Wikileaks reveal Article 5 contingency plans to defend Baltics and Poland

The latest selected release of confidential US diplomatic cables (from late 2008 to the end of 2009) are the first to directly address sensitive negotiations within NATO. As reported today in The Guardian and New York Times, the cables show that the Russia-Georgia clash in August 2008 led the three Baltic states to lobby the Alliance, which they had joined in 2004, for a formal defence plan. Following secret diplomacy a regional “contingency plan” to defend the Baltics and Poland against Russian threats was agreed in January 2010.  

The leaked cables show the extent to which this issue became a difficult balancing act for the Alliance. On the one hand, the allies were faced with an Article 5 treaty obligation to respond to an attack on one member as an attack on all, and on the other hand, NATO had been making repeated declarations that post-Soviet Russia was not a threat. In particular, the incoming Obama administration had announced a ‘reset’ in relations with Russia and the US State Department feared that a major policy shift could trigger "unnecessary tensions" with Moscow.  

With significant ethnic Russian minorities, all three Baltic states were alarmed by Russia’s public explanation that it had gone into Georgia to protect the rights of Russian citizens there. Some Latvian leaders said they needed to do more to integrate ethnic Russians, while others worried that excessive criticism might endanger business deals. But by October 2009, a cable reported that “The Baltic states clearly believe that the Russian Federation represents a future security risk and desire a contingency plan to address that risk. And therein lies the problem,” the cable said. “Post-Cold War NATO has consistently said that it no longer views Russia as a threat”.  

The cables also reveal that it was Germany that proposed expanding parallel negotiations with Poland to the Baltic states. In the discussions with Warsaw the US had offered to strengthen Polish security against Russia by deploying special naval forces, squadrons of F-16 fighter aircraft and rotating C-130 Hercules transport planes into Poland from US bases in Germany. Earlier this year the US started rotating US army Patriot missiles into Poland, but the cables expose the Patriots' value as largely symbolic: the Patriot batteries are purely for training purposes, and are neither operational nor armed with missiles. Poland’s then deputy defence minister complained that Poland wanted operational missiles and not “potted plants”. 

The Poles, while keen supporters of concrete NATO defence plans for the Baltic, were "sceptical that a regional approach was the best way ahead”. In contrast, the Latvians expressed “profound happiness” at the eventual decision, and an Estonian official called it an “early Christmas present”. But US officials urged Baltic officials to keep such talk secret: “A public discussion of contingency planning would also likely lead to an unnecessary increase in NATO-Russia tensions, something we should try to avoid as we work to improve practical cooperation in areas of common NATO-Russia interest,” a December cable said.

In January 2010, therefore, with the plan (codenamed ‘Eagle Guardian’) approved by NATO’s Military Committee, a cable signed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered an information blackout on the exact details. This is in keeping with NATO’s usual practice of refusing to divulge details of its military contingency planning– although Baltic and East European news organisations have been reporting on the defence plans for several months. "After two years, contingency plans have been successfully prepared for Poland," Bogdan Klich, the Polish defence minister told Warsaw newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza last month. 

The cables reveal parts of the policy and political decision-making processes but contain little on the specifics of hard military planning. As a result of separate leaks to Gazeta Wyborcza, however, it is known that nine NATO divisions – US, British, German, and Polish – have been identified for combat operations in the event of armed aggression, while North Polish and German ports are earmarked for the receipt of naval assault forces and British and US warships. The first NATO exercises under the plan are due to take place in 2011. 

It can be assumed that Russia already knows a great deal about this contingency planning, which was common knowledge to those that closely follow such issues. And NATO-Russian relations are unlikely to be seriously damaged by the ‘leaks’ and can be expected to tread wearily along as uneasily as before.


Further details: US diplomatic cables relating to this story published by New York Times, 6 December:


·         Baltic Pressure for NATO Defense Plan, 20 October 2009

·         Russia-Georgia Clash Worries Baltic States, 15 August 2008