Important Takeaways:

• Long-range missiles strike civilian targets across Europe. Baltic States are invaded. AI-controlled tanks rule the battlefield. As NATO warns of Russian attack in 20 years, a terrifying prediction of how it will unfold
• The year 2024 is off to an alarming start.
• Almost two full years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and with the Middle East teetering on the brink of disaster following Hamas’ October 7th attacks on Israel, the threat of a wider war looms large on the horizon.
• Prime ministers, defense secretaries and military chiefs have claimed that the threat of a major conflict is greater now than at any other time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
• Phase One: Cyber warfare and missile strikes
  • ‘Cyber-attacks have real battlefield applications – the Russians used these in the prelude to the invasion to Ukraine to take down the Viasat communications network, among other things,’ RUSI associate fellow and defense analyst Sam Cranny-Evans said.
  • But technological advancement in the coming years means Russia’s capacity to employ cyber warfare to sew chaos in NATO’s ranks could be orders of magnitude greater when the time comes to attack.
• Phase Two: Invasion – by land, sea and air
  • Hodges said Russia will have learned from the mistakes made in Ukraine
  • In one scenario, Gen. Hodges said Moscow could use this renewed military strength to first attack the narrow strip of land known as Suwalki Gap, sandwiched between Poland, Lithuania and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
  • This second phase would involve sending thousands of Russian soldiers, AI-controlled tanks and Special Forces, to attack one of the Baltic states on NATO’s eastern flank – most likely either Lithuania, Poland or Estonia.
  • And Gen. Hodges says that after Putin had attacked a nation on NATO’s eastern flank, Russia would wait to see how the military alliance would respond.
  • And if NATO did hesitate, Putin would not stop, Gen. Hodges predicts.
  • ‘If we hesitated, that failure to live up to our obligations under Article 5 to protect member states… it would break the alliance. It would be a staggering blow to NATO if we didn’t live up to what we said we were going to do,’ Gen. Hodges said.
• Russia’s allies could join the fight
  • In recent years Russia has been forging closer ties with other powers, each of whom has their own deep-rooted grievances with what they see as a hegemonic world order led by the US and its Western allies.
  • Iran, for example, represents a grave threat in the Middle East, with a fearsome military and the resources to develop nuclear weapons – something Gen. Hodges said would likely happen in years to come.
  • With this in mind, it’s less likely Beijing would wade into a European theatre to back up Russia in a conflict with NATO forces.
  • But a scenario in which the Chinese Communist Party seizes such an opportunity to launch an invasion of Taiwan in an effort to bring the sovereign, self-governed island back under control – while NATO is focused on the threat from Moscow – is certainly a plausible one.
• So how can the West stop this from happening?
  • According to experts, deterrence is the key.
  • This requires NATO and its member states to have a military that is not only ready to repel any invading Russian force, but strong enough to outmatch Moscow’s armies to the point that the Kremlin will be unwilling to launch an attack in the first place.
  • ‘Deterrence is both having the military capability and signaling to your foe your willingness to use that capability – and your resolve to see it through to the end,’ Sam Cranny-Evans says.
  • Gen. Ryan said: ‘Getting ready could be enough to avert a wider war. Not getting ready could invite one.’

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