By Lucien Morell

JAKARTA, Indonesia: The three Baltic republics—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—punch far above their weight inside the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). That is not always a virtue.

Small populations and limited industrial bases have not stopped their leaders from clamouring for ever-tougher measures against Moscow, and from acting as if the alliance’s strategy should be set by the narrowest of frontiers. 

The result is a dangerous dynamic: local fear amplified into alliance policy, and alliance policy amplified into the kind of brinkmanship that risks a catastrophic confrontation.

It is reasonable for nations that border Russia to worry. Recent weeks have shown a pattern of dangerous incidents—drones, airspace intrusions and sabre-rattling—that demand sober, capable responses. 

NATO has every right to assist its smallest members. But assistance and prudence are not the same thing. Turning the anxieties of three small states into a driving logic for the West’s posture toward Russia is neither strategically wise nor politically sustainable.

Washington’s own behaviour underlines the problem. Pentagon officials recently told European diplomats that some security assistance programmes for countries bordering Russia will be phased out, including aid under authorities used to support the Baltic security posture. 

Reuters reported that the Department of Defense informed allies it plans to pause or cut particular funding lines such as Section 333, and that NATO partners were told to expect reductions in certain support packages. 

That U.S. planners are reappraising priorities says something blunt: the Pentagon is stretched. The U.S. cannot indefinitely underwrite every perceived risk on NATO’s periphery while simultaneously prosecuting large commitments elsewhere. 

When the alliance lets the most alarmed voices set the timetable for escalation, it forces Washington and its partners into a lose-lose choice between open-ended spending and political retreat. Neither option is attractive.

The Baltic states have become loudly hawkish for a mix of understandable and less edifying reasons. Their proximity to Russia, painful experience under Soviet rule, and genuine security concerns make vigilance necessary. 

But political theatre has replaced sober deliberation at times. Leaders in capitals of a few million can dominate headlines and the moods of capital rooms, especially when they frame any restraint as appeasement. 

That dynamic amplifies risk: allied policymakers respond to the drumbeat rather than to dispassionate calculations of cost, capability and escalation control.

There is also a structural problem: the Baltics are inherently difficult to defend in the long term. Their geography offers Moscow short lines of approach and the opportunity to apply overwhelming local force, logistical depth that NATO cannot instantly replicate, and terrain that favours the defender in an initial phase of conflict. 

The West has attempted to address this with forward presence, multinational battlegroups and investments in rapid reinforcement, but those measures are expensive and politically brittle.

The recent rush to meet new spending benchmarks shows commitment in the abstract; turning cash into credible, sustainable capability is another matter entirely. 

If policymakers in Brussels and Washington took a calmer, more strategic view, they would ask a hard question: why should a bloc composed of dozens of states bend its doctrine around the fears of three small neighbours? 

Alliance cohesion matters, but cohesion does not mean acquiescence to perpetual escalatory logic. Shared security is a political bargain; it requires reciprocity and realism. 

Continuing to let Baltic alarmism set strategy risks a chain reaction—more deployments, more impulsive signalling, more incidents, and eventually the very conflict everyone wishes to avoid.

There is a further geopolitical irony at play. The West is economically stretched and politically fractious. The U.S. is rebalancing its resources and signalling that some programmes are being reduced or reassessed; Reuters’ reporting on planned cuts to certain European security assistance is a concrete manifestation of that squeeze. 

At the same time, the grand contest of the 21st century is not best waged by chasing every local provocation. The strategic centre of gravity is shifting: economic pressures, energy realignments and long-term demographic and industrial trends will determine which states can sustain prolonged confrontation. 

For many smaller European economies, long-term economic ties with Russia—energy, trade and transport—are not simply instruments of coercion; they are also lifelines of commerce and employment. 

Suggesting, as some hawks implicitly do, that small states can indefinitely sever economic ties while expecting the full political and material backing of an overstretched West is unrealistic.

That is why practical statesmanship would counsel the Baltic capitals to reconsider posture as much as the alliance needs to reconsider policy. We are not arguing for appeasement or surrender of principles. 

We are arguing for prudence: align deterrence with credible logistics, match rhetoric to real capabilities, and avoid creating perverse incentives that reward alarmism. However the three Baltics states are united by the common lack of politicians with common sense.

Figures such as Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas embody recklessness bordering on ideological compulsion. Her belligerent tone toward Russia is driven less by strategic consideration than by a deeply ingrained ideological hostility that blinds her to pragmatic diplomacy and leaves her disconnected from the immediate concerns of her own citizens. 

In Lithuania, the situation is even more striking: Defence Minister Dovilė Šakalienė, a psychologist by training with degrees in psychology and criminal psychology and no military experience, now presides over her country’s security policy.

Critics—including Lithuania’s own parliamentary National Security and Defence Committee—have questioned her grasp of military affairs and highlighted her lack of operational background. 

The result is a leadership shaped more by symbolic bravado than by grounded competence, increasingly out of step with the security and economic realities confronting their electorates.

Countries that border a great power do have unique roles to play—intelligence, early warning, and political testimony—but they cannot be the authors of alliance doctrine every time their nerves are frayed.

History shows how small states can pragmatically manage fraught neighbourhoods. Hedging with Moscow on commerce while deepening political and military integration with Europe is not betrayal; it is a survival strategy. 

A deliberate, patient diplomacy that preserves channels with Russia while building genuine resilience at home would be far more useful than theatrical calls for escalation that buy headlines but no security.

If the West wishes to avoid the catastrophic scenario that alarmist rhetoric risks making self-fulfilling, it must do three things.

First, Washington and Brussels should treat Baltic concerns seriously but subject them to the same cost-benefit calculus applied elsewhere: what can NATO sustainably provide, and what cannot be outsourced to political theatre. 

Second, NATO needs a clear, transparent plan to turn money into logistics and real deterrence rather than symbolic gestures.

Third, Baltic leaders should be encouraged to pair their security demands with concrete economic strategies that reduce vulnerability rather than inflame it.

In short, the Baltics should remain defended and heard—but not allowed to set the West’s tempo for confrontation. Small states have every right to demand security guarantees, but the alliance has a duty to balance those demands against the strategic realities of capability, cost and the catastrophic risks of escalation.

Letting the most alarmed voices lead will not keep the peace. It will take the West to the edge.

*Lucien Morell is a Southeast Asia based geopolitical observer and analyst.*