Reviving The Intermarium To Stop Russia
Putin’s assault on Ukraine means that Russia’s other neighbors in Europe are forced to contend with the possibility of coming under attack too.
NOTE: Originally published on Medium April 15. 2022.
Finland and Sweden are both considering NATO membership despite decades of holding themselves aloof from the alliance. In response, Russia’s leadership is making tacit threats to deploy nuclear weapons near their borders.
The idea of Russia physically conquering all of Europe when both Putin and American intelligence experts got it so painfully wrong about how quickly Kyiv would fall — funfact, it never did thanks less to American weapons and more to the spirit of Ukraine’s defenders — is ludicrous, paranoid nonsense. However, the possibility of an attack on Lithuania, Moldova, or even Poland is too high to ignore.
Fear of Russia is pushing even traditionally neutral countries like Finland and Sweden to consider joining NATO for understandable reasons. The trouble is that NATO’s claim to be capable of defending any country along Russia’s border is dangerously thin.
Russia’s nuclear arsenal has already deterred NATO from getting directly involved in Ukraine despite the atrocities committed by Russian forces. Despite all the cries of Never Again in the media America and its allies refuse to meaningfully intervene, allowing the people of Ukraine to die in what for them already is a world war in order to avoid Americans having to shed their own blood.
The bottom line is that American fears of a mutually destructive World War 3 are being leveraged by Putin to his advantage. He knows full well neither side could win a nuclear conflict but also knows NATO has less tolerance for any risk of a nuclear conflagration. This is an edge he can be expected to rely on even more now that Ukraine has proven the Russian army and navy to be far less capable than most professional analysts expected.
But the supposed weakness of Russia’s armed forces is more than matched by NATO’s lack of preparation for a long fight. Under the hood of the NATO refusal to give Ukraine heavy weapons like tanks and combat jets is the sneaky little fact that its own stocks don’t run very deep and are already facing depletion.
The English-speaking media has as usual willingly signed on as an advertising arm for the defense establishment, spreading the messages of alleged experts like Iraq War cheerleaders Fred Kagan and David Petraeus. These voices almost universally insist that NATO is experiencing a renaissance thanks to Putin attacking Ukraine, advancing an argument in play since before the war began — despite Russia being painfully undeterred by NATO.
They never admit there they lack any hard evidence backing up these claims, just words spoken by spin artists for an audience trained to see war commentary the same way they do sports. Sure, NATO countries have made similar public statements denouncing Russia’s invasion and deployed some additional military units to members bordering Russia. But these top-ups are nowhere near the number required to actually withstand a Russian attack.
To punish Russia and keep it tied down in Ukraine at minimal cost to NATO members are pushing military small arms like Javelin and NLAW anti-tank missiles and short-range anti-aircraft weapons like the Stinger and Starstreak to Ukraine. While these have certainly augmented Ukraine’s home-made weapons and helped stop Putin’s assault, they cannot in and of themselves allow Ukraine to retake most of its territory in the east where Russian forces have made the kind of substantial progress the forces operating near Kyiv failed to after the first couple days of the war.
Yet led by the American Biden Administration, NATO has stopped short of allowing the transfer of heavier weapons useful in major counteroffensives. NATO members have also explicitly ruled out sending troops to aid Ukraine, citing the dangers of the fight escalating into World War Three, under the legalistic pretense of not having a formal obligation to unlike it does with members.
It is unclear, however, whether Putin will forever tolerate the hypocrisy inherent in not helping Ukraine kill Russian soldiers with direct military force while simultaneously giving Ukraine lethal aid that has the same effect. The only reasons Putin has for not bombing vulnerable weapons shipments as they land in Poland are that his military can’t, meaning Russia isn’t nearly the threat to the world people are making it out to be, or that he has not yet decided the time is right to take that move and the risks it entails.
If and when he ever does, suddenly NATO will be forced to back up its talk of unity with real military force. It will have to do what it has studiously avoided in Ukraine and risk a nuclear conflict to punish Russia and prove Article 5 means anything, which would utterly demolish the argument NATO’s boosters keep making to insist they can’t give Ukraine tanks and jets.
NATO is in a nasty strategic trap — it lacks the military forces in place to actually defeat a Russian attack on major airfields and logistics nodes to say nothing of an assault through the Suwalki Gap. Building them up would mean antagonizing Russia, giving Putin time to act quickly and escalate before they arrive.
Europe, remember, is still stuck buying Russian oil and gas. Germany has only just begun rearming. And political unity among NATO members is not likely to continue if the war drags on for months or years.
As an American dominated institution thanks to the unique capabilities the American military possesses — mostly logistical and reconnaissance— NATO is bound to America’s domestic politics. And if you haven’t noticed, odds are that NATO-skeptic Donald Trump will be back in the White House in 2025 given how polls for incumbents rarely go up much anymore. France, another critical NATO member, might soon wind up being run by another NATO-skeptic if Marine Le Pen outperforms her polls by a few points.
