Should the U.S. respond with military means to a limited Russian incursion in the Baltics? This paper explores Western attitudes towards such a hypothetical grey zone crisis. Using survey experiments and crisis simulations we find considerable reluctance to use military tools in order to support a Baltic ally, and surprisingly little variation across the audiences. The underlying reluctance to get the U.S. involved in an armed conflict with Russia in the hopes that such acquiescence may help preserve global stability indicates that the conflict in Ukraine only had a fundamentally limited impact on Western strategic thought on deterring Russia.
The current study discusses differences between Russia and the Baltic States in terms of their strategic narratives, as well as how they interpret key terms and concepts in the field of security. To frame the scope of the study, the strategic narrative of Russia for the Baltic countries and the Baltic strategic narrative(s) for Russia are compared and analysed. Both sides are also locked within the bigger framework of European Union’s economic sanctions against Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance’s deterrence concept. On the other hand, the Baltic States and Russia have a lot to gain from possible improvements in economic relations and reduction of regional security tensions.
The experience of the past decade shows a steadily increasing role of the armed forces in the implementation of Moscow’s strategic aspirations. The aim of this work is to present the geopolitical ambitions of Russia in competition with the West and the role of the armed forces in satisfying these ambitions, as well as to evaluate their modernisation.
The article identifies the directions of Moscow’s strategic aspirations and presents a vision of Russia’s future war. The reforms carried out by the Russian national defence ministers Anatoliy Serdyukov and Sergey Shoygu are evaluated. The conclusions resulting from the involvement of Russian armed forces in the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria are explained. It indicates the changes that will take place in particular branches of the armed forces in the near and long terms.
The article discusses the evolution of political and security cooperation between the Republic of Poland and the United States of America in the years 1999–2019. It argues that this relationship has been strengthened over the past several years to an unprecedented level, as reflected by the following: (a) permanent presence of US troops and facilities
on the territory of the Republic of Poland; (b) significant reinforcement of energy cooperation that would contribute to the security of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region; (c) development of a high-level strategic dialogue; and (d) successful widening of the mutual scope of soft security collaboration, including economic, digital and people-topeople
aspects. In this article, I try to answer the following questions: what are the reasons of upgrading Poland–US political and security relations? What was the process shaping US– Poland relationship during 1999–2019? What are the priorities for both sides in this cooperation? I suggest that the past 20 years of Polish–American relationship can be divided into three stages: (a) between Poland’s accession to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russian aggression towards Ukraine (1999–2014); (b) between the NATO Summit in Newport and the swearing in of Donald Trump as President of the United States (2014–2017); and (c) then onwards (2017/2018–).