Scaremongering is where defence-planning and politics overlap. Big military exercises in western Russia and Belarus, which finished earlier this month, were based on the following improbable scenario: ethnic Poles in western Belarus rise up and “terrorists” from Lithuania attack the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. More than 10,000 troops from Russia and Belarus countered them, reinforcing Kaliningrad from the sea and sending special forces behind the enemy lines. Three NATO-like brigades, one visiting, one Estonian and one Latvian, then invaded western Russia, where they were successfully rebuffed by the elite Pskov-based 76th air assault division, reinforced by a motorised rifle brigade.

Military exercises need a notional enemy and, from Russia’s point of view, NATO is the obvious choice. Because the alliance has expanded to Russia’s borders, taking in a dozen ex-communist members over strenuous protests from the Kremlin, it is all the more desirable to send a strong signal. What is more, Western countries have been urging (and helping) Russia’s military forces to become more professional. That requires practice drills.

The main aim of the Russian exercises may indeed have been to measure progress on military reform, particularly the creation of more Western-style autonomous brigades. And, plainly, Russia is neither willing nor able to fight a real war with NATO. Yet the war-games look alarming to neighbours. They recall that the war in Georgia in August 2008 followed many years of exercises, and they point out that NATO has no formal contingency plans to defend its vulnerable Baltic members. Nor has the alliance held land drills on the territory of any of its new members. Indeed, until two years ago NATO’s threat assessments explicitly discounted the idea of conflict with Russia.

... contd.