Two weeks after the U.S. midterm elections (early next week), U.S. President Donald Trump is meeting his Chinese and Russian counterparts, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, in Shenzhen, China. Ukraine is on the agenda but not invited to the table. The world is holding its breath. Will America sell out Kyiv?
By Anton van Schijndel
Perhaps that won't happen. If there is no American sell-out of Ukraine, the key question is: what options does Russia then have to force a breakthrough in the conflict?
What is needed is a realistic analysis of the military balance between Russia and Ukraine, the foreseeable shifts in that balance, and the potential for escalation. In this regard, balance-of-power theory provides the right analytical framework for predicting how the war might unfold.
A starting point is that NATO’s advance toward the gates of Moscow, put in the limelight by the promise of NATO membership made to Ukraine in 2008, is and remains totally unacceptable to Russia. While this is a Kremlin talking point, that does not make it any less true. If the aim is – as it in my view ought to be – to maintain a stable European balance of power, that promise of accession was foolish; but that is now history.
Nevertheless, FT commentator Edward Luce revisits the subject at length (Financial Times, October 21, 2026). He writes that, to justify the invasion of Ukraine, Putin spoke only of ‘denazification,’ ‘demilitarisation,’ and the protection of the Russian population in the Donbas.
This is, of course, the rhetoric for domestic consumption one might expect at the outset of military operations. Luce overlooks Russia’s legitimate security concern: namely, that after President Yanukovych fled in 2015, Ukraine was increasingly drawn into NATO’s orbit, with British and American military advisors working intensively with Ukraine to strengthen the country’s armed forces.
Meanwhile, after more than four years of war, Russia’s territorial gains on the front lines remain meagre. Russia has been unable to force a breakthrough, and the Ukrainians now appear to hold the upper hand in drone warfare.
Since the summer, Ukraine has been striking oil refineries, data centres, and online distribution hubs deep within Russian territory. As of last month, Russia has begun to retaliate in kind, targeting civilian infrastructure, such as Ukraine’s energy and transport networks, as well as residential areas.
In an interview with the FT, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia has abandoned all humanitarian boundaries (Financial Times, October 2, 2026). It remains to be seen which side has the greater staying power in this war of reciprocal bombardments. History shows that during World War II, the Allied carpet-bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, and Berlin failed to break German morale.
Furthermore, both sides' losses are difficult to verify. From a military standpoint, they are also of fairly limited significance. Russia could announce a new round of mobilisation. At the same time, Ukraine could intensify efforts to round up conscript-age men who are currently in hiding (a figure estimated at around 900,000, according to the Financial Times two and a half years ago (March 13, 2024).
The dynamic of escalation is undeniable; these are no longer mere pinpricks. The crucial point is that war escalation cannot be effectively ‘managed.’ Escalation thus happens; one move triggers the next. Violence intensifies, the conflict expands geographically, and so forth. From this perspective, one must try to understand and step into Russia's position, for a moment setting aside one’s own moral and legal judgements.
All in all, Putin now needs a major political success to gain room for manoeuvre in future negotiations about Ukraine.
Seizing a Baltic state could deliver that success. It would provide room to make concessions regarding the Ukrainian theatre of war, specifically, a ceasefire, akin to the situation in Korea in the 1950s, the freezing of the front line, and a backtracking on ‘demilitarisation’ of Ukraine. The country would become an armed-to-the-teeth buffer state between Russia and Western and Central Europe.
How could Russia get there? In particular, what options does the military have? First, there is the tactical-nuclear option. At first glance, this appears to be a possible way to force a breakthrough, given that Ukraine has lacked the capacity for a nuclear counterstrike since 1994, the year its nuclear arsenal was transferred to the Russian Federation.
Jack Watling writes about this in his seminal book Statecraft. Precision strikes on airbases and command bunkers can inflict massive damage on an enemy’s national defence, essentially destroying it.
However, Russia would almost certainly want to avoid the infamy and disgrace of using nuclear weapons, something that has not happened since the Second World War. Furthermore, China and India have issued strong warnings to Putin against taking such a step.
By comparison, the risks of the conventional option are significantly lower. The most obvious scenario is the overrunning of the Baltic states. Russian forces can seize these countries, as they are basically indefensible for NATO member states. NATO has only a limited ground presence there, including 250 Dutch personnel in Lithuania.
