NATO Must Plan to Liberate Narva, Estonia from Little Green Men

Russia might wait until the Winter War of 2022 is over. Or it might be a means to win that war.

I think Narva, Estonia could be in Putin’s crosshairs even as he struggles to defeat Ukraine in the Winter War of 2022. NATO must prepare to prevail in any Russian attack that seeks to deniably capture the city with conventionally organized and equipped “little green men” to break NATO’s Article V defense guarantee. The United States Army needs to be the key building block to organize a victory over that gambit.

The Army participated in a NATO multi-corps exercises in September:

With maps and graphics flashing on movie theater-sized screens, top U.S. Army commanders monitored in real time a scenario of all-out ground war with Russia as new NATO defense plans were put into operation for the first time.

U.S. Army Europe and Africa was at the center of the action for Avenger Triad 24, a two-week drill that wrapped up Thursday. It involved 10 other countries and multiple alliance regional corps that oversee alliance front-line troops. …

While the smaller Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 brought Pentagon attention back to the Continent, the ongoing war throughout Ukraine that began Feb. 24, 2022, has taken matters to another level.  

This is good. Having an insurance policy in Europe in case Russia reverted to expansionist ways was one reason I wanted to retain an Army corps in Europe, which I advocated in this old in Military Review article (starting on page 15). Since America had to renew the policy after Russia reverted to its aggressive posture, I now think the corps should be a heavy rather than a lighter airborne corps that I proposed keeping there as a hedge against the unknown. Now we know. America's Aegis Ashore air defense system is online in Poland. This air defense bubble in the key Polish American center of gravity in eastern Europe helps defend forces and supplies flowing into and deploying through Poland.

Yet Russia is decimating its ground forces in the Winter War of 2022 begun in February 2022. It will take some time to restore the threat Russia poses to NATO that the Avenger Triad 24 exercise simulated.

Russia certainly intends to be a military threat to NATO:

Russia has to prepare for war with NATO as well as complete its war against Ukraine, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov told the Defense Ministry on Monday in a joint meeting with President Vladimir Putin.

Even as Russia issues hollow nuclear threats to NATO to prevent Ukraine from using Western weapons inside Russian territory, Russia is expanding its war on Ukraine to NATO states:

Russia is staging hybrid attacks on other countries as part of its all-out war on Ukraine, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said on a visit to the German capital Monday.

"Russia is conducting ... an intensifying campaign of hybrid attacks across our allied territories, interfering directly in our democracies, sabotaging industry and committing violence," said Rutte, speaking alongside Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

"This shows that the shift of the frontline in this war is no longer solely in Ukraine. Increasingly, the frontline is moving beyond borders to the Baltic region, to Western Europe and even to the high north," he said.

Well, you know my feelings on “hybrid war.” It is not a novel means of waging war. It is simply a part of war. These tactics can get obscured when carried out in support of a major shooting war. But when used on its own, that trendy term just obscures the reality and gives us an excuse to let it slide. Ever since Russia conquered Crimea with “little green men” I’ve lamented NATO’s ability to ignore the Russian threat:

Good Lord people, Russian "hybrid warfare" is just Russian aggression that we pretend isn't happening. Sadly, there's nothing new or novel about that.

NATO since 2015 has been alert to the threat, stating:

the Russian Federation uses sophisticated hybrid strategies, including political interference, malicious cyber activities, economic pressure and coercion, subversion, aggression and annexation. Coercive military posture and rhetoric are also used as part of the Russian Federation’s hybrid strategies to pursue its political goals and undermine the rules-based international order.

Right now, Europeans are refusing to resolutely resist Russia’s shadow war of sabotage and other measures to undermine states in Europe. The extent of Russian covert actions is staggering. reaching into America:

The Russian attacks involved four methods: election and information operations, attacks on critical infrastructure, violence campaigns and weaponized migration.

The hybrid campaign has ranged from cyberattacks on train stations that cause scheduling delays to attempted assassinations and terrorism plots, the commission said.

If not resisted, will Putin escalate this campaign? That seems far more likely than the much-discussed threat of nuclear escalation against NATO. Nuclear escalation is suicidal and if Russia is suicidal we have bigger worries than how much Ukraine fights back against Russia’s invasion.

I worry most about the exposed Baltic states should Putin decide to directly target NATO. I wrote about the threat posed by Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave which could be used to isolate the Baltic states from overland lines of communication to the rest of NATO, making those small states vulnerable to overt invasion by Russia.

But Russia could have another option to crack NATO by using a version of hybrid tactics that relies on Pakistan’s subliminal invasion of India in 1999 at Kargil. I recently wrote about that potential threat—what I call the Narva Gambit—in this January 2025 Army magazine article, “Pay Attention to Estonia”:

Will an angry Vladimir Putin seek to shatter NATO at Narva, Estonia? Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commander of U.S. European Command, warned in July that NATO is “going to have a situation where Russia is reconstituting its force, is located on the borders of NATO, is led by largely the same people as it is right now, is convinced that we’re the adversary, and is very, very angry.”

Is the threat overblown? It depends on what lesson the Russians have learned from their past aggression:

Vladimir Putin has repeatedly resorted to naked military power – first when he seized Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008, then in 2014 when he invaded Crimea and severed it from Ukraine, a year later when he sent his forces into Syria, and then in 2022 with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Each time, he scored a political win, suffering only marginal consequences until 2022, when the United States and NATO finally reacted, but with no strategy for victory in place and with escalation management as our overarching priority.

As an aside, all we can really say about Ukraine 2.0 is that Russia hasn’t won yet. Is NATO trying to help Ukraine win? If not, that “yet” figures prominently in the final outcome.

If Russia decides to test NATO directly at Narva, allowing Russia to get a political victory there because NATO refuses to support an effort to eject the invaders, Russia will have weakened NATO for the next potential blow. Perhaps the Baltic States. Perhaps Ukraine again. Maybe Finland or Norway.

Those targets might be more isolated with a weakened NATO exposed as unwilling to resist Russian aggression even against a member state. And Russia will buy time with such a victory to rebuild its military to take on the next target.

Indeed, instead of being the next target after Ukraine, perhaps Russia would see a small direct—but deniable—blow at NATO as a means to finally isolate Ukraine and win the Winter War of 2022.

Russia has long wanted to reclaim what it lost in the Cold War. But I believe Russia has come to believe its own propaganda about the threat of NATO that was initially designed to appease China while concealing that reality by loudly claiming a nearly toothless NATO was a threat to invade Russia. Not only did those threats finally prompt NATO to reverse its military decline, but that NATO rearmament provided “proof” that Russia’s fantasy claims were real.

And here we are with Russia waging war on Ukraine and expanding that war into NATO itself in deniable ways that give NATO a chance to refrain from reacting to the subliminal attacks.

How much more would Putin expand such deniable aggression to recover from his stumble inside Ukraine that has derailed his hope to be known as Vladimir the Great in Russian history books—the tiger-riding ruler who restored Russian power, territory, and glory after the great geopolitical tragedy of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Army should think about and prepare to lead a multinational joint campaign to defeat Russia at Narva, Estonia, and deny it a cheap win inside NATO. Failure to defeat a Russian gambit that counts on this type of willful blindness would shatter NATO's Article V defense commitment. And preparing to deal with that high-end form of subliminal warfare will create the capabilities and organizations to more easily deal with lesser forms.

Narva, Estonia is the front line of freedom in NATO Europe.

NOTE: I made the image with the Substack capability.