Episode 4: Europe Without America

I don't think we need to implement it within the first 24 hours, but we should keep it in reserve.

The Russian foreign minister agrees.

When it comes to Germany, it's best to stick to the tried and tested strategy of carrot and stick.

For now, we're showing the stick, not yet using it, with all the measures you've just outlined

outlinedBehind the players on a screen hanging on the wall, the blue team's decisions are now appearing.

The German wargaming center, which runs the adjudication of the exercise, has staff in both rooms.

Whenever one team takes a decision, it is passed on to the other side.

The three men on the Russian team are now reacting to Germany's latest moves.

What I find interesting are these relatively tough economic measures.

We're essentially trying to lure them in, and they are deliberately doing the opposite, not engaging with that at all, but instead escalating in the economic sphere.

What's interesting is that there's not a single measure here to reinforce NATO's troop presence.

In the end, the forces NATO currently has in the Baltics simply aren't sufficient to disrupt our corridor.

The blue team has adopted tough economic measures, but from the Russian perspective, none of them threatens Moscow's core objective.

Our objective right now is simply to get this corridor through.

Once we've done that, we are in a completely different world, and somehow all of this misses the point.

Maybe their goal is simply to show that they're acting, that they're strong, that they're sending a strong signal, but they're not actually solving the problem.

The military chief now turns his attention to the Baltic Sea.

Germany and the other NATO countries bordering the Baltic have decided to monitor it so closely that Russia can no longer use it freely for military operations.

There is little Moscow can do about that.

From a purely military perspective, we're actually inferior to NATO in the Baltic Sea.

I wouldn't commit too many resources to trying to break through NATO's A2/AD bubble there.

Instead, I'd focus on what countermeasures are available to us.

One option, he says, would be to isolate Lithuania by sea.

For example, we could impose a naval blockade by sending special forces from Russia's Baltic fleet to lay offensive minefields in approaches to the port of Klaipeda.

But the Russian president sees no reason to escalate any further, at least for now.