A popular parlor game of "What if?" by Western military analysts — a Russian invasion of the Baltic states — is getting a new twist amid recent comments by Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, who said not all NATO members are worth defending.

Some believe the prospects for such a scenario are real, arguing Europe hasn't found itself in a similarly dangerous situation since 1913 or 1939. The issue is also the subject of a major analysis by Rand, a US-based research organization funded in part by the US Army. In a series of war games in 2014 and 2015, Rand considered the possible repercussions of Russian tanks rolling into Riga and Tallin, the capitals of Latvia and Estonia, respectively.

The recently published conclusions do not make for edifying reading: Russian tanks could reach the outskirts of both cities in as little as 36 hours, or 60 at the most. Though the Western alliance strenuously denies it, NATO's forces are described as so "woefully inadequate" that such a "catastrophic" outcome would leave the alliance with a "limited number of options."

One certainty, according to Rand's analysis, is that Russian adventurism into these tiny, former Soviet republics — whose combined population is slightly greater than that of Maryland — could both hand Moscow a stunning coup and trigger a much wider conflict.

According to Rand, preventing such an outcome specifically necessitates a force of about seven brigades, including three heavy armored brigades.

Crafting such a deterrent comes at a cost: $2.7 billion annually, the analysts estimate.

Pauline Massart, a security expert at the Brussels-based Friends of Europe, believes a Russian invasion of the Baltics, and hence more NATO brigades in the region, isn't actually what officials should be worried about.

Vladimir Putin, she said, has a lot to lose and not much to gain by invading a NATO member nation. What we should be worried about, she said, is the West's lack of an efficient response to Russia's potent hybrid warfare tactics, comprising a massive propaganda machine, cyberattacks (often difficult to attribute), funding Europe's extreme right, Putin's play on the refugee crisis, his strategy in Syria, and perhaps more worrying, his newfound friendship with Racep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president.

"The question," she said, "is which war we should be preparing for. And brigades or air support aren't going to do the trick."

Rand's assessment might be seen as overly gloomy given that recent endorsement was given to deploy 4,000 NATO forces — mostly from the US — to be stationed in the Baltic states (and Poland) to deter Russian aggression.

The decision, taken at the Warsaw Summit in July, to send four new battalions to the Baltics represents a significant increase of activity in the region.

While the alliance does not see an imminent threat to any ally, a NATO military official said that over the last couple of years alone, Russia has "illegally" annexed Crimea and "continues its aggressive actions" in eastern Ukraine.

"Russian troops remain in Moldova and Georgia, against the will of their governments," the NATO official said. "If we really put it in perspective, the need for assurance to our border with Russia came from Russia's action in Georgia and Ukraine. It was not initiated by us. So if there was no Russian action in Ukraine or Georgia, there would be no forward presence. That's absolutely clear."

Russia, says the official, has "significantly" built up its military forces from the Barents to the Baltic Sea, and from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Its air and naval activity close to alliance borders has also increased significantly in the last two years.

Moreover, there has been what alliance officials consider unsafe and unprofessional buzzing of allied planes and warships by Russian assets as well as violations of NATO airspace. Russia has also been conducting massive military exercises, including unannounced "snap" exercises sometimes involving more than 100,000 troops.

The official argued that "all of NATO's measures are defensive, proportionate, transparent and fully in line with our international obligations. NATO is and will always be a defensive alliance."

The four new Baltic battalions will be "robust and multinational" and, the official said, demonstrate the strength of the transatlantic bond and make clear that an attack on one ally would be considered an attack on all.

The response from Russia's Permanent Representative to NATO Alexander Grushko is to accuse NATO of creating a bridgehead for exerting military pressure on Moscow in the Baltic states.

According to Dmitri Trenin, head of the Carnegie Moscow Center, the erosion of Russia's power since the end of the Soviet Union, as many of its former forced allies have switched over to join NATO and the European Union, has led to a "colossal asymmetry" between Russia and the US.

To be sure, Russia's army is much smaller than its Soviet predecessor. Today, it can muster for operations in its Western Military District — the region adjacent to the Baltic states — about 22 battalions, roughly the same number of divisions forward deployed in the non-Soviet Warsaw Pact countries in 1990.

But fears that Russian forces could be knocking on the gates of Riga and Tallin in two or three days are not entirely fanciful.

In 2015, Russian military planes approached Baltic countries' borders with their transponders turned off. The European Leadership Network, a London-based think tank, has recorded 66 "close military encounters" between Russian and NATO military forces, and between Russia and neutral Sweden and Finland in the last couple of years or so.

It all feeds the sense of threat in the Baltics.

In the book "2017: War with Russia", Gen. Richard Shirreff, a former deputy commander of NATO, predicted the Kremlin would invade the Baltic states through Latvia and threaten to go nuclear if NATO attempts a military response.

"A hesitant NATO will face catastrophe; the day of reckoning for its failure to match strong political statements with strong military forces finally arrives," he said.

Conflict on Europe's eastern flank, he believes, could be avoided if the West began to position personnel and weapons in the Baltic States and Eastern Europe.

Of course, it could be argued that NATO is in the process of doing just that, to the chagrin of the Kremlin.

Denis MacShane, a former Europe minister in the UK, said that if the full weight of the Russian military decided to launch an all-out invasion of a Baltic state, there is little chance of successfully defeating such an invasion any more than if the US Army were to invade a Central American state.

"That is why NATO members have committed to having their own units deployed in the Baltics as well as increasing air patrols," MacShane said. "The Baltic states are in NATO and covered by Article 5 on mutual defense. Putin is a Russian nationalist who takes advantage of any breakdown or chaos in one of the former Soviet states, but he's not an adventurer and is unlikely to seek a full-on confrontation with NATO. The greater threat to the Baltic states is any weakening or disintegration of the EU under the pressure from populist nationalists who reject cooperation with Brussels and the EU member states."

Artur Jugaste, deputy director of Stratcom at the Estonian Ministry of Defence, welcomed Rand's "thorough" analysis of the security situation in his region and agreed with the main conclusion of their analysis, namely that the allied presence in the Baltics needs to be increased.

However, he suggested that any such war games always simplify the real situation and the results are not always applicable to reality. "One has to keep this in mind regarding claims such as that the Baltics can be taken within 60 hours."

The goal of Estonia's national defense is to ensure that the potential aggressor is deterred, Jugaste said.

"We do this," he said, "through strong national defense, that we develop with a defense budget of over 2 percent of GDP, and through our allies. What we ask for from our allies is a clear commitment to collective defense to avoid any miscalculation that NATO won't protect its allies. This is exactly what NATO did at the Warsaw Summit by deploying four battalion combat teams in our region. The multinational, persistent and rotational force of the allies is a good solution for the current security situation here."

At the same time, Jugaste said, "we are not looking for Cold War-style confrontation, soldier-to-soldier or tank-to-tank."

About Martin Banks

Martin Banks covered the European Union, NATO and affairs in Belgium for Defense News.

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