Denial or punishment? Perspectives on the deterrence strategy behind NATO’s eFP in Lithuania

• Žurnalo archyvas: straipsnio tekstas

ENIn response to the Ukraine crisis, NATO has deployed four multinational battlegroups to the Baltic States and Poland under the Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) initiative. The strategy behind eFP is described as defense and deterrence in official NATO documents. However, some experts (most notably from the RAND corporation argue that a larger military presence is necessary in order to achieve defense and deterrence based on the assumption that eFP follows a strategy of deterrence by denial instead of deterrence by punishment. This article sheds light on the discussion using perceptions from Lithuania based on one deployment and a series of work visits for interviews.