Trust, but make military plans

IN THE heart of NATO's military headquarters, SHAPE, near the Belgian city of Mons, an unspoken revolution is taking place: planners are thinking about how to defend eastern European members from Russian attack. For years after the cold war, the orthodoxy was that Russia did not pose a threat, so NATO did not need to draw up contingency plans to protect newer members, such as the Baltic states.

That has now changed, NATO officials say, though nobody wants to speak about it publicly. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO's secretary-general, puts it obliquely. “We have all necessary plans in place to defend and protect all allies. I think the Russians would be surprised if we didn't. That's the core purpose of the alliance.”