Following the crisis in Ukraine and Russia’s involvement in Syria, the world is closer to super power confrontation than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Now a committee of senior former British military and diplomatic figures comes together to war game a hypothetical ‘hot war’ in Eastern Europe, including the unthinkable - nuclear confrontation.
The War Room faces a scenario that has haunted western strategists since civil war broke out in Ukraine: potential Russian military involvement in the Baltic States of Latvia and Estonia. Like Ukraine these countries have sizable Russian speaking minorities, but unlike Ukraine they are members of NATO, whose founding treaty states that an attack on one ally is an attack on all of them. Because of this, western analysts regularly war game a situation where Russia seeks to exploit ethnic tensions in the Baltic and test the strength of the NATO Alliance.