Russian Propaganda Myths - “NATO Enlargement Threatens Russia”

“Welcoming new countries into NATO threatens Russia”, says one of the most frequently repeated Russian propaganda myths, most recently resurrected as Finland and Sweden apply to join the alliance. What this claim implies is that Russia has no choice but to preemptively attack neighboring countries to prevent them from joining NATO, and its own strategic position from becoming untenable (as described in detail by our own Map of Putin’s Argumentation). Russia has to attack first, or it will not be able to defend itself later.

That implication would be very implausible even if the premise on which it is based was 100% correct, which, as we will see, it is not. For one, Russia is the world’s largest nuclear power, capable of stopping any conventional invasion with a fraction of its nuclear arsenal. In addition to the nukes, it fields very substantial conventional armed forces that, although clearly not as capable as advertised, are a force to be reckoned with, especially when defending on their own territory. The notion that a country possessing the combination of nuclear and conventional capabilities Russia does could fail to deter an attack or defend from one is thus highly suspect from the get go.

That implausibility does not stop the assertion that Russia must start preemptive wars to get out of a strategic chokehold from being plastered all over Internet. In this post  I will fact-check this claim in both its crude and steelmanned forms, showing all the reasons for which it is simply not true. This will help us to showcase a general feature of Russian propaganda - it is not intended to fool a well-informed fact-checker. Instead, it is a Matrioshka of catchy yet false slogans intended to lure in those who know nothing about the issue, or for some reason want to believe Russia’s version.

Let’s start with the most obvious falsehood. NATO countries do not encircle Russia, physically or in any other way - nor do NATO bases, nor deployed NATO troops. Russia itself is fond of showcasing maps on which NATO bases - kinda, sorta - surround Russia, or at least border it from more than one direction:

However, the above meme/map does not withstand contact with reality. First of all, having bases in Pakistan, Thailand or Iraq, let alone in Somalia and Indonesia, would not help NATO or the US to wage war against Russia in any conceivable way. As for the bases in Central Asia, these were created specifically to support the war effort in Afghanistan, and with the explicit permission and even assistance from Russia, as explained in this Al-Jazeera article; that conflict is now over, and so is Western presence in the region. Given this, the layout of military bases in Russia’s geopolitical vicinity actually looks like this (minus the currently non-existent US presence in Afghanistan):

Based on the second, accurate map, prepared by Radio Free Europe,  no encirclement of Russia can be alleged. Yet bases do not fight wars - deployed troops do. Even when the US did run a few bases in Central Asia, these were traffic and supply hubs incapable of being defended against Russia, let alone being used offensively against it. NATO bases in Europe, on its home turf, are of course defensible - that is the purpose and the selling point of the alliance. But is there any evidence that they could be used to carry out offensive operations against Russia, if NATO leaders were crazy enough, and united enough, to decide on such a move? The truth can be discerned from the number and type of NATO forces present in Eastern Flank countries that can be said to be stationed in the broadly understood vicinity of Russia:

According to NATO’s own press releases, its Eastern Flank contains about 25 thousand troops from outside the region and 290 thousand local troops, with about 80-85 thousand US troops stationed further West in Europe. These figures could be questioned, of course - but they would have to be questioned with concrete evidence in the form of satellite imaging, signal intelligence, open source intelligence and the like, just like Russia’s pre-invasion troop deployment figures were. As Russia itself, to my best knowledge, does not allege they are subject to significant manipulation, we will take them at face value in this article. We also have to remember that these numbers are the numbers deployed in reaction to Russia’s deployments since October 2021; for example, the 10 thousand US troops stationed in Poland did not arrive until February 2022.

