Azor...this goes to the heart of why Putin always seems to not understand NATO nor the West in general.....Originally Posted by Azor
Russian tabloid MK: Believing NATO battalions will protect Baltic from Russia "is like believing you can use a fly swat against a mad bear"
WHAT is missing from this statement by a Russian MSM propaganda outlet is the simple fact that it is not the numbers of troops that count BUT that that NATO BN being attacked inside a NATO member state.....
This NATO BN becomes the Article 5 "trip wire" thus triggering automatically Article 5 to go to war.....that is why Poland, and the Baltics want them there...it ensures them of NATO Article 5 support.
We saw this same thing during the Cold War on the inner German border...where the US Army Cavalry units both with their Cobras and ground armored mech units were constantly patrolling the inner German border ALL with the explicit knowledge that if the Soviets ever did cross over they were toast militarily speaking but their being engaged directly by Soviet troops triggered automatically NATO Article 5....and they were designed to initially to simply slow down the Soviet forces giving time for other units behind them to go to war status and get out of their bases and into defensive positions.
All NATO Cold War exercises until 1991 practiced this exact maneuver.....for example while the Cav units where being grind into the ground other NATO demo teams were destroying via prepared demo chambers all LOCs that could be used thus slowing down the Soviet Army also designed to give time for NATO to get into prepared defensive positions....all designed to hold the Rhine river as a natural defensive barrier....until the follow on of US and other NATO troops into the theater could arrive....that was the reasoning behind all the so called "Reforger" exercises.....
Many fail to remember that at the height of the Cold War say about 1975-80 there were over 450K NATO troops facing a Soviet Army plus Warsaw Pact forces of roughly the same number....
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