Abstract
In early 2024, Poland and the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania announced plans to put up fortifications along their eastern frontier. Yet one lesson that analysts might draw from contemporary experience is that defensive systems of the sort planned for parts of NATO’s so-called Eastern Flank have little to no utility except for sapping precious resources that could be spent elsewhere. We argue that this skepticism towards fortifications is misguided even though defence establishments must be attuned to the risk of catastrophic failure. A conventional defensive system must have depth and enable the ability to go about counteroffensives. A major reason for the historical failures associated with fortifications is because defenders either did not match the imagination of their adversaries or neglected the value of depth and counterstrike options. For those considering how to fortify the Eastern Flank, they must pair static defences with operational as well as organizational dynamism. We offer a framework for how to think about effective defence systems and use various case studies, two of which are drawn from the First World War, to substantiate our argument. We conclude by teasing the implications of our analysis for how Poland and the three Baltic countries can create effective defence systems.
Panel: Conceptualizing Military Strategy: From Planning to War