The commanding general of U.S. Army Europe, Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, recently highlighted a small area in northeastern Poland, often referred to as the Suwalki Gap, as one of the most vital locations in the buildup of military forces on the European continent. According to some military leaders, the area would be a ripe target for Russian forces to capture in the event of war to connect Kaliningrad to Belarus. The comments recall another strategically significant strip of land, one considered vital to NATO's interests during the Cold War: Germany's Fulda Gap. But comparing the two is ill-advised.
During the Cold War, central Germany's Fulda Gap was identified as one of the most likely routes Soviet armored units would use to invade Western Europe in the event of war. The area offered a path running from Soviet East Germany, behind the Iron Curtain, to crossings over the Rhine River. A successful assault through this corridor would have enabled Soviet and Warsaw Pact allied forces to strike quickly and decisively into West Germany and beyond.
But the Suwalki Gap is different. It does connect the small Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and to Belarus, a Russian ally. But rather than providing a corridor through which Russian forces could rapidly mobilize and invade NATO members, the gap is an existing land connection between NATO members, Poland and Lithuania.
Moreover, any real military offensive into the Suwalki Gap to isolate the Baltic states from the rest of NATO would result in a military response beyond the gap that would certainly instigate a more serious conflict, one that would likely make holding the area irrelevant. Capturing the Suwalki Gap, then, would not be a strategic threat to all of NATO; it would be the start of a larger war that would devalue the relevance of the gap itself once the conflict broke out.
Ultimately, the area is unlikely to see a NATO buildup similar to the one that occurred at the Fulda Gap during the Cold War. Such a buildup in the region and the greater likelihood of conflict that would come with it would simply be too costly for either Russia or NATO to execute.
