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Current Imbalance of Military Power on the Russian Border a Result of Different Motivations

• In the years following the end of the Cold War, NATO's ground forces have substantially declined in size and shifted focus away from high-intensity conventional combat.
• By contrast, while Russia also saw a major decline through the 1990s and 2000s, more-recent efforts have led to effective changes in Russian warfighting capabilities and a gradual spread of more-modern systems to much of the Russian armed forces.
• Recent improvements to readiness and to the ability to move forces quickly within Russia, combined with the density of anti-access/area denial capabilities arrayed to defend the Russian heartland, provide Moscow with a much greater ability to project force against countries on its borders.

The Russian Threat to NATO in the Baltics

• While NATO militaries have retooled to focus on stability operations and lighter forces that can be more easily deployed out of area to such places as Afghanistan, Russia has retained a combined-arms force that emphasizes mobility and firepower and trains to conduct larger-scale combined-arms operations. This gives Russian forces an important advantage in conflicts between mechanized forces close to their border.
• There has been a notable increase in the quality of Russian forces over the last decade: a growing number of volunteer soldiers, fielding of modernized weapons, improvements to readiness, and experience gained from large-scale exercises and combat operations in Ukraine and Syria.
• The highest density of Russia's most-capable ground and air forces is in its Western Military District, which borders the NATO allies in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which have very small conventional forces.
• Russia's demonstrated ability to mass ready forces from elsewhere within its borders, leveraging its internal rail and road networks, means it is likely to enjoy a significant time-distance advantage in generating combat forces during the opening period of a crisis.