It is important to note that these are not the forces deployed in countries bordering Russia; if we count only the forces in countries actually bordering Russia, this number drops to 170 thousand troops stationed in Poland and in the Baltics. And these forces are not all ground troops, let alone combat troops; of the 120 thousand Polish troops listed, only approximately half serve in the ground forces, of whom many are not actually deployable or combat ready. The number of boots on the ground that could be gathered from among these 170 thousand troops to actually invade Russia would be much smaller. Russia’s own example illustrates this - out of the 900 thousand strong armed forces, it was able to generate approximately 200 thousand strong force to invade Ukraine. This is in part due to the fact that Russia delegated some forces to screen its borders with other countries, and to the fact that the 900k figure includes a large nuclear component, which NATO forces in Europe lack; still, it is safe to assume that only a fraction of the 170 thousand troops present currently in countries bordering Russia could be used to attack it. 

Such a force would clearly be inadequate to invade Russia as a whole, or even a part of it. Not even considering nuclear weapons, Russia could easily repel it in a conventional manner. This is true even before considering other factors that would come into play to favor Russia - and there are plenty of these. First, an invading force generally has to have three to six times more troops to overpower a competent defender (though this rule of thumb may not be representative of reality in specific cases, which may get almost infinitely more complex, it can reliably serve as a general guide). Secondly, invading NATO forces would have to hold terrain and engage in counterinsurgency, policing and stabilization efforts. Even assuming very modest resistance by the occupied population, these extremely manpower-intensive activities would exhaust NATO forces troop supply on its own even if only a fraction of Russian territory was to be occupied (occupying the territory on which 10% of Russia’s population - 15 million people - live would require 300 thousand troops assuming moderately intensive resistance).

NATO troop numbers in the region are thus insufficient for any realistic offensive action against Russia (even assuming political will existed for such an undertaking - an absurd assumption in itself), although they are sufficient for defense. NATO could, of course, surge the troop numbers in the region (just as Russia could). Yet such a surge would involve months of clearly identifiable preparation, much harder to hide than Russia’s own pre-invasion deployments were. If, faced with such deployments, Russia has made a case that it is threatened by NATO, we would be in a completely different conversation - but Russia is making no such case. Indeed, it is actively reducing its own ability to launch a successful conventional defense by engaging and losing unprecedented numbers of scarce, irreplaceable equipment in Ukraine. Indeed, given its current losses and commitments, Russia has actually exposed itself to a conventional attack by NATO - and it is precisely because of its imperialist actions in Ukraine that it is so. These actions clearly demonstrate that Russia is not actually afraid NATO will launch a conventional attack against it, because if it were, it would concentrate on defense instead.

Indeed, the actual effect of NATO enlargement may be a substantial decrease in the number of troops and equipment Central and Eastern European nations collectively field. Given NATO security guarantees, these nations may no longer feel the need to prepare for facing Russia on their own, and so devote a smaller portion of their GDP to defense/ employ a smaller portion of their population in their respective militaries. This is clearly demonstrated by the disproportion between the military expenditure of Poland - a NATO member - and Ukraine - a country outside NATO. According to the World Bank data, Polish military spending oscillates around 2% of its GDP (a massive decrease since its Warsaw Pact, Russian-ally days). For Ukraine, that figure has rapidly shot up since the Dignity Revolution in 2014 and in 2020 stood at 4,1 %. Despite having roughly similar populations, Ukraine also fields the armed forces 150% the size of Poland’s (and the World Bank data seem to be strongly underestimating the actual difference). It appears that once they have joined NATO, Russia’s neighbors can actually chill out and decrease their military potential, making them less of a conventional threat to Russia.

All in all, there is no truth in the claim that Russia is actually threatened by new countries joining NATO. Putin himself admitted so much recently by stating that it is not NATO membership per se, but equipment and troop deployments that could pose a - theoretical - threat to Russia. There is no mistaking NATO’s current defensive posture for actual capability for aggression, let alone aggressive intentions. What NATO enlargement does threaten is Russia’s ability to bully and invade its neighbors - yet this can be lamented by no person of good will, nor even by citizens of Russia who would massively benefit from peaceful cooperation with the nations of Eastern Europe replacing current warmongering and imperialist policy. Yet this is a subject for a separate article.