Should Canada stand on guard in 'tripwire' Eastern Europe?

The already tense standoff between the West and Russia in Eastern Europe now looks to become even more knife-edge with the return of armed alertness reminiscent of the Cold War's grim lock-and-loaded past.

By several accounts, the U.S. is getting ready to pre-position heavy military equipment and a rotating brigade of some 5,000 troops on NATO's eastern frontiers, directly across from Russia's military.

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Up to 250 U.S. tanks as well as armoured fighting vehicles, heavy artillery and anti-tank weaponry would be parcelled out across the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia as well as NATO's eastern members, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and, possibly, Hungary.

Yes, these are a relatively modest numbers of troops and equipment, but they would represent a massive and historic shift in American policy towards Moscow since the fall of the Soviet Union, and are sure to send nerves jangling across Europe.

The permanent placement of weapons manned by rotating troops would be what the military calls "tripwires."

In essence, these are garrisons not big enough to successfully fight off aggression by a much larger force, but just substantial enough to make any potential invasion politically risky.

In this case, it would be "like taking NATO back to the future," according to former White House defence expert Julianne Smith, with the policy flowing right out of the old Cold War box of tactics.

The most famous tripwire of the Cold War, of course, was West Berlin, where the Western allies controlled half of the city, which was then isolated inside Communist East Germany and surrounded by thepowerful Soviet army.

Moscow wanted the West out of Berlin entirely. But the allies refused to budge, and insisted that the city's western zone was a free part of West Germany by treaty.

Cold War outposts

Through the most tension-filled years of the Cold War, the U.S. and Britain (and, to a much lesser extent, France) maintained smallgarrisons of about 5,000 soldiers in West Berlin, troops that were easily outnumbered 100 to one by the Soviet and East Bloc armies surrounding them.

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Military experts figured these somewhat sacrificial forces could hold out for 48 hours at best before surrendering.

But, of course, theirpurpose was only to give Moscow severe pause, for taking on these garrisons pretty much guaranteed all-out Western retaliation, and quite possibly World War III.

In the immediate post-War decades, you could take the pulse of Cold War tension by checking that day's state of readiness within this NATO outpost.

When the Berlin Wall was thrown up in 1961, U.S. and Soviet tanks rumbled to within close sight of each other where one command miscue, an accidental shot, might have set off "the works," as generals grimly call it.

After the Cold War ended, those eyeball-to-eyeball showdowns seemed mercifully part of another age.

True, some Western diplomats warned in the 1990s of a return to such tensions if NATO expanded too far east into the former Soviet sphere of influence.

But these warning about some future Moscow's displeasure seemed less important to Western capitals than the democratic wish of Eastern European populations to link up with the West.

Who is aye-ready?

Now, though, we appear to be heading back to tripwire Europe, something that seemed highly improbable just a couple of years ago when Washington famously "pivoted" away from Europe toward the Pacific.

At the time, Barack Obama's aim was to leave Europeans to defend themselves without significant U.S. backing on the ground, and a big U.S. pullout from the continent began.

However, Moscow's takeover of Crimea, along with the Russiansponsored military action in eastern Ukraine, looks to have forced a reversal in U.S. policy as a cascade of demands for firm guarantees of support have poured in from Poland and other eastern NATO partners.

Each feels isolated and highly vulnerable to future border crises with an increasingly militarized and bombastic Kremlin.

Quite predictably, Moscow has reacted to this anticipated U.S. action with warnings from its defence ministry that "Russia will have no option but to build up its forces and resources on the Western strategic front."

This would most likely see a further expansion of Russian ground and air forces in Belarus, an ally of Putin that borders both Lithuanian and Poland. In short, major escalation.

In this climate, words alone don't count for much. And NATO's eastern allies have limited faith in the willingness of their Western European partners to run serious risks on their account.

These jitters are understandable given recent opinion polls that show Europeans are very reluctant to use force to help one of NATO's eastern members if attacked by Russia. Overall, fewer than half would be willing, with clear majorities in key countries like Germany (58 per cent) and France (53 per cent) against armed action.

Even once staunch Britain also has fewer than half its respondents ready to support Eastern Europe with force, according to the U.S.-based Pew Research Centre.

Interestingly the only two NATO countries in favour of using force in Eastern Europe are the ones furthest from the crisis zone Canada and the U.S.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's recent visits to Ukraine and Poland may have helped shore up the 54 per cent of Canadian apparently willing to take on Russia with force if needed.

Still, one wonders how willing Ottawa will be if Obama now naturally turns to ask Canada to contribute indefinitely arms and soldiers to these proposed U.S. tripwires spread out along the sharp edges of Russian military power.

Back to the future, anyone?