A few years ago, RAND Corporation, a renowned security studies consultancy and Pentagon advisor, calculated that it would take 60 hours to seize the Baltic countries. That timeframe might even be shorter now: the Russians have since become battle-hardened and have developed very significant expertise in drone warfare. In such a scenario, the Baltic forces and NATO ground troops would be wiped out.
A telling detail emerged from a recent exercise involving Ukrainian drone teams, in which the NATO and Baltic forces were soundly defeated. The three countries' geography is also a critical factor; it makes it impossible to bring in reinforcements from Western Europe within days.
Most importantly, Trump is washing his hands of the matter: after Iran, another war in some obscure European countries that no one has ever heard of is too much.
In this connection, a recent Russian action, or perhaps a psy-op, has caused considerable unrest within the Baltic states. All of a sudden, Russia levelled wild accusations, claiming that NATO intended to cut off the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg in East Prussia) from the Russian mainland. Moscow announced that it would resist such a move using every available military means, including nuclear weapons (Financial Times, September 30, 2026).
Could this rhetoric indicate that Russia has now set its sights on the Baltic states? Anyway, recently in Warsaw, the American NATO commander in Europe, four-star General Alexus Grynkewich, made a highly unusual statement. He declared that NATO would “halt, slow down, and break the war-fighting system attacking us so that it is no longer operational”.
Yet, such firm language cannot mask the fact that NATO has few military options. Ultimately, the situation hinges on the balance of military power and which side holds “escalation dominance.” In this regard, Putin holds the cards.
It should be noted that Russia views the accession of traditionally neutral nations like Finland and Sweden to NATO as a hostile act. If Russia occupied one or more Baltic states, the Baltic Sea would no longer be a completely NATO-controlled inland sea. In a sense, this would restore symmetry: Finland and Sweden in NATO, balanced against Russia's occupation of one or more Baltic states. That is a possible scenario.
What, then, should the Netherlands do? At all costs, a “Pavlovian” reflex must be avoided, specifically, the urge to rely only on the framework of international law; the quintessential default “autopilot” for Dutch foreign policy.
To give in to this impulse would be unwise. The Dutch government should not immediately announce that the Netherlands will fulfil the mutual assistance obligation under Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. Doing so may cost us dearly.
With contributions amounting to staggering sums in the billions of euros, the Netherlands has been one of Ukraine’s largest sponsors in recent years. Russia knows this, of course. Yet the prevailing sense in the country is that we are, and will remain … invulnerable.
How very strange.
Rotterdam and Flushing, along with Hamburg and Bremen, serve as the primary Western European ports for transporting weapons and troops to the East. A Russian attack on these ports with cruise missiles would make reinforcements impossible, while also testing the Dutch public’s willingness to make sacrifices.
All in all, NATO’s eastward expansion toward Moscow was a disastrous idea. Well-founded criticism from scholars such as John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago), Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia University), Jack Matlock (former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow), and, earlier, George Kennan, the architect of the American containment strategy against the Soviet Union, as well as many others, including Frits Bolkestein, was cast to the wind.
A conventional Russian attack on the Baltic states is a plausible scenario, if Trump does not effectively hand Ukraine over to Moscow next month. Perhaps the likelihood of such an outcome seems low, as halting intelligence support to Ukraine, or restricting its access to the Starlink system (this time for an extended period), would severely damage American credibility in the eyes of its own allies and worldwide.
But with Trump, one can never be sure.
For Russia, the ongoing war is an existential struggle; all bets are off. The Dutch government, and other governments in the European Union, better move beyond "autopilot" and avoid being dragged into a war that a handful of Western European nations cannot possibly win.
Anton van Schijndel is a Dutch politician and jurist, born in Amsterdam in 1960. He holds a master's in security studies from Columbia University. studied Security. He previously served in the House of Representatives for the VVD (2005–2006) before joining FvD. Beyond politics, he is an experienced corporate lawyer. His previous contribution can be read here.
FOOTNOTE - The Peace of Utrecht (April 1713 & February 1715)
The Republic of the Seven United Netherlands was excluded from the negotiations to end the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714. Although the Republic had been a key player in the war, fighting alongside England against France, and hosted the negotiations in Utrecht, the British opted to ally with their former enemy.
The French envoy remarked to the diplomats of the States-General: “Nous traiterons chez vous, de vous, sans vous” (We shall negotiate at your location, concerning you, but without you).
Nevertheless, the Peace of Utrecht was a success. From then until the French Revolutionary government's invasion in 1794, the Seven Provinces enjoyed a tranquil, uneventful existence as a nation of rentiers.
