From the Fulda Gap to the Suwalki Gap: Understanding the Baltic States’ Defence in Depth Problem in the Context of Cold War 2.0

This paper argues that the current defence predicament of the Baltic states has some important parallels with NATO strategic thinking and doctrine in the 1980s. Then, the problem was to defend the Fulda Gap with little scope for defence in depth because of political imperatives not to concede West German territory and because of a short time window before tactical nuclear weapons were likely to be employed. Today, NATO and the Baltic states must deter a resurgent, but presumably not irrational, Russia in an equally constrained narrow geography, including the Suwalki Gap. NATO’s response to the lack of defensive depth in the 1980s was to develop an ambitious forward defense posture and the follow-on forces attack concept, with much stress placed on the maneuverist ‘air-land’ battle doctrine. However, today such offensive defence strategies are not political plausible and would be likely extremely escalatory. Alternatives consist of seeking defensive depth in the wider and deeper Baltic littoral to achieve a type of ‘offshore control’ effect and a version of the air-sea battle concept (DoD, 2013, Hammes, 2013), or a focus on more static and attritional zonal defence (Cross, 1985), or some combination of unconventional approaches (Osburg/RAND, 2016). This paper concentrates of explicating the differing political ramifications for how the Baltic defence in depth problem is resolved, especially as regards to how it impacts on the Baltic states political flexibility, resilience and relative autonomy within NATO alliance politics.