But for Trump and his supporters, all this is overblown. It’s NATO’s eastward expansion that provoked Russian aggression, Trump said just days before his inauguration this year. And anyway, Russia doesn’t have the capacity to strike against a NATO country beyond Ukraine. “I don’t believe for a second Russia is going to advance a war in any other country right now,” Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin told NBC News on Sunday.
Maybe not right now, but later — yes. That’s Europe’s overriding fear, especially for countries located near Russia, like the Baltic and Nordic states and Poland.
Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service already warned that Russia is expanding its armed forces in a way that “prepares for a potential future war with NATO.” Danish intelligence has forecast Russia could be ready to wage a “large-scale war” in Europe within five years. Lithuania’s government has reintroduced military conscription and is ramping up its defense spending to 3.45 percent of gross domestic product. And Latvia’s intelligence service thinks the Kremlin is purposefully developing its capabilities to confront NATO. And, of course, it was fear of Russia that prompted Finland and Sweden to join NATO.
The contrast between these two assessments of Russia’s geopolitical ambitions is stark, and it cuts right to the core of the difference between most of Europe and Trump’s Washington — as well as Putin’s allies like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Slovakia’s Robert Fico.
Orbán is confident that once a deal on Ukraine is reached, it will be all roses — not guns. But that’s not how Nilsson sees it: “In the longer run, I’m not ruling out the possibility that the Russians will decide or calculate they could actually test Article 5,” he told POLITICO, referencing the alliance’s collective defense commitment.
He doesn’t argue that the military threat is imminent — as long as the war rages in Ukraine, Russia doesn’t have the capability to conduct another large-scale military campaign. “They have lost key categories of staff needed to build capacity, and current sanctions [are] making it more difficult and more expensive to build some of the advanced capabilities,” Nilsson said. Nonetheless, “Russia remains the military threat to Sweden.”
From warplanes and warships to nuclear weapons and cyber, Russia still has plenty of assets in the region that it “could use at any given time,” Nilsson said. And he has no doubt that once the war in Ukraine ends, “Russia will reestablish its military presence near Sweden as soon as it can,” and this time it will be “more up to date and more adapted to battlefield experience.”
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