Pat Buchanan writes that in Estonia last week President Obama assured tiny Estonia that were Estonia attacked, the NATO alliance, including the armed forces of the United States, would come to help.
Pat comments that this Obama war guarantee would have been considered madness by Obama’s Cold War predecessors.
Pat writes, “In 1994, George Kennan called the expansion of NATO into the old Soviet bloc a strategic blunder of potentially epic proportions. Yet we not only brought into NATO all the Warsaw Pact nations, George W. Bush brought in the Baltic republics.”
Pat asks, “How would NATO save Estonia without destroying Estonia?”
…if Ukraine’s cause is militarily hopeless, what would be Estonia’s chances in a clash with Moscow? Estonia has three percent of Ukraine’s population and is less than one-tenth its size. If Moscow decided to take Estonia, it could do so in 48 hours.
And should Putin engage in so rash an act, what would NATO do?
Would 28 NATO nations declare war and send troops? Would the United States declare war on Russia and conduct air strikes on Russian forces inside and outside Estonia?
Would we send aircraft carriers into the Baltic Sea? Would we start a war with Russia that could lead to early use of tactical atomic weapons, devastating Estonia and causing massive deaths?
How would NATO save Estonia without destroying Estonia?
To eliminate second thoughts about our war guarantee to Estonia, some in Washington are calling for permanent U.S. bases and the stationing of U.S. troops in the Baltic states, so that any Russian incursion would lead to U.S. casualties and a definite clash with Russia.
Presumably this threat would deter Russia in perpetuity.
But if it doesn’t deter Putin, or if a future Russian ruler regards it as a bluff and chastises Estonia, what do we do then? Put the B-2s on alert and go to DEFCON-2, as we did in the Cuban missile crisis?
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