g. this:
He makes an interesting argument:
For years now, Russia has been training the United States like Pavlov's dog, delicately preparing the Americans for their most important capitulation - the refusal to fulfill their allied obligations under Article 5 of the NATO Charter.
I agree there is a risk Putin thinks he has achieved this.
Traditionally, during the Cold War, the US would station US troops in pretty-much indefensible forward locations (eg West Berlin).
The theory was that these troops would be killed by any attack, and US allies could be confident that the loss of US lives would be enough to make sure the US responded.
Interestingly, NATO has prominently been pointing out the existence of "four multinational battalion-size battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland... led by the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and the United States respectively"
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_136388.htm
And repeating their commitment to article 5:
"Putin’s war affects us all and NATO Allies will always stand together to defend and protect each other," he said. The Secretary General also noted that NATO is deploying elements of the NATO Response Force for the first time in its history. "Today, French troops are arriving in Romania as the lead element of this force. Our commitment to Article 5, our collective defence clause, is iron-clad,"
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_192548.htm
The reluctance of Trump to back article 5[1] will cost lots of lives.
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/05/17/t...
If Putin tries to invade Latvia, the default assumption in this analysis is that NATO will just crumble rather than respond?
The idea is that the lack of NATO membership is just a formality. In any other aspect, Ukraine is a much more important geopolitical asset than said Latvia (with all due respect to the Latvians - I'm just imagining the way it plays out in Putin's head. Or at least the way I understand Piontkovsy here).
> If Putin tries to invade Latvia, the default assumption in this analysis is that NATO will just crumble rather than respond?
Yep. Piontkovsky even describes a potential limited nuclear strike scenario as part of the raising of stakes by Putin. AKA "are you willing to die for Narva[0]?"
I could totally understand some guy on the street thinking hey Latvia is nothing, if they won't defend the Ukraine then they won't defend Latvia but why would a guy with supposed knowledge of military history and how alliances can often cause nations who are allied to come in to wars they would otherwise rather keep out of think such a thing.
In fact I would assume his kneejerk opinion would be to believe that the only way to get all these weak nations to actually go to war would be if an attack happened on a NATO nation.
There's no military history of nuclear wars. This could be the difference in Putin's head.
There's a guy[0] who spent a career analyzing and writing about these things.
His most recent take is that by refusing to get directly involved in Ukraine, NATO creates an understanding in Putin's mind that it wouldn't get involved in, say, Latvia either. According to Piontkovsky, (to Putin,) there's no essential difference, and the (lack of) NATO membership reason provided by NATO is a lame excuse indicative of a lack of resolve to commit, NATO member or not. So Putin is willing to keep upping the ante until NATO folds and becomes irrelevant.
[0]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313258664_Putin's_R...