- NATO's naval power is far superior to Russia's, which exists primarily to defend the homeland.
- Russia is concerned that NATO ships could launch attack missiles into the Russian heartland.
- That could force Russia to strengthen its maritime defenses and distract it from rebuilding its battered military.
The longstanding conflict between continental and maritime nations has always been a source of frustration. For example, Napoleon and Hitler were furious at the English Channel and the Royal Navy, which prevented their powerful armies from conquering Britain. Conversely, Britain needed a continental power (usually Russia) with a large army to fight France and Germany on land.
NATO's naval power currently far exceeds that of Russia. The problem is that Russia has always been a continental power, and its power rested in its military. NATO may control the oceans, but that may not help much if Russian tanks invade the Baltic States or Poland.
So how can NATO leverage its naval superiority? Two British experts have the idea of using NATO's navy to wage psychological warfare against Russia. More specifically, it uses naval power to intimidate Moscow into allocating its scarce resources to defending its vast coastline rather than invading its neighbors.
“Forcing Russia to commit to its own maritime defense would divert significant Russian resources to the alliance's mission.” [NATO] “We do not think it is much of a threat,” Sidharth Kaushal and Rene Valletta wrote in the paper. essay A think tank of the Royal United Services Institute in the UK.
For America and Britain, the sea was a friend, a buffer against invasion, a highway to overseas empires, and a means to ensure war on foreign soil. But for Russia, with some 34,000 miles of coastline spanning Europe and Asia, the sea has historically been a source of vulnerability. The Russian Navy is one of them. world's largest, exist primarily to protect the homeland, support the military, and provide strategic firepower from things like nuclear missile submarines. Many of the cruise missiles that have hit Ukrainian cities over the past two years have been fired by the Black Sea Fleet.
But, as a famous 19th century American naval theorist said, there is command of the seas. Alfred Thayer Mahan It is not the Russian Navy's mission to define that. “Rather than naval warfare per se, the purpose of Russian sea power is to enable the Russian state to safely and effectively compete and participate in conflicts,” the paper states.
Russia was defeated in the Crimean War in 1854 by an amphibious attack by Britain and France, who captured Sevastopol. There are concerns that NATO ships could launch long-range guided missiles into central Russia in 2024.
According to Kaushal and Baretta, there are several ways NATO can exploit this fear. Western countries have conducted exercises, forward-deployed nuclear submarines closer to Russia, invested in drones and hypersonic missiles, and even converted carrier-based anti-aircraft missiles such as the U.S. SM-2 and SM-6 into land-attack weapons. It can even be modified to
As Russia rebuilds its military to compensate for heavy losses from the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin may feel forced to direct resources to its navy rather than its ground forces. “To the extent that the alliance can expand the area in which Russia must achieve sea denial to protect itself from long-range attacks, it could shape the contours of Russia’s military rebirth,” the paper argued. “This can be accomplished in two main ways: by expanding long-range land attack capabilities and by operating in new vectors that Russia has not historically had to defend against.”
It will not be easy for the Kremlin to strengthen its maritime defenses. “Russia is able to deny sea control and achieve some degree of sea control in coastal waters, but it is difficult for a country that also needs to rebuild its military power on land to contest freedom of action over a range of 1,000 kilometers or more. , would be costly,” the paper states. In particular, Russia has a large arsenal of sea- and land-based anti-ship missiles, but lacks ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) capabilities. To detect distant naval targets and direct the missile towards them.
With the Russian Army and Aerospace Forces in dire need of skilled personnel, ships, especially those intended for open sea operations rather than coastal operations, are expensive to build, maintain, and crew. It takes. Russia's shipyards are already overburdened, and new ships may require imports of parts blocked by Western sanctions.
But Western countries also suffer from constraints. As the authors acknowledge, some NATO members on Russia's borders, such as Finland and Norway, may be nervous about making Russia nervous. And, of course, there's the fact that Russia has historically feared attack by the West — and it has the world's largest nuclear arsenal. Stirring up Kremlin fears of waves of cruise missiles surging from the sea risks nuclear escalation.
Nevertheless, this approach leverages NATO's maritime advantages. Given a choice, the Kremlin would probably prefer to spend its resources buying tanks to fight in Ukraine rather than warships to defend the Baltic Sea. NATO could make that choice even more difficult.
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy Magazine, and other publications. He holds a master's degree in political science from Rutgers University.please follow him twitter and linkedin.
