Karlis Neretnieks' article Deterrence against what? (KKrVA blog 25 May 2026) is one of the most clarifying Swedish contributions to the deterrence debate in 2026. It introduces with great pedagogical clarity an analytical distinction — the difference between meeting attack and deterring the start of war — which is fundamental but too rarely explicit in the political debate. Neretnieks' numerical analysis of the Baltics is sober and well-founded, and his geographical prioritization is not political wishful thinking but an operational conclusion with strong empirical support.
This review adopts the article's method: starting with the question “deterrence against what?” rather than “how much?” The starting point is that Neretnieks answers that question in an exemplary manner for the conventional Baltic scenario, but that the same question needs to be asked equally systematically at four complementary levels: the nuclear link, the grey zone, the relationship between denial and punishment in a cohesive allied system, as well as the asymmetric responses that make punishment credible in practice. The aim is therefore not to show that Neretnieks is wrong, but to show that his response is necessary but not sufficient as guidance for Swedish and Nordic security policy after NATO entry.
Neretnieks' main contribution
The article begins with a fundamental analytical shift: the deterrence question is framed as “against what?” rather than “how much?” It is a methodological prioritization of a kind that is missing from too much of the defense debate, where GDP percentage targets, brigade numbers, and capability lengths often dominate without a clear discussion of which threat scenario they are intended to deter and how the specific capability communicates to the specific adversary.
NATO's objective is summarized in the article as the alliance's fundamental task being to act as a deterrent and, if this fails, to have such a warfare capability that an attack can be repelled. Here Neretnieks makes it clear that deterrence and warfare capability are related but not identical concepts. This conceptual analysis, as well as his formulation that the ability to meet an attack is not automatically the same as effective deterrence against the decision to start war, constitute the conceptual core of the article.
The analytical focus of the article is the Nordic-Baltic area. Neretnieks identifies two geographies where Russia may see reasons to conduct major military operations: the High North and the Baltics. After analyzing both, he concludes that NATO's most pressing deterrence needs are in the Baltics. For Sweden, he formulates the central question as whether the country can contribute to the alliance's deterrence capability in such a way that the Russian willingness to start a war is affected.
The numerical analysis of the Baltics is detailed. Neretnieks pits the Baltic brigades and allied battle groups against a Russian mobilization potential of the order of ten divisions after a certain preparation time. The conclusion is that numerical considerations cannot be ignored in deterrence communication. In the High North, he makes a distinction between the threat to Russia's second-strike capability on the Kola Peninsula and the need for an allied warfare capability that only comes into play if deterrence fails in the Baltics.
Strengths of the analysis
It is important to acknowledge what the article adds to the debate as genuinely valuable insights. The conceptual distinction between war prevention and war-fighting is fundamental in deterrence theory, but rarely explicit in Swedish political debate. Neretnieks makes this distinction understandable without losing precision.
The numerical score is sober and necessary. The Russian mobilization capacity is presented not as an alarmist worst-case scenario but as an operationally anchored comparison, and the figures are directly linked to the logic of deterrence rather than to detached threat images. The Suwałki analysis is also prescient: the observation that Kaliningrad and parts of Belarus must be dealt with before substantial allied reinforcements can operate in the Baltics points to a real operational problem that is often downplayed for political reasons.
The distinction between the Baltic States and the Northern Areas — conventional-territorial and primarily nuclear-strategic threats — is analytically well-justified within the framework of the article. For this reason, its limitations also become clear when the article is read as guidance for Swedish and Nordic planning in a broader systems perspective.
A necessary demarcation
It is important to note that Neretnieks' article makes a conscious distinction: the focus is on major conventional military operations and on the question of where the alliance's most pressing deterrence needs lie. The fact that the nuclear and hybrid levels are not developed in detail is therefore not necessarily a fault in the article's own terms, but a question of scope.
The problem arises when the article is read as a guide for Swedish and Nordic defense planning after NATO entry. For such a purpose, it is insufficient to simply ask the question “against what?” at the conventional level. The question must be applied equally stringently to the nuclear connection to the Baltic scenario, to the gray zone aggression in the Baltic Sea region, to the relationship between denial and punishment in the overall logic of escalation, and to what asymmetric costs can actually make punishment credible.
Problematization 1: The nuclear connection
Neretnieks treats the nuclear dimension primarily as a Russian internal problem: the need to protect second-strike capabilities in the North. However, the nuclear dimension is also an Allied deterrence problem at the Baltic level, especially since NATO itself emphasizes that nuclear weapons are a core component of the Alliance's overall deterrence and defense capabilities.
