Europe Needs Forts Again

Poland has announced that it is building massive fortifications along its borders with Russia and Belarus. Serious money is going into this: 10 billion zloty (about $2.55 billion) will go into building the fences and planting forests. Poland’s undertaking raises an important point: Border fortifications can slow down the enemy’s advance, free up troops, and indeed save troops’ lives. More NATO countries ought to follow Poland’s example.

Some countries are blessed by nature. God may have put Finland next to Russia, but at least he also graced the small country with forests along large swaths of its border. During the 1939-40 Winter War, when the Finns valiantly tried to save their country from the invading Red Army, the defenders used the trees to their advantage and dramatically slowed what the enormous Red Army had thought would be a cakewalk.

But the Finnish military has added to the defenses nature provided. “We have a long history in building fortifications, especially for coastal defense and to protect our air bases,” said retired Maj. Gen. Pekka Toveri, a former chief of Finnish military intelligence and now member of the Finnish Parliament. “They protect troops and equipment, and troops in fortified positions can also defend key terrain with fewer troops compared to when you’ve got your troops in the open.”

Poland, too, has several hundred miles of border with Russia (combined with Belarus), but it has less forest than Finland, though it does have a few swamps. Indeed, until Aleksandr Lukashenko’s regime decided to weaponize migration in 2021 and send thousands of migrants across Belarus’s border to Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania, the three countries had little border fortification of any kind. Since then, the Polish government has built a steel wall along its border with Belarus, and Latvia and Lithuania have erected fences.

A steel wall may keep migrants out, but it certainly won’t deter Russian or Belarusian soldiers. Now, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced East Shield, a plan to do exactly that. “We want our border to be safe during peace and be impassable during war,” Tusk said at a World War II commemoration ceremony last month, Bloomberg reported. The project will “include the construction of new fortifications, fences, changes in landforms and special forestation along 400 kilometers (249 miles) of land border,” Bloomberg noted. Construction has already started.

Poles support the plans. When asked, just before Tusk’s announcement, whether Poland should “build fortifications (barbed wire, bunkers, trenches) on the border with Russia and Belarus,” 64.3 percent of Poles responded yes, while only 16.5 percent opposed such a move. Indeed, with Poland now spending more than 4 percent of its GDP on defense, allocating less than 10 percent of this year’s budget to fortifications seems worth a try.

$2.55 billion is a hefty sum, even in a country whose 2024 defense budget amounts to about $29 billion. But if forests, fortifications, and fences can keep the enemy out or at least cause a delay, this is money well spent. Fortifications can take blows that would otherwise fall on troops.

“Generally, a fortified border should provide us with more time to respond to any sudden attack, the likelihood of which is minimal, as things currently stand,” noted Marek Swierczynski, the head of the security and international affairs desk at the Polish policy analysis firm Polityka Insight. “It may provide a more robust defense posture against both land and—if sufficiently equipped—a low, slow air attack. The lessons learned from the Ukraine war suggest that a well-prepared and sufficiently manned defensive position may slow down the enemy’s attack to the degree it would culminate and break down much sooner than otherwise.”

In Finland, the fortifications are indisputably a source of strength. “The Army trains the troops in fortification … but we don’t build long trench lines like the Ukrainians do,” Toveri said. “Our fighting positions normally have two, three soldiers with overhead protection, which creates a mutually supporting network of positions protected by minefields. That’s much more difficult to destroy than the trench lines.” The bottom line, Toveri noted, is that “since the threat is heavy Russian artillery and now also drones, fortification gives the troops much better protection.” Better yet, Finnish industry can quickly build concrete and wood elements for such fortification. Indeed, Finland is building new fortifications. (Yes, their locations are classified.)

Poland’s plans and Finland’s good experiences, in fact, suggest every country that borders an increasingly aggressive Russia ought to erect fortifications along their borders. Trees and bollards are indisputably less valuable than soldiers. During the Cold War, the intra-German border, then also the NATO-Warsaw Pact front line, was heavily fortified. The installations were removed in the early 1990s, but anyone wishing to see a few examples for themselves can do so—in a museum on the border between the formerly East German region of Thuringia and the formerly West German Bavaria. And now fortifications may experience a renaissance. Imagine the burden lifted from the shoulders of NATO’s front-line soldiers—and, in the long run, the money saved.

But retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a career infantry officer who commanded U.S. Army Europe from 2014 to 2017, cautions that fortifications are only as effective as their human and air support. “Fortifications and obstacles such as minefields and tank ditches by themselves are only effective if they are covered with observed artillery or rocket fire,” he said. “Otherwise, the attacking force is able to take their time and conduct deliberate breaching.” And, he explained, “the fortifications have to be in-depth, and they must be properly integrated into NATO’s defense plans for that region. Otherwise, plans could be disrupted by obstacles and fortifications that are not complementary to the defense plans.”

Fortifications designed by an individual country could trip up soldiers from allied countries that come to its aid in a crisis—because defenders, too, have to operate near the border, especially as they try to push the invading forces out. Plus, Hodges added, fortifications consume considerable resources and are expensive.

That means Poland’s planned fortifications will only add benefit if NATO planners know all the details. It’s unclear how detailed Poland’s plans are, as the fortifications’ locations will most likely be kept classified. “We don’t have full clarity yet as to how deep, how wide, and how well armed that fortified line will be and what its aims will be,” Swierczynski said. “In terms of this being an opportunity to free up forces, I think it’s actually going to have a reverse impact. It will need to be manned, and this burden will fall on the armed forces.”

Such sentry duties are likely to be carried out by members of the Territorial Defense Forces, a branch of the armed forces that has particular responsibility for homeland defense and whose often part-time members are deployed in their home regions. “And it will require maintenance and supplies by army engineers and logisticians,” Swierczynski said.

As with all attempts at deterrence, though, what truly matters is whether the potential attacker is swayed. Signaling to Russia that Europe takes its threat seriously may be worth its weight in gold. If the plans merely cause a raised eyebrow in the Kremlin, they’re not worth pursuing. For now, most of us can only guess at the conversations inside the Kremlin—but if Russian media freaks out about the move, it may be one sign that it’s working.