Correct and NATO needs to station substantial forces there.
Not really.
All that is needed is enough support to blunt an attack, and slow it down until help can arrive.
That has always been the key strategy of NATO. Trade land for time, so that the rest of the alliance can bring it's equipment and personnel into play.
Even most of the "WWIII scenarios" between Warsaw Pact and NATO supposed the lost of most of Western Europe. With lines stabilizing somewhere in Eastern France. It would take that long to get the rest of NATO mobilized, and forces and equipment from the US and other nations brought into the theater. The forces on the ground were to have fought a withdrawing action, trading space for time. Set up a line, blunt or slow down the attack, then move West again. Rinse and repeat until the forces pouring in from the French Coast arrived.
This is why so many books written about the conflict by those that understood these plans, the major conflicts were on the ocean (Red Storm Rising), or the air war in the attempt to gain air superiority (Red Storm Rising, The Third World War). These in many ways were considered even more important than the war on the ground.
The Soviets knew they could not extend supply lines much past the French-German border. So it was key to them to stop the resupply by US forces across the Atlantic. NATO knew it could not hope to blunt the assault via land forces, so it needed to use it's air power to try and blunt the attack and disrupt the logistics of the invading forces.
Today, the alignment of forces is drastically different than it was during the Cold War. Most of the Warsaw Pact is gone. Having aligned itself to NATO to prevent ever being forced to follow Russia again, or reluctantly remaining neutral due to Finlandization. And for those nations, accepting even limited NATO support and forces is enough to help keep Russia in check.
That is why you see Poland making such large expenditures into NATO. Once considered to likely have been the cannon-fodder of the Warsaw pact, they are constantly asking for more support from NATO. And they are a larger member of NATO than many realize. They give more money that Belgium to the alliance. Their military expenditures are larger than that of the Netherlands. And at 2% of their GDP going to military expenditures, they only fall behind the US (3.6%), Greece (2.3%), UK (2.1%), Estonia (2.1%), and Lithuania (2.06%) in trying to pay "their fair share" of the organizations costs.
If Russia was ever to feel adventurous enough to attack, Poland is well aware that they would be over-run yet again. But they also know that as part of NATO, they would eventually be liberated once the fighting stopped.
Sometimes people imagine the Russian threat to be one of imminent one-time mass invasion but that isn’t Russia’s way of doing things. They play the long game. People like Vladimir Putin know they can’t restore the Soviet Union but they can Frankenstein a likeness by sending the message that if you’re not willing to be a puppet State or otherwise get too cozy with the West then they’ll slice you up and keep the pieces they want. Moldova in 1992, Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014...the Baltic States know what’s going on here. The only question is how far NATO is willing to let this go unanswered.
Hence my constant reference to Finlandization. And no, I do not mean the term as a pejorative towards Finland, but as a term of realpolitik maneuvering in how one country can get another to follow it's wishes through the potential threat of force.
I can generally tell who has an idea what is really at play here, in if they get the reference (or if they have not heard of it, if they take a few minutes to research it and understand the implication).
The Russian Empire and Soviet Union both used it's potential use of force as a way to achieve their goals. But it was not always potential, both used actual invasions and incursions enough to show that such threats were not just empty promises.
More and more during the past 20 years we have seen Russia start to throw it's weight around in Eastern Europe. And only targeting nations that do not have a firm alliance with other nations. Specifically NATO and the EU.
