The Suwalki Gap

It is the Achilles heel of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It is a 64-kilometer narrow corridor between the two Putin dominated states: The Russian exclave Kaliningrad and Putin friend Lukashenko’s Belarus. The Suwalki Gap is NATO’s only access by land through Poland to the Baltic State Lithuania which leads further North to Latvia and Estonia. All four are members of the European Union (EU) and NATO since 2004. If Putin wants to incorporate these former satellites of the Soviet Union – and that is what he desperately wants – then he only has to close the Suwalki gap and the Baltic States Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are trapped. Then his tanks can invade Estonia and then roll up going south into Latvia and Lithuania.

That seems easy and tempting for Putin. In Kaliningrad he has stationed countless destructive Iskander rockets and near Grodno ln Belarus only 20 km from Polish border he holds huge military exercises with massive artillery use. We know from the war against Ukraine what damage those are capable to do to cities, civilian and military targets. We know his ruthlessness. And we saw how a maneuver can turn into a war. The Suwalki Gap is the nightmare for Jens Stoltenberg, the Pentagon, 30 governments of NATO member states and 947 million citizens in the alliance.

But launching another special military expedition would trigger the NATO case according to article 5: an attack on one NATO state is an attack on all 30 NATO members. Therefor after February 24, 2022, NATO is heavily rearming their northeastern flank. In no case can the civilized western world accept that the three states are subjugated again under the yoke of Russian dictatorship after they have fought for freedom since centuries until they eventually broke free from the Soviet Union on the occasion of the latter’s collapse in 1991. Their slogan is: Better dead than red.

Since NATO is purely defensive and clearly has no intention to raid any country all their efforts are about deterrence: In order to deter Putin (or his successor) from triggering a war against his small and putative weak neighbors they have considerably rearmed their land, air and naval forces.

The balance of powers is largely in favor of the Western Alliance. Soon the hitherto neutral NATO partner states Sweden and Finland will be granted full membership which will strengthen marine and air defense capabilities. All in all there are more than 400 modern combat aircraft in the region. Numerous partly nuclear-armed U.S., UK and French submarines are cruising everywhere in the Baltic Sea. The German navy operates 15 surface combat ships along with five submarines. Poland is modernizing its fleet and Sweden operates one of the finest conventional submarine fleets. Denmark has vowed to spend the NATO - requested 2% of its GDP for its military. The allies are working on conducting tactical interoperability exercises in the Baltic Sea as well as in the Norwegian Sea. The Finns are wildly decided to defend their 1,340 km long border with Russia.

Consequently Putin (or any of his successors) is well advised to keep his hands off the Suwalki Gap.

Erich Wannemacher