To be clear, I’m not on the Right, but I have to count myself as a NATO skeptic too because looking at the broader context it is abundantly clear to me that NATO is living on borrowed time. Its leaders can only hope that Putin remains too occupied with Ukraine’s unexpectedly tough resistance to risk calling its collective defense bluff.
Given the strong and still growing likelihood of America tearing itself apart in the coming years, it is vital for European countries sharing land or maritime borders with Russia to have a working alternative to NATO. Eastern and Northern Europe need a backup plan.
Given the structural similarities between the geopolitical situation in eastern Europe today and in the Interwar period, I suggest reviving the fascinating Polish idea of the Intermarium.
People today too easily forget that the map of Europe looked a lot different just a little more than a century ago. In World War 1 the European colonial empires tore themselves apart in a bloody, futile, ultimately pointless conflict.
Many English speakers are aware of the mud and trenches of the Western Front, fewer know that on the Eastern the war looked very different. In fact after the German invasion of Belgium and France in 1914 the forces of the Kaiser were mostly on the defensive in the West up until Russia’s defeat in 1917, enduring wave attacks by British and French generals willing to see their troops slaughtered and gassed.
That is because so many of Germany’s forces were shoring up Austria-Hungary’s forces in Italy the provinces of the Russian Empire. And by 1918, they had won such spectacular victories that Lenin’s new government, in power after the Revolution that ended the reign of the Tsars, wound up accepting a brutal peace deal called the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
But the armies of the Central Powers were a spent force by 1918. Germany’s front in the west finally fell apart after a series of failed offensives meant to finally isolate Paris. The Treaty of Versailles that ended the active phase of the war led to the breakup of Austria-Hungary and forced Germany to give up its control over eastern Europe, letting local populations decide on their own what country they wanted to belong to.
Really, the story of eastern Europe ever since 1918 has been one of dozens of peoples working out what their political boundaries ought to look like. At first and too often later the process has been bloody, the nationalism that drove most independence movements at the time often pitting neighbors against each other. No country in Europe, but perhaps least of all one that emerged in eastern Europe, was linguistically or ethnically homogeneous after 1918, and most still aren’t today.
Eastern Europe had basically been treated as a colony by Russia, Germany, Austria, and Ottoman Turkey for centuries, and in the divide and conquer pattern that defines most colonial conquest local peoples were forced to support opposing sides in a long parade of conflicts. And unfortunately, old European patterns reasserted themselves with alarming speed in the Interwar Period, with Germany, Italy, and Russia all coming under the control of powerful militaristic leaders who all wanted their empires back.
Too many of the newly independent countries like Poland, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania were hostile towards one another and they all tended to be militaristic too. Each became the site of a constant diplomatic struggle between Germany, Soviet Russia, and even more distant Britain and France even while they schemed against each other.
Some leaders of the time naturally realized the danger they faced. A conservative named Józef Piłsudski in Poland advanced the idea of the Intermarium, an alliance “between the seas” intended to hold off Soviet Russia and any future threat from Germany. In the case of the former this threat was very real: Lenin’s armies actually invaded Poland in the early 1920s, an assault warded off by what was dubbed “The Miracle on the Vistula” thanks to Poland’s surprise victory south of Warsaw — a historic predecessor to Ukraine’s own recent Miracle on the Dnieper north of Kyiv in 2022.
Exactly which seas were always a matter for debate and the concept evolved substantially over the years Piłsudski pushed for it, but all versions revolved around the same principle: bound together, this diverse alliance of countries would have a population and industrial capacity to rival either Russia or Germany.
It was one of those bold ideas that arrived too far ahead of its time. Piłsudski. himself effectively a dictator, could never make it work. One by one the free countries of eastern Europe became puppets or were consumed, until after the joint Nazi and Soviet invasion of Poland the German and Russian empires shared a border once again.
Given the fact that Putin’s Russia appears hell-bent on re-establishing control over places Russia once dominated, the so-called “Russian World” that could be contrived to include former Russian colonies like Finland and even Alaska, old ideas are worth another look. Today’s eastern Europe is not today the collection of warlord states it was in the 1920s. Czechia, Finland, Estonia, and Poland are all reasonably wealthy from the global perspective and mostly stable democracies. Ukraine has proven it isn’t going to be swallowed up again, at least not without an epic fight, and none of Putin’s other neighbors are likely to trust Moscow any time soon.
But we don’t know how long Putin or an equally vicious successor might pursue Russian expansion. And history has shown that eastern Europe simply can’t rely on the so-called “West” to protect it. Particularly not America, which could well split apart by 2025, likely taking NATO down with it.
Personally I suspect NATO’s backup plan is to become the formal military arm of the European Union when America collapses or bails. The hesitation on the part of Germany and other NATO leaders to send even old equipment that would likely never be used on the modern battlefield is tied directly to the fear of running out of supplies and spare parts if Putin attacks NATO in the next year or two.
