Steve, a friend of mine in the US Army, pointed out a very key inaccuracy in our previous post about the US armored brigade in eastern Europe: it's not a manned brigade, currently, just the equipment.
This changes the rationale from being a "spiral deterrent" to being a "fast-response force." US troops can be deployed to this equipment within hours, which means they can go be a "speed bump" of sorts for any Russian invasion. Since these are NATO countries, the US won't need to waffle and quibble about a response the same way that it did with Ukraine: US troops could credibly show up and start shooting as soon as there's a problem.
It's not 100% clear that the current US administration would do just that, but deterrence is a game of probabilities: just what has been said between Mr. Putin and Mr. Obama behind closed doors? How much has US resolve stiffened in the face of Russian aggression? I assume that the Obama administration has posed some credible ultimatum to go along with the armor. It means the high risk of escalation (and lower likelihood of success) for any Russian invasion remains, especially in a country like Estonia (which could otherwise be totally occupied within a day).
This changes the rationale from being a "spiral deterrent" to being a "fast-response force." US troops can be deployed to this equipment within hours, which means they can go be a "speed bump" of sorts for any Russian invasion. Since these are NATO countries, the US won't need to waffle and quibble about a response the same way that it did with Ukraine: US troops could credibly show up and start shooting as soon as there's a problem.
It's not 100% clear that the current US administration would do just that, but deterrence is a game of probabilities: just what has been said between Mr. Putin and Mr. Obama behind closed doors? How much has US resolve stiffened in the face of Russian aggression? I assume that the Obama administration has posed some credible ultimatum to go along with the armor. It means the high risk of escalation (and lower likelihood of success) for any Russian invasion remains, especially in a country like Estonia (which could otherwise be totally occupied within a day).
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