The Trump administration floated the idea of withdrawing from NATO in his first term. That relationship is already rockier this time, just two months into a four-year term. It appears that the most vulnerable members of NATO are preparing for a new reality where the U.S. doesn’t back up NATO or even deter Russia in general.
To prepare for Russian aggression in this brave new world, the most vulnerable members of NATO—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland—have announced that they’re withdrawing from a landmark ban on military mines.
The risk of leaving vulnerable territory up for grabs
When I was in the Army, one of the common training scenarios at the brigade headquarters level was a war in Europe. The conflict often centered on the Suwalki Gap. All the country names were changed for the exercise and, sometimes, even a few borders, but the gap always remained. We’ve written about this gap before, a thin strip of the Polish-Lithuanian border that runs east-west between Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad Enclave. If Russia struck through the gap, it could sever the three Baltic countries from the rest of NATO.
Without going into too much detail, our exercises often called for either 1) Repelling the Russian attack or, 2) Expelling Russians from the gap. The first was often challenging since it took time to get units into place against a surprise attack. But the second scenario was many times worse. With enough time, Russian units could dig into the grass plains of Europe. Picking the ticks out would cost buckets of European and American blood.
For decades, America promised that it would do so. The foreign policy logic was simple: Preventing World War III was much less costly than fighting it. So we sent arms and armies to help keep the peace, and we promised that we’d fight if anyone broke the peace. And Europe avoided large-scale conflict for almost 80 years.
Things in Europe have changed
But the expanded Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has triggered the largest European land war since World War II. The U.S. is loudly threatening to leave NATO and is even musing buying or taking territory from a NATO country.
Many European leaders today either remember living under Soviet occupation or heard stories of it from their parents. They have no desire to see their people subjugated once again. So they need a strong, effective deterrent that doesn’t rely on American equipment or guarantees.
And so they’re turning to mines.
Why mines are so effective
Mines are one of the few weapons that Hollywood gets largely correct. And that’s probably because they’re completely terrifying on their own, no need for exaggeration.
Emplacers use mines of varying sizes, burying them in the ground with triggers built into them. The triggers reflect the kind of weapon that the mine attacks. It takes a larger tread or weight to trigger most anti-armor mines, for instance. Anti-personnel mines might trigger with just a few pounds of pressure.
Russian armor dashing across the Suwalki Gap or else attacking from Belarus west into the Baltic countries would trigger the explosives, quickly tying up maneuver forces and their support elements. The slowed-down attackers would be easier targets for NATO artillery and other weapons.
Previously, this task of stopping Russian armored columns could have been done by airpower and artillery. That’s how the U.S. defended American special operators from a massive Russian attack by the Wagner mercenary group in Syria in 2018, with no losses to our service members.
But that concentrated airpower requires a lot of combat aircraft and top-tier intelligence. And the U.S. is taking a lot of both if it leaves NATO. The fastest new deterrent that the Baltic countries could turn to is mining their own borders. That slows down a potential attack to make it easier for their infantry and artillery to repel.
Why no one uses mines unless they have to
The problem for people who mine their own borders is that it makes it impossible for their people to use the territory, either. They have to mine potentially thousands of square miles of territory and then let it sit fallow. And weather or geological activity can shift mines over time, sometimes by hundreds of feet, making it hard to find them and to keep the public safe from them. Mines killed over 5,500 civilians in 2023, according to the Landmine Monitor 2024 report.
Mines are so dangerous to civilians that most of the world signed a treaty banning them. The U.S. was one of the few major countries to never sign the ban. The U.S. came close enough to compliance under Obama and then Biden that it is no longer counted by the Landmine Monitor 2024 report as one of the 12 countries that use landmines. Ukraine was not counted either, though it has used mines and cluster munitions on its territory that is occupied or at high risk of Russian capture.
Looking forward…to mines
Now, four countries are withdrawing from the anti-mine treaty, and it would be crazy to think the rest of NATO, especially those on the eastern flanks, aren’t considering it. One of the other flank states, Finland, has over 12,000 mines “retained for training purposes.” It could quickly deploy mines if it decided to.
Landmines are relatively easy to manufacture, even for terrorist groups and other non-state actors. So once someone breaks the seal on using mines in a fight, it can quickly become a common tool for everyone in that fight. Mines are dangerous enough for civilians if military forces carefully employ them and map where they are placed. When terror groups start dropping mines, there’s no formal registry where they can submit their maps even if they want to.
So we’re facing a potential expansion of a large-scale war in Europe and likely frontline nations are withdrawing from anti-mine treaties. Might be time to invest in personal demining equipment. Or study this fun flow chart of how to demine areas, a literal foot at a time.