Strauss Center Distinguished Scholar Paul D. Miller recently contributed a blog piece to Foreign Policy titled “How World War III Could Begin in Latvia“. In it, Dr. Miller recalls a piece he wrote four years ago in which he predicted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and states that Russia will likely invoke a similar pattern of behavior and invade Latvia.

In Dr. Miller’s assessment, another ‘deniable’ invasion like the one in Ukraine occurring in Latvia will likely provide President-Elect Donald Trump’s first great foreign policy test. The implications for this test will be massive, and they will again pose a serious threat to the mutual-defense clause, Article V, of NATO’s charter. Dr. Miller asserts that the international environment has never been more favorable for post-Soviet Russia: the runaway success of Russian information warfare has sown discontent and doubt among Western democracies and has led many to question the value of NATO’s existence–most importantly, perhaps, the next American president appears ready to dismiss and excuse Russian misbehavior on the global stage. According to Miller, as in Ukraine, Russian president Vladimir Putin will likely “instigate an ambiguous militarized crisis using deniable proxies,” and the fact that Latvia is a NATO member will prove a truly perilous test: one in which then-President Trump will have to choose between starting a war over Latvia, or letting Russian aggression go unchecked.