[Bus Insider] The future chairman of the NATO Military Committee has issued some dire warnings about Russia's ability to occupy the Baltic States. Czech General Petr Pavel, who is scheduled to become chairman in June, warned on May 27th that Moscow would be able to conquer the three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania within two days even despite the former Soviet republics' NATO membership, according to the Czech news site CTK.
This is largely due to the complexity of the NATO decision-making process, along with the small geographic area of the Baltics. Russia could take advantage of NATO's relatively slow-moving command structure to blitz across the three countries in a matter of hours.
"On the one hand, one of [NATO´s] disadvantages is its complex process of decision making. It is because NATO has 28 members who have to reach consensus on all conclusions," Pavel told CTK.
"From the technical point of view, if I consider how many forces Russia is able to deploy in the Baltics, the size of the Baltic countries and the density of forces on their territories, the Baltics could really be occupied in a couple of days."
According to Pavel, the key military and political processes of NATO are not synchronized to allow for a split-second response. Whereas NATO's rapid reaction forced could be mobilized and deployed within two days, the political consensus needed to make that decision could take substantially longer to reach.
And until there is a consensus that the Russian advance has triggered the NATO alliance's mutual defense obligations, NATO military forces would have to remain on the sidelines.