One of the dirty little secrets about the American and European military industrial complexes is that they have virtually no flexibility. Procurement of hardware and ordnance is worked out years in advance. Part of the reason major arms supplies to Ukraine aren’t picking up is that back-filling NATO combat units with new gear in the coming months is impossible — something Putin might well exploit, with Russia historically maintaining huge arsenals in storage.
Funny thing about American-style race-to-the-bottom capitalism is that supply chain shocks are totally ignored despite being inevitable. The entire economic system functions under the assumption that logistics will always work smoothly and predictably. The military industrial complex is so monopoly-dominated no supplier has any incentive to warehouse spare parts and munitions, so there is a real chance that NATO won’t be able to resupply itself, much less Ukraine, if the fighting lasts months more.
The bottom line is this: NATO is a massive bluff underwritten by American nuclear weapons which Americans are too terrified to risk using. While understandable, this means there no longer exists a credible deterrent to Russian aggression in Europe. To avoid running the risk of being picked off one by one as future American leaders decide Latvia or Finland or Moldova isn’t worth the risk of World War Three, eastern Europe desperately needs a backup plan.
History does not need to repeat itself in Eastern Europe. A parade of free countries suppressed by German then Soviet occupation for half a century cannot be allowed to fall under anyone’s sway again — Russia’s or America’s.
Enter the new Intermarium. A simple alliance invoked in the event of Russian aggression of any kind against a member. Its members will contribute 2% of their annual gross domestic product to a coherent joint defense force with the ability to withstand and defeat any Russian attack. This will be paired with direct investments in the factories and workshops required to maintain the force.
Who will join? Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Czechia, Moldova and Ukraine are the obvious candidates based on their geographic proximity to Russia and proven willingness to support Ukraine in its fight for independence.
This bloc would boast a GDP of about $3 Trillion in nominal terms, meaning it could sustain a $60 billion common defense fund while allowing each member sufficient budget to sustain its home-grown military forces too. That, for the record, is right about where Russia’s current military spending falls.
Given the serious advantages on modern battlefields that accrue to the defender, this is a defense fund that could guarantee Russia is never able to beat a member country so long as the Intermarium adopts an Article 5 style joint pledge of collective defense. Each country, after witnessing what has been done to Ukraine by Russia and NATO, would be united like small powers able to rely on no one but their closest allies can.
Putin’s assault on Ukraine has proven that a smart, well-equipped defense can succeed even against overwhelming numbers and firepower if it absorbs key battlefield lessons Ukraine’s forces are teaching Russia every day. It is possible to design and field a robust defensive force that at the same time doesn’t antagonize Russia by focusing on its organization and survivability, not offensive arms like long-range missiles or weapons of mass destruction.
Each member will still field its own territorial defense forces, and none will be limited to allocating only 2% of their GDP to military spending. The purpose of the joint forces of the Intermarium will be to provide the heavy equipment and trained troops needed to engage Russian forces on the battlefield and not only hold them off, but defeat them, liberating any seized territory.
At the heart of the Intermarium defense force should be nine heavy regiments, each deployed in a particular area and prepared to hold it against numerically superior forces. They will each be comprised of three combat battle groups that will mix tanks, infantry, and artillery at the tactical level, offering personnel an extreme degree of autonomy — more or less uniting guerilla tactics with the potential offered by robust information networks and precision firepower.
Each regiment must be backed up by a combat air wing that mixes crewed interceptors like the Typhoon and multi-role combat jets like the Gripen with drone squadrons capable of offering constant surveillance and close air support. The role of the air arm will be purely defensive, not aiming to establish air superiority or strike targets deep in Russian territory, and will embrace Swedish, Israeli, and Taiwanese best practices for conducting efficient distributed operations to mitigate danger of missile strikes on airfields.
As for naval coverage, a small force of stealthy corvettes with anti-ship missiles and advanced electric submarines should suffice. Given that Russia’s own navy has been proven to be painfully vulnerable, evidenced by the loss of the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship Moskva,. Russia’s historic weakness at sea means its submarines pose the greatest threat, and are best hunted by small ships and subs working with aircraft.
Perhaps most important of all, equipment will be produced in Intermarium countries to the extent possible, bringing high-tech imports from Scandinavia as well as Japan and South Korea into lower-income countries like Poland and Ukraine to take advantage of their lower labor costs. This should give an assortment of smaller defense companies constantly fighting the political power of big American conglomerates for market share a leg up, too, creating jobs and export revenues.
The hard reality people living on Russia’s borders now face is that they cannot rely on Washington, London, Paris, or even Berlin to stand up to Moscow. A new Intermarium is essential to their security and the cause of global peace too.
Only by developing a third, independent, fully neutral option for dealing with security threats will the rest of the world be free from American and Russian machinations. The Intermarium must be reborn — the sooner, the better.
Because the clock is still ticking for America and therefore NATO. And the rest of Western Europe?
Germany might soon find itself joining tomorrow what Eastern Europe builds today.