by Patrick Appel
Daniel Berman eyes Estonia:
Putin needs three things in a target at this point. First it needs to be of less strategic value than the Crimea so that the arguments for fighting for it are even less. Second it needs to be politically vital, preferably as part of both NATO and the EU so that if the West chooses not to fight for it both organizations will be shattered. Thirdly, Russia’s moral case must be so impeccable that in the game of political chess that will precede the Western defeat, Russia at all times maintains at least a moral deadlock if not a moral ascendancy. In effect, he needs an Eastern European Verdun.
Estonia meets all of these criteria.
It is poor and geographically isolated. Furthermore, more than a third of its population is Russian, a legacy of Soviet rule, and that minority, unlike that in the Crimea, has legitimate cause for complaint. … Estonia is a member of both the EU and NATO. If Russia is able to stir up chaos in the form of riots and unrest within a member of both organizations it will discredit them totally. It makes no sense for Europe to risk destruction to defend Estonia, less than it did over the Ukraine, but the EU and NATO are based on the lie that an attack on one is an attack on all. Putin’s goal is to exploit this as a lie; Estonia is Verdun, a strategically worthless target that political factors forced the French army to defend to the death. In this case its Putin’s goal to draw NATO and the EU into a battle not of armies, but of political capital, and to destroy that capital in the open fields of the Baltic shore.
Andrew Connelly instead selects Moldova as possibly the “next Crimea”:
In November 2013, the country signed an association agreement with the European Union—the same treaty that led to Yanukovych’s downfall in Ukraine. Moldova is considered poor even in comparison to neighboring Romania and Bulgaria, and with the average Moldovan currently taking home around $200 per month, access to EU markets could be a huge boon. Moldova is home to the largest wine cellars in the world and exports around 3 million bottles to Russia each year, though after Chisnau’s flirtations with the EU last year, Moscow jealously banned their import. Gas is exclusively imported from Russia and hence vulnerable to politically motivated disruptions.
The Dish 