The question left unanswered is what the nuclear deterrent is aimed at in a Baltic scenario, and how Moscow perceives the connection between a rapid conventional course and the risk of broader escalation. If Russian leadership concludes that a limited conventional attack on the Baltics can be handled as a controllable undertaking without risk of major retaliation, the calculus for launching such a war changes radically.
There is also a transatlantic dimension here that the article does not touch on. The credibility of the US security guarantee is openly discussed in Nordic analyses, and CSIS emphasizes that the Nordic countries must relate to NATO's nuclear umbrella at the same time as the credibility of the American guarantee is questioned. If Moscow doubts Washington's willingness to take great risks for the Baltics, the punishment component is eroded, and the pressure for local and regional denial solutions increases.
The European nuclear discussion — Macron's advanced deterrence, the Northwood Declaration and increasing Nordic interest in European nuclear risk sharing — must therefore be seen as attempts to manage uncertainty, not as an already fully developed alternative. The criticism of Neretnieks is not that he ignores a ready-made European system, but that he does not fully examine what the changed nuclear discussion means for the credibility of the Baltic scenario.
Problematization 2: The gray zone and resilience
The article implicitly presents two threat alternatives: an open conventional attack or peace. However, the most likely Russian method in the Baltic Sea region in the near future is actions below the threshold: cable sabotage, manipulation of trade flows, shadow fleet operations, information influence and other gray zone aggression. Documented events surrounding submarine cables and energy connections in the Baltic Sea area show that this form of conflict is already underway.
However, it would be unfair to claim that Neretnieks developed a complete gray zone doctrine in an article about major military operations. The more precise criticism is that the article does not relate its conventional reasoning to the type of gray zone pressures that in practice shape the strategic situation in the region.
In a SV-AR[1] -perspective, gray zone aggression cannot be primarily met through classical deterrence, as this requires clear attribution. Instead, it must be managed through a combination of resilience and response: technical and societal resilience to disruption, redundancy in critical infrastructure, a robust information environment, and rapid and proportionate countermeasures that increase the cost of continued activity. The deterrence that remains in the gray zone is therefore indirect: signaling that such attacks do not achieve their political goals because society remains functional and the ability to respond is intact.
Problematization 3: Baltics first — without binary prioritization
Neretnieks’ conclusion that the Baltics constitute the alliance’s most pressing conventional deterrence need is well-founded within his own framework. The problem arises when “Baltic first” is interpreted as binary language that implies “North then — if anything is left.”
An alternative planning scenario that should be considered is that Russia conducts a limited, deniable operation in the High North, for example against Svalbard or against Norwegian infrastructure, with the aim of changing control over the GIUK corridor without a clear Article 5 threshold. The point is not to claim that this is the most likely scenario, but to show that a strategy that unilaterally binds Nordic resources and political attention to the Baltics can create an exploitable gap in the North.
The critical point is therefore not that the Baltics should not be prioritized, but that the language of prioritization must be more than binary. There should be a clear principle for how Swedish and Nordic investments are weighed between conventional denial in the Baltics, contributions to nuclear credibility and risk sharing, and Northern presence and resilience against nuclear strategic fait accompli.
Problematization 4: Denial, punishment and asymmetric responses
Neretnieks's overall goal is to deter Russia from starting a war at all — that is, to influence political decision-making in Moscow. His concrete recommendations, however, are mainly denial measures: more brigades in the Baltics, early allied presence, and operational control of the Suwałki Corridor.
A central insight from deterrence theory is that denial and punishment interact: a strong denial capability also affects the political calculus because the possibility of a quick and cheap victory is reduced. But denial alone cannot provide deterrence. If Moscow judges that a failed initial attack will only lead to a protracted conventional war within a limited part of the Baltics, without wider costs, the decision to go to war may still appear rational in a certain political context.
This is where the punishment dimension becomes crucial, not only in a nuclear sense but through a spectrum of asymmetric responses that clearly signal that an attack on the Baltics triggers costs far beyond the frontline itself. A first such avenue is the control and potential closure of the Baltic Sea to Russian shipping. A joint NATO control over the Danish Straits, Gotland and Swedish and Finnish coastal waters could, in a critical situation, create a de facto blockade of Russian civilian and military transport between St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad and the rest of the world. This type of maritime punishment is asymmetric: Russia can attack the Baltics, but then has to pay with greatly reduced strategic and economic access to the Baltic Sea.
