War with Russia

When ambassadors began to repeat the same platitudes, he cut them short and asked them to focus on the issues at hand. As for the Chairman of the Military Committee, the Danish general, Knud Vahr, if anything McKinlay admired him more. Not only did he have to sit through endless NAC meetings listening to the ambassadors, he also had to put up with the dead weight and disinterest of the Military Committee, that group of senior military representatives from each of the Allied nations who were meant to add value to the NAC, but who seldom could be prevailed upon to say anything. Many were at the end of their, usually, distinguished careers, and were more focused on enjoying the Brussels diplomatic dinner-party circuit and the excellent networking opportunities it offered for future consultancy opportunities.

Today’s meeting had been called following the chaos in Riga yesterday. The decision-making body of NATO was debating the issue that underpinned the Alliance’s very existence: whether recent events in Latvia warranted the declaration of Article 5, the founding principle of the North Atlantic Treaty. This stated that an attack on one member state was an attack on all. It bound all members to come to the aid of the victim—as if they themselves were under attack. The motion before the NAC was whether to declare an Article 5 emergency on behalf of the three members who had called for it: Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

This was first time since the 9/11 attacks, and only the second time in history, that an Article 5 emergency had ever been called and that, McKinlay knew, made this meeting deadly serious.

But what seemed to be making it particularly serious for some of those seated around that circular table was that the meeting had been called over lunchtime, because of difficulties in programming the Secretary General’s attendance. Some ambassadors were already showing irritation at missing out on their daily, all-expenses-paid lunch. Despite the seriousness of the world situation, McKinlay couldn’t help chuckling to himself as he watched the emergency solution to the developing culinary crisis; a couple of Belgian waiters, in white shirts, black bow ties and waistcoats, entered and began to circulate mini-bars of extra-dark Cote d’Or chocolate to help quell the growing pangs of ambassadorial hunger.

Chocolate safely dispensed and waiters removed, the Secretary General opened the meeting. He invited the Latvian ambassador, as the representative of the principal nation under threat, to open the discussion.

“Secretary General, my fellow ambassadors, generals, dear colleagues and friends, only once in its sixty-eight-year history has NATO agreed the declaration of Article Five, and that was after the unprecedented attack on the USA on the eleventh of September 2001. A day of infamy we will all remember only too well. Today the motion before you is to declare an Article Five emergency at the request of my country and our close friends and neighbors, Estonia and Lithuania. I will leave it to the Estonian and Lithuanian ambassadors to explain their countries” positions. But from the Latvian perspective, what we have seen in the past few months, and most graphically in the rioting in Riga yesterday, is the progressive application of the new Russian techniques of warfare designed to undermine the integrity of Latvia before there is any need to cross our boundaries with an invasion force.

“The very rules of war have changed and what we are witnessing in Latvia is the role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals; war, as it were, by other means. The advantages we in Latvia enjoy as a result of NATO’s unconditional guarantee of collective defense are being nullified by the sophisticated application of hybrid or asymmetric techniques by Russia, techniques we saw most recently in the invasion of eastern Ukraine and Crimea three years ago. In essence, to paraphrase General Gareyev, the Russian Chief of the General Staff, what we are seeing is the use of special operations forces and internal opposition to create a permanently operating front through the entire territory of what Russia has deemed to be an enemy state; my peaceful, democratic, freedom-loving Latvia.”

He stopped for a sip of water in order to control his emotions.

“And if this were not enough, we have seen unprecedented military activity on the borders of Latvia and our Baltic neighbors. Our history tells us never to trust Russia. It was Count Shuvalov, a Russian who was Governor General of what were then the Baltic Provinces in the Tsarist Empire one hundred and fifty years ago, who said, and I quote: ‘The historical mission of the Baltic provinces is to serve as a battlefield for the problems of the highest politics in Europe.’ Please, my fellow ambassadors, we have no desire to be Russia’s battlefield once again!”

He stopped, overcome with emotion. He had the attention of all.