Four retired generals tell F.A.S. NATO faces a five-year window in which Russia could attack the Baltics, with Germany pulled in as logistics hub

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung interviewed four retired generals from four countries — Air Marshal Greg Bagwell of the UK, now an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute; Lieutenant General Ben Hodges of the United States, commander of US Army Europe until 2017; Major General Mick Ryan of Australia, who writes for the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Lieutenant General Jürgen-Joachim von Sandrart of Germany. All four argued that Russia could attack NATO within roughly five years, with the Baltic states the most likely target.

They named three motives. Bagwell pointed to Putin's domestic position: "Putin is in trouble at home. The war in Ukraine is stagnating, the economy is under pressure. If he sees he's running into a dead end, he could be tempted to do something spectacular." Ryan added: "Putin knows he can't bring home a beaten army, so he must do something with it. An attack on the Baltics would be tempting." The second motive, said Hodges, would be to break NATO open: "Russia could launch a limited attack against Latvia and then see what NATO does. If the response was weak, it would have achieved its goal." The third is timing — that American resolve is wavering and that Europe's new defence spending will not produce equipped soldiers for years.

Bagwell described "a window of opportunity of perhaps five years" for Putin. Von Sandrart said Russia, through its force build-up, is "already today" capable of a regional conflict in parallel with the Ukraine war and that the greatest danger therefore runs "until" 2029, not "from" 2029, as the German government assumes. "Russia knows that Europe is poorly prepared right now," he said. "So why should it wait until we're ready?"

Germany would be a target, the generals agreed, because the most important NATO supply routes run through it. Russia would try to cut those lines, Bagwell said, hitting targets "in Poland or in Germany," with the secondary aim of triggering panic that would force allies to abandon the Baltics. Hodges said that under such an attack "Riga, Klaipeda, Gdansk and Bremerhaven could come under fire."

The warnings come as Donald Trump moves to pull at least 5,000 US troops from Germany — possibly more — to punish Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and as the US missile battalion Joe Biden had promised for this year, intended to keep Russia's Iskanders in check with American Tomahawk cruise missiles, looks unlikely to arrive. Berlin no longer expects Trump to honour the pledge, in part because the United States is "firing everything its depots will give" in Iran. Russia has for years been deploying Iskanders and other long-range weapons in Kaliningrad and along the Polish-Belarusian border; depending on type and load, they can reach Berlin and beyond. The fully loaded Iskander-M is estimated at roughly 500 km range — enough to put Warsaw in acute danger, possibly Berlin too.

Hodges called Trump's withdrawal announcements damaging "above all because they create the impression that America is no longer committed to the defence of Europe," undermining deterrence. He stressed that US interests in Europe do not depend on the sitting president: most American aircraft heading to Iran must transit through European bases because, as Ryan put it, "you can't simply fly from the American east coast to the Middle East. You have to refuel, and the sweet spot for that is Germany." Hodges called Ramstein "probably the most important American installation in Europe" — the centre of a complex that also houses the largest US military hospital outside the United States and NATO Allied Air Command. By a 2013 RAND Corporation calculation, the US saves close to €1 billion a year by paying neither rent nor taxes for Ramstein and roughly 40 other major installations in Germany. Replicating that infrastructure elsewhere, Hodges said, would cost decades and billions of dollars: "President Trump is doing this to punish the chancellor, but in truth he is damaging America."

The German government has set out its response: modernise the Taurus cruise missile and push the Taurus Neo successor, buy Tomahawks if the Americans will not field them, work with Ukraine on cheaper alternatives, and accelerate the European long-range programme ELSA. A defence ministry spokesman said on Monday the work is "on a very, very good path," while conceding it will "naturally take some time." The Information Warfare Initiative, a German-American expert group, has proposed standing up four battalions with 1,200 missiles by spring 2027 through accelerated cooperation between Germany and several other European NATO states, building on Taurus, with overall cost set at €15-19 billion by 2030. The plan would require the Bundestag to declare the Article 80a Grundgesetz "Spannungsfall" — a step backed by CDU defence specialist Roderich Kiesewetter but requiring a two-thirds majority that is not in sight. One of the plan's authors, Axel Ludwig Jacob, believes escalating Russian provocations in the coming months could generate the public pressure needed.

Von Sandrart placed the European choice in a global frame. If Russia attacked, China might simultaneously move on Taiwan: "We will have the simultaneity and equivalence of several conflict and crisis zones — deliberately produced to split our forces." In that case, "almost automatically the Americans will have to take care of the Pacific and the Europeans of Europe." Europe would have to manage with "less America" and build "complementary capabilities" to share the global load.

"If you think it is expensive to prevent a war by deterrence," Bagwell said, "try fighting one."