With NATO’s Warsaw Summit beginning today, NATO leaders are expected to decide for the rotational deployment of four multi-national battalions (~4,000 men) in the three Baltic states and Poland. In addition, in 2017, the Pentagon will send a full brigade (~5,000 men), permanently roaming between NATO’s eastern allies (including Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria as well as the Baltic states).

NATO’s new deployment seems modest in comparison to Russia’s conventional military superiority in Russia’s Western Military District (~300,000 men), which stretches across a large geographical area from the western city of Pskov all the way to the Urals. And if Russia is “building up” forces close to the Baltic borders then this deployment becomes increasingly justified, right?

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Photo credit: Flickr photo by Matt Foster shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC 2.0) license.