The West won’t fight Russia itself. Eastern Europe may have to

We have come to regard the countries of Eastern Europe as the most conflict-prone and volatile part of the political landscape surrounding Russia, and there are grounds for this view. 

Immediate neighbors often have the most difficult relationships because the more points of contact there are, the more opportunities for friction, and in Russia’s case, geopolitical logic is reinforced by considerable historical experience of invasion, which means Russia has traditionally sought to ensure that no serious threat can emerge from neighboring countries and that its immediate surroundings remain predictable.

This predictability has been secured in different ways over the centuries, sometimes through direct annexation and sometimes through indirect forms of control. Russia’s western neighbors are small in comparison with it, and their policies have often been driven by fear of their much larger neighbor, whether justified or not.

The acute military and political crisis that began in 2022 seems to confirm that stability between Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe shouldn’t be taken for granted, as countries that joined NATO and the EU in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are now pursuing the most intransigent course, seeking not merely to contain Russia but to marginalize it.

Their own capabilities are limited, so they have increasingly used international institutions, above all an increasingly militarized EU, to push larger member states towards a tougher position. A recent example is Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski’s rhetoric concerning the Baltic region and Kaliningrad.

The militarization of Eastern Europe is, in this sense, a continuation of a policy pursued since the 1990s, which rested on the conviction that the expansion of Western military and political institutions was an objective historical process, and that enlargement itself would provide security without ever requiring serious military action.

This assumption was convenient for everyone as the new member states regarded NATO membership as a guarantee of their security, and the veteran members in Western Europe and the US were confident that these guarantees would never actually have to be tested. Nobody seriously expected to fight Russia over the states along its borders.

Let us leave aside for the moment the role NATO expansion played in creating the conditions for the conflict over Ukraine, because whatever one’s interpretation of how we arrived here, the question of military guarantees has now moved from theory to practice.

This creates a fundamental problem for NATO. On the one hand, it can’t simply abandon its security commitments, because if these guarantees cease to be credible, NATO loses much of its purpose. On the other hand, Article 5 of the Washington Treaty is less automatic than is commonly assumed and it doesn’t mechanically send every member of the bloc to war.

Eastern European governments understand this ambiguity. They lack confidence that the larger powers would come to their aid, and history gives them reasons for doubt and encourages some of them to push both Russia and their own allies toward firmer positions.

The objective is to bind the major Western powers ever more tightly to their security, which raises the question: What role would Eastern European countries actually play if a direct military conflict with Russia did occur?

An impartial assessment suggests that they would most likely become both the battlefield and the vanguard, sent into the confrontation ahead of the major Western powers, and elements of this arrangement can already be seen in Ukraine.

Western European societies are neither willing nor prepared to fight Russia themselves, but they have proven to be considerably more comfortable supporting others who are prepared to do so – and Ukraine, for its own reasons, has accepted this role. For the rest of Eastern Europe, however, the calculation is more complicated.

We shall leave aside the Baltic states, where the level of political rhetoric increasingly makes serious discussion difficult, but more established countries with deeper traditions of statehood – Poland, the Czech Republic, and Romania – are perfectly capable of recognizing the danger of being thrown under the bus of military escalation in pursuit of the broader objectives of the European establishment.

This awareness doesn’t necessarily moderate their public rhetoric, but their practical behavior shows a certain degree of caution.

This distinction is becoming increasingly important as military tensions rise. The escalation pursued by Kiev creates a growing possibility of incidents capable of drawing neighboring states more directly into the conflict. For Eastern European countries, encouraging further escalation therefore carries risks, given that they’re likely to bear the immediate consequences of the policies they are advocating.

Until now, Russia has generally assumed that if any European countries eventually contribute to a settlement, they would be the continent’s other major powers, states large and secure enough not to define their policies primarily through fear of Russia.

In a genuine military crisis, however, the logic could turn out to be the reverse, as the countries with the greatest reason to fear an uncontrolled confrontation may also have the greatest interest in preventing one.

Eastern European governments therefore face an increasingly stark contradiction. They want stronger Western guarantees against Russia, and the natural method of obtaining them is to persuade the rest of Europe that the ‘Russian threat’ is immediate and severe, yet the more successful they are in escalating the confrontation, the greater the possibility that their own countries become the front line.

Rationality doesn’t always prevail in international politics, but this doesn’t mean Russia should write off Eastern Europe as a lost cause – because the countries closest to a conflict may ultimately have the strongest reasons to keep it under control.

This article was first published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta, and was translated and edited by the RT team