A second track is deeper security cooperation with Ukraine. An attack on the Baltics would likely immediately affect the conditions for the war against Ukraine, and an asymmetric punishment response would be for NATO countries, including Sweden, to sharply scale up support for Ukraine in the form of long-range systems, intelligence, air defense and industrial capacity. The signal to Moscow would then be that an attempt at a limited war in the Baltics would in practice open a second costly front by giving Ukraine better conditions to strike against Russian military capacity.
A third track is deepening ties to Poland and the eastern flank in other domains. Poland is both a frontline state and the logistical backbone of NATO in the east, and a Russian attack on the Baltics would make Polish infrastructure central to the alliance's resilience. An asymmetric response could therefore consist of Sweden and other Nordic countries building in advance mechanisms to increase investment in the Polish defense industry in the event of aggression, redirect trade and energy flows to strengthen Poland and Ukraine, and use sanctions, seizures, and legal action against Russian assets in a way that specifically benefits the resilience of the frontline states.
The point is not to program exactly which measures will be triggered at which threshold in peacetime, but to make the principle of punishment itself clear: a conventional attack on the Baltics is met with denial on the spot, but if Russia escalates or if denial fails, a predictable but not detailed pre-announced ladder of asymmetric maritime, economic, technological and political responses follows, in which Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Poland play defined roles. Neretnieks basically analyzes only the first part of this chain.
Problematization 5: The European nuclear change
Neretnieks' assessment that the need to protect Russian strategic submarine forces against European nuclear powers is limited is technically correct. Neither France nor the UK has the capacity to threaten Russian second-tier capabilities in a way that matches the US's strategic potential.
At the same time, a European nuclear discussion is underway with direct implications for the Nordic region: Macron's advanced deterrence, the UK–France Northwood Declaration and a growing Nordic interest in a more visible European nuclear role. A reasonable interpretation, however, is that these steps should be understood as strategic signals of political will and risk sharing, rather than as a complete system shift where a European nuclear guarantee already replaces the US one.
A fair criticism of Neretnieks is therefore not that he ignores a fully developed European nuclear framework, but that he does not fully examine the question of what this European nuclear agency should be directed towards in the Nordic-Baltic context: towards stabilizing deterrence if US credibility is questioned, and towards making it visible that an attack on the Baltics cannot be considered an isolated regional enterprise. At the same time, a Swedish analysis needs to be careful not to exaggerate the actual material difference that European nuclear steps make for Russian decision-makers in the near term.
The balance of criticism
The review is not intended to dismiss Neretnieks's contribution. The article is an unusually clear example of a military practitioner with an operational background choosing to conduct a conceptual analytical discussion rather than a pure planning or budgeting exercise. The methodological quality — asking the question “against what?” and sticking to it — is in itself a contribution of long duration if it is adopted by the Defence Committee, the Armed Forces and NATO's Nordic planning processes.
This manuscript builds on that methodology but argues that the same precision must be applied simultaneously to the nuclear, conventional, and hybrid/resilience levels, as well as to the asymmetric responses that give punishment credibility. Neretnieks demonstrates with great precision how “against what?” can be applied to the conventional level; the task here is to show that the question must be asked equally clearly at the other levels, and that the responses must then be integrated into a system rather than juxtaposed.
Policy implications
- The Swedish defense policy debate should embrace Neretnieks' methodology and apply the question "against what?" consistently at all three levels — nuclear, conventional and hybrid/resilience — as well as to the asymmetric punishment chain that follows if denial fails.
- Neretnieks' recommendation on a Baltic focus should be adopted as the main track for conventional denial, but supplemented with an explicit principle for how Nordic deterrence and resilience in the High North should be designed so that no exploitable gap arises.
- Sweden, together with Nordic and Polish partners, should more clearly develop the asymmetric punishment tracks that make an attack on the Baltics strategically destructive even beyond the frontline itself: maritime control in the Baltic Sea, strengthened support for Ukraine, and deeper economic, industrial, and logistical cooperation with Poland and other frontline states.
- A follow-up dialogue within the KKrVA, the Defence Committee and the Nordic governments should initiate a review of how punishment signalling is actually perceived in Moscow given the uncertainty surrounding the US's long-term commitments, as well as how industrial and political interests influence the choice of deterrence mode.