Should NATO be folded in favor of a European Union unified command?

[Hax]

I don't know if I read you right, but I honestly give it a snowballs chance in hell that Putin will mess with NATO countries.

Putin might be many things, but stupid isn't among them.

I'm torn on this.

I agree that Putin is no fool, but sometimes I get the impression that he's somewhat in a tight spot. I understand that he has lost a lot of face in Russia, and I think he would go to great lengths to stay in power. No, I don't see him starting a full-blown invasion of Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania, but he (or someone else) could use the pretext of riots in the Baltic states to justify a military presence in certain locations ("to protect the Russian minority"), then by demanding a certain quota of Russian representatives in parliament, a certain quota of Russian bureaucrats, the elevation of Russian as an official language, etc, etc. It's not an invasion that I fear, but a slippery slope.

If the Baltic countries were attacked today the US would do nothing about it. NATO treaty or not, the US citizens couldn't find Estonia on a map and, like when chemical weapons were used on people and never disposed of, the current admin found any excuse it could to wash its hands of the situation. That has worked out extremely well.

Maybe the U.S. wouldn't interfere directly, but I hardly think that an invasion of the Baltic states would go unnoticed by countries such as Poland or Finland, who would most likely pressure the individual European Union states into a conflict with Russia. Of course, maybe not Finland, we all know what happened the last time when Russia tried to invade them.


EDIT: To illustrate the current issues of Baltic-Russian relations, a few years ago there were huge riots in certain parts of Tallinn after the Estonian government decided to remove a statue commemorating Soviet soldiers; this also led to some strong comments from Russian officials, in which the Estonian president, prime minister, and minister of foreign affairs were called nazis. The fact that there are several marches throughout the Baltic states that honour Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian soldiers who served in Nazi regiments has also set some bad blood. Very recently, the Latvian minister of environment was sacked over this. Throughout the Baltic states, Nazi Germany was initially hailed as a liberator from the Soviet Union (additionally, the Nazis were a bit vague over possible independence after the war, whereas the Baltic states were completely annexed by the Soviets). After a few years of course, most of the people figured out there weren't any differences between the two, and the Nazis lost a lot of sympathy. However, unlike in Western Europe, the Soviet Union has left traces that are so strong and so recent, that it would be nothing short of miraculous if people would just gloss over it (my girlfriends family, for example, was deported to Siberia).

tl;dr: there is a lot of bad blood between Russia and the Baltic states, which is sorta understandable on both sides.