Within a few days, the Russians, with small forces, take over the strategic bridgehead in Lithuania, and NATO reacts with decision-making paralysis – this is the result of the war game, conducted jointly by the “Die Welt” daily and the Bundeswehr University, reports its Polish participant Bartłomiej Kot from the Aspen Institute Central Europe to PAP.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday on the war game, which involved 16 former senior German and NATO officials, as well as lawmakers and security experts. It was organized jointly by the daily “Die Welt” and the Bundeswehr University in Hamburg.
According to the scenario adopted in the game, in October this year Russia takes Lithuanian Mariampol, a city of 35,000 inhabitants, located in a narrow isthmus between Russia (Königsberg Oblast) and Belarus. He is doing this under the pretext of an alleged humanitarian crisis in the Königsberg Oblast, his enclave bordering Poland and Lithuania.
Mariampol is a strategic place, located at the intersection of important highways for Europe: to the southwest runs Via Baltica, a road leading to Poland, and to the west runs the road between Belarus and Kaliningrad. Under the 2002 transit agreement between Russia, the EU and Lithuania, the latter is open to Russian transport.
“INeveryone accepted the establishment of a humanitarian corridor“
The director of the Warsaw office of the Aspen Institute Central Europe, Bartłomiej Kot, played the role of the Polish Prime Minister in this game. In an interview with PAP, he admitted that the exercise showed the lack of solidarity among NATO allies to the Russian threat.
– The United States, the basic guarantor of NATO, decided that it would try to enter into direct talks with the Russians. In turn, the Germans treated the Russian escalation narrative as a starting point for further play, Kot reported on the further course of events.
According to him, apart from Poland, none of the players tried to contest the “Russian starting position” and all of them accepted the establishment of a humanitarian corridor on the territory of Lithuania, also agreeing to the lack of access to this corridor and the closing of the airspace over it for everyone except Russia.
– The Germans started negotiations, just trying to achieve de-escalation. I decided that it was impossible to simply accept Russian demands, because this would mean giving up part of the sovereignty of a NATO country without a fight. Even though there was no Russian military activity, Kot explained.
The Polish player proposed to check the credibility of the Russian narrative by “demonstrative presence in the area to which they wanted to deny us access.” If the Russians reacted to this with military action, it would, in his opinion, provide an excuse to trigger Article 5 due to a physical violation of the sovereignty of a NATO country.
– My intervention made the other players understand that Russian statements should not be accepted without any verification – added the expert and admitted that in order to break the decision-making deadlock among the allies, it was necessary to look for coalition partners and force, for example, the Americans or the Germans to take specific actions. Therefore, as he emphasized, the lesson from this war game is that solidarity should be maintained for as long as possible. – And when it is lacking, you have to act boldly and overcome the reluctance of other allies to act – he concluded.
“The United States refused to invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty“
Also according to the “WSJ” report, the simulated invasion of Marijampolė under the pretext of the humanitarian crisis in Königsberg paralyzed the decision-making process of NATO allies.
The United States refused to invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, according to which, in the event of an attack on one of the allies, the others provide it with solidarity. In turn, although Poland began to mobilize, it did not send troops to Lithuania, and the 500-strong 45th Bundeswehr armored brigade stationed in Lithuania did not react at all. According to “WSJ”, this happened, among others, because Russia used drones to mine the roads leading to the German base.
A similar scenario of a Russian attack on a “small, limited part” of a NATO country, hoping for the alliance's inaction, was described in October last year in an interview with PAP by prof. Carlo Masala from the Bundeswehr University in Munich, author of the book “If Russia Wins”. He argued that the smaller the NATO country and the less significant the territory attacked by Russia, the greater the risk that the alliance will not decide to respond in solidarity.
According to Masala, the Russians only want the end of NATO, not World War III. Therefore, they count on the alliance's inaction in a situation where they attack only to a limited extent. Why could this mean the end of NATO? Because the lack of solidary defense of one of the allies will cause some countries to start asking questions about the sense of such a military pact, the expert noted.
Experts quoted by “WSJ” had a similar opinion. They admitted that the Russians did not care about a prolonged war with the entire NATO. “Such a war would be harmful to them, because in the long run we would be able to produce more and conscript more people into the army,” said Amund Osflaten, a lecturer in military doctrine at the Norwegian Defense University, in “WSJ.” Therefore, if Russia wants to attack, he added, it will do so quickly in order to take advantageous positions that will later be easy for it to defend.
In the war game described by “WSJ” this was the course of events – the Russians used a “smokescreen” in the form of a humanitarian crisis, quickly attacked a small city, and the West reacted with hesitation and decision-making paralysis. – Adopting a de-escalation attitude means that the other side wins. That's what this game showed. When we take too many steps back, we may lose consistency in our responses. The worst thing is that the Russians undermined allied solidarity in this simulation with hybrid rather than open action, Kot summed up in an interview with PAP.
Anna Gwozdowska (PAP)
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