>>514037661
The logic is sound. As long as Ukraine remains independent, Poland's border with russia-controlled territory is narrow and fighting across a narrow front tends to favour the force with a qualitative advantage over the force with a quantitative one.
In a russian invasion contingency, forward-deployed US forces would cross into the baltics to reinforce the multinational NATO forces already based there while Kaliningrad is isolated and captured by a joint US-Polish task force, thus ensuring logistic access to the baltics. The borders of the baltic states are already reinforced as heavily as Poland's and even in the face of a concerted invasion the Suwalki only needs to hold for a few days to buy time for the Bundeswehr to mobilize and join the fight, and only for a week or so for british and french forces to arrive, and then a month or so for forces from other NATO allies like Greece, Turkey, Italy, Spain etc. to arrive in force.
In order to have any hope of success, Russia would need to be able to produce sensational successes against the odds in an extremely short timeframe, advancing further and faster in a few days than they have advanced in years of grinding across the Donbas, against better-equipped and more heavily fortified defenders dug in along vastly more defensible terrain. They would need to contend with the full force of a combined air force vastly more numerous and capable than their own, which can now fly sorties out of Sweden and Finland across the baltic sea, and would simultaneously need to contend with their enormous border with Finland, a NATO ally, who would naturally be at war with Russia and have every reason to advance and threaten St. Petersburg if such a war were to break out.
Not to mention Russia's far east holdings that are more or less undefended and well within striking distance of US assets based in the Pacific around Korea and Japan.
Simply put the move is not tenable and would essentially constitute Suicide-by-NATO.
