Zero margins: Model shows Europe’s long odds in a Baltic war

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The new US National Security Strategy is a bit of a troll job. But taking its assumptions literally, Washington is saying that Europe cannot depend on the US. So, our team at Dragoman Praxis ran a simulation of a hypothetical Russian attack on the Baltic states, purposefully excluding the US (and Turkey, for good measure) from the NATO response. The results? Europe lacks the decisive speed, logistics, and political unanimity required to guarantee victory. The unacceptably high chance of failure – defined as any outcome short of full territorial liberation – is sobering.

Bad news bear

The computer model, run 1,000 times to maximally account for all variables, leaves little margin for success.

• Across all simulations, four major outcomes emerged. The most common result, a grinding stalemate or “frozen conflict”, occurred in 35 per cent of runs.
• A full Russian victory, while minimized, still happened in ten per cent of the conflicts.
• Crucially, this analysis includes the critical forward defence forces of the newest members, Finland and Sweden.

Though European NATO, now including Finland and Sweden, achieved a clean victory – retaking all lost territory – in a substantial 30 per cent of cases, a core strategic problem remains. In 70 per cent of scenarios, NATO fails to fully eject Russia. The model, which adjusts the likelihood of success after each simulated engagement, found that a total Russian defeat is far from a statistical certainty. Diplomacy occasionally produces a ceasefire in 25 per cent of runs, but would by definition be, at least territorially, on Moscow’s terms. Put another way, the modal outcome is at least a partial victory for Russia.

How we did it

The analysis employed a Discrete-Event, Agent-Based Simulation powered by Bayesian analysis. We set up the structure and let it iterate autonomously across 1,000 simulations.

• This mechanism does not assume fixed outcomes. Instead, it continually refines the likelihoods for all military variables – readiness, terrain effects, and reinforcement delays – after each simulated run.
• By the time the model converged after 1,000 draws, it had learned that even the significant boost from the Nordic nations was not enough to overcome the structural challenges in force projection.
• Our key assumptions were that the US military did not intervene at any point. We also assumed that Turkey did not as well, given its own strategic drift over the years.

Lag that dooms

The core finding is that Russia still possesses a speed advantage in the first week, preventing NATO from establishing a dominant defensive posture. The reason is not that Russia is stronger – Europe is significantly more powerful in aggregate by nominal measures – but that it is still too slow in a high-intensity conflict.

The inclusion of Finland and Sweden provides decisive logistical access and has helped significantly push the calculus back towards Europe’s favour – but a gap remains. Russia can field three brigades on the border within three days; European NATO requires five days at least.

• Heavy armour arrives for Russia on Day 2, but for NATO, not until Day 7. And while Russian interior supply lines keep logistical delays minimal (1.5 days), European militaries still face an average 2.5-day lag as equipment crosses multiple borders.
• The effect is visible in the model’s territorial shifts. NATO’s slow reinforcement allows Russia to secure a territorial wedge that stabilizes the conflict in its favour.
• The front line stabilizes quickly at about 40 per cent Russian control of the Baltics by Day 30. This stabilization occurs just as NATO’s heavy armour arrives, creating the structural standoff that makes full liberation unlikely in 70 per cent of runs.

Where there is a will

Behind the operational lag lies a deeper constraint: political hesitation. The simulation incorporates a “Political Will Index” (PWI) capturing each country’s probability of deploying substantial combat forces.

• The PWI is an analytical assessment across an upper and lower confidence bound, based on the judgment of a major European NATO power’s socio-political willingness to commit substantial forces to the Baltics’ defence.
• The PWI is probabilistic, which means there is no certainty one way or another. While it helps us model the European response, it does not predict. It is a constraint envelope, not a forecast of national behaviour.
• The upshot is an uneven coalition. The model converges toward a shared European reality: high political support for deterrence, but more tepid, scattered support for the sustained, high-risk offensive action needed to fully retake territory.

Europe’s underlying problem, even with the new members, is structural. Washington currently provides the bulk of NATO’s heavy airlift, aerial refueling, and precision long-range fires – capabilities that can enable a quick, complex counter-offensive. Without the US, Europe is left with fragmented national forces – compounded by diverse PWI – that struggle to achieve the decisive speed required to guarantee victory.

This analysis suggests Europe can stop the bleeding, but in the majority of scenarios, it cannot reclaim the territory under conservative assumptions. The policy implications are obvious. Europe not only desperately needs to invest in capabilities, particularly ones independent from a mercurial Washington, but to cultivate a shared, ironclad understanding that political unity and decisiveness of action is paramount. The good news, however, is that Europe has much of the capacity to defend itself; it just needs to fill niche capability gaps, conduct autonomous operational planning, and cultivate a shared sense of strategic unity.

Right now though, the difference between defeat and deterrence in the Baltics is measured in days – and under current conditions, Europe does not have enough of them.

Dragoman Praxis is a geopolitical research and advisory practice focused on the mechanics and global implications of statecraft, security, and political economy in Europe and Eurasia. Learn more at DragomanPraxis.com.

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Baltic Sea, Scenarios, War