At Strategy Page:
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/afghan/articles/20080822.aspx
The opinion is that the Taliban is taking advantage of the unwillingness of NATO to fight there. I’m sure many Eastern European nations are noting this also.
Broadly speaking, Eastern European nations have two options:
1. Surrender to Russia and cut whatever deal is to be made, with the understanding that once the deal is cut Putin or whoever can renege at any time and replace local elites with their own people.
2. Fight to maintain independence, and for the local elites, control of local resources.
This option #2 is likely to be far more attractive. OK, so the local elites in Eastern Europe have decided to fight. How? Western Europe cannot even sustain the modest effort to fight against the Taliban, and will soon shed the military altogether, under pressure from declining tax bases and ever-growing welfare states. Aid from NATO which does not exist as a military organization outside the US forces is not to be relied upon.
Eastern European states will adopt the American Tripwire strategy (as used in South Korea, West Germany during the Cold War) only to the degree that support in the US for the tripwire is bipartisan and the consensus of American elites, that the tripwire is considered genuine.
Otherwise, Eastern European states will re-arm. They are unlikely to match even in Russia’s degraded state, the manpower requirements to resist the first phase of a Russian armored assault, no matter how bad Russian air and logistics would be. But it’s cheap and relatively easy for industrial states to make nukes and missiles. Particularly since the reach required is not global but a few thousand miles.
How much of Poland’s GDP would be required? About 10% of the 2006 GDP at $620 billion at purchasing power parity (according to CIA World Factbook) would do it I think. That’s $62 billion. That ought to buy missiles capable of reaching St. Petersburg and Moscow, and nukes, and the hardened facilities inside Poland to survive a first strike. There might even be enough left over for a ballistic missile submarine purchased from Israel or India. About $62 billion would purchase at my guess, at least 20 nukes and missiles. Which Moscow could not be sure they’d knock down.
Poland is more than capable of looking after it’s own defense given enough space and time, without the US.
The practical effect, though, without the US, is that Poland will by definition be a proliferating state. At best, incentives for the Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Finns, and others to nuke up ASAP. At worst, Poland and other states proliferating might be tempted to shave costs by selling expertise to other nations, creating a seller’s market for nuclear technology and spreading it as a base technology the way say, power plants are purchased.
Which would mean, Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, all the Gulf states and princelets, would have nukes very soon.
