Will Putin invade the Baltics?

Senior military types across Europe are warning that Putin will turn his attention to the Baltics once he has either crushed Ukraine or forced a surrender by Kyiv. If this is true, and it might be, then we are talking about a potential war between Nato and Russia in the next two to five years. Is this really realistic or are people now getting so jumpy about this crazy world that they have convinced themselves that Putin wants world domination and is hell bent on carving up Nato once and for all.? Again, it's a scenario that can't be dismissed. These military chiefs read the intelligence every day and should know what they're warning about. Or is it really about persuading their governments to spend a helluva lot more on defence, on the basis that deterrence prevents wars and our deterrence and Europe's deterrence is currently unimpressive? All of this foreboding, of course, has been brought on by the man in the White House, Donald Trump, who has not given the sort of assurances about defending Europe to which all his predecessors have been committed. So, a major incursion (not quite an invasion) by Russia against, say, Lithuania, should trigger Article 5 of the Nato Treaty and every member of the alliance then goes to its aid. Putin would be gambling that Nato will do no such thing because Trumpo might say to Europe, "You do it, we're not going to get involved because we have China to worry about." It's a gamble Putin might think worth taking. My view is that Putin has been so humiliated by the way Ukraine has fought back aginst his invasion army that I think he will hesitate to make the mistake of attacking any member of the Nato alliance. This hesitation will be doubled if every member of the alliance starts spending big money on defence, like the five per cent of GDP which Trump is demanding. Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, has claimed today at a Nato defence ministers' meeting that many alliance members are already showing enthusiasm for five per cent, but he didn't include the UK in his list. There is no way Keir Starmer is going to find the money to commit to five per cent of GDP on defence. He's struggling to commit to three per cent and won't get to 2.5 per cent until 2027. Putin will be watching and calculating.