Russia can conquer Latvia and Estonia in 3 days

Freedom Monument,
Riga, Latvia

A weaker American military means a weaker NATO.

And it means a more dangerous world, thanks to President Obama.

From The Week:

NATO has no way of stopping a Russian conventional invasion of Estonia and Latvia short of nuclear war, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

That's not surprising in itself. Russia has one of the world's most powerful militaries, and can field vast armies compared to the Baltic states with their small populations. Not only are the Baltic armies small, but NATO reinforcements would be slow coming in the early hours of a conflict, allowing Moscow to quickly bypass or destroy the alliance's defenses.

What is surprising, or at least not discussed enough, is how quickly Russia would steamroll the Baltic states — and that has the study's authors David Shlapak and Michael Johnson worried.

The study relies on a series of tabletop war simulations of a surprise Russian ground invasion directed at the capitals of Estonia and Latvia. U.S. military officers and RAND analysts played the role of the combatants. They found Russian forces will have "eliminated" NATO resistance and be "at the gates of or actually entering Riga, Tallinn, or both between 36 and 60 hours after the start of hostilities."

Four years ago Barack Obama mocked Mitt Romney for calling Russia a geo-political threat.