June 29, 2023: Estonia is the latest of the three (Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia) Baltic States to dramatically increase defense spending and order a lot of new weapons. Estonia plans to spend $14.5 billion over the next ten years. This will increase annual defense spending to three percent of GDP. Current spending is 2.85 percent of GDP. The recommended NATO goal is two percent. This is all about learning the lessons of the Ukraine war. That means spending over a billion dollars to increase ammunition supplies. Large quantities of Israeli Harpy loitering munitions and Spike ATGMs (Anti-Tank Guided Missiles) are on order. Blue Spear land-based anti-ship missiles are also on order and will arrive in 2024. These have a range of 290 kilometers and Estonia is launching them from trucks. These mobile missile launchers can be moved around, making them more difficult to hit with airstrikes. Estonia has ordered 36 K9 self-propelled howitzers from South Korea and 18 of these have already arrived. Six HIMARS vehicles and a large supply of FMLRS missiles are also on the way. Several hundred wheeled armored personnel carriers are being obtained to replace the trucks many infantry units now use.

Air defense systems are being upgraded with new radars and fire control systems for new anti-aircraft missile systems. These include the Polish Piorun for going after low flying threats and the German IRIS-T for more distant and higher flying aircraft and missiles. The size of the active-duty armed forces is being increased from 26,000 to 36,000 and that will be completed this year.

Estonia is a small country with a population of 1.3 million and a GDP of $41 billion. That means per-capita GDP is $31,000. Poland and the Baltic States made an extraordinary, in terms of financial cost, effort to assist Ukraine during the first six weeks of the war. For example, tiny Estonia spent about 0.8 percent of its annual GDP to support Ukraine during those six weeks. Most of the aid went to processing and hosting Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian attacks on their homes. By late 2022 Ukrainians and their NATO supporters were planning for what comes after the war. The Russian troops were on the run and Russia has few options left. Estonia is convinced that Russia will try again and the next time Estonia might be the target.

This is not a new problem. Back in 2016 the Baltic States asked for some American troops. Not enough to halt a Russian invasion, just enough to ensure that the Americans and their NATO allies (or at least some of them) will intervene if Russia does attack. The Baltic States already have a mutual defense guarantee from NATO in the form of NATO membership. But that is not enough and what has been asked for, and granted, are some American troops in each of these nations. The response was an offer to send one reinforced battalion per country. That means about 4,000 troops overall. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, the Americans have put more personnel, most of them support troops, in Poland and the Baltic States.

The Baltic States and neighboring Poland join a growing list of nations who, threatened by dangerous neighbors, have agreed, and often asked to host American troops. The first and most obvious examples of this are South Korea, Japan and Germany. This form of defense has been quietly followed by a number of nations in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE (United Arab Emirates). All of these Persian Gulf nations want the Americans around to keep the Iranians out. But it is not just the Iranians. Inside Iraq there have been American troops in northern Iraq to protect the autonomous Kurdish majority up there from the Arab majority since the early 1990s. This form of security is also called a "tripwire force" because, if the host nation is attacked, the presence of some U.S. troops means that a lot of U.S. reinforcements will promptly arrive. Several other nations are seeking this form of security guarantee but are not getting it, at least not yet. This includes Ukraine and Georgia. The United States is the favored source of these armed hostages because the U.S. is a superpower and, compared to all the alternatives, the least likely to take advantage of the situation.