“Anti-access/area denial, or A2/AD, is a growing problem,” Gen. Philip Breedlove, supreme allied commander Europe and commander of U.S. European Command, told an audience in Washington on Monday. Kaliningrad has given Moscow the ability to better defend the Baltic, while the annexation of Crimea has done the same on the Black Sea, he said.
“The geography of Europe has changed” since the end of the Cold War, Benitez said. “The geography of NATO has changed. In the Cold War NATO’s borders were in the center of the continent, but now the front lines are the Baltics, and you’re drawn to that small land bridge [near Suwalki].”
“The Russians have chosen to make this the new zone of friction, that’s where you’re seeing the air provocations,” such as Russian warplanes flying with transponders off, said Benitez.
I’ve decided that certain parties who advocated that Nato and the EU not expand eastward were right all along. One wonders how much more pacific the relationship between Russia and the West would be today if Nato had chosen to form working relationships with the former Warsaw Pact states rather than allowing them to slowly enter the alliance and eat away at the buffer zone. Everyone would probably be getting along a lot better if Nato had kept places like Poland and the Baltic states at arm’s length as its own buffer between it and the former Soviet republics that are Russia’s near abroad and are understandably considered by Russia to be within its sphere of influence. Certainly in places like Ukraine, attempting to draw in states into the greater Western European sphere has ultimately proven to be futile.