Key findings
With a 2:1 or 3:1 force advantage, a European NATO offensive breaks through the Russian defence in the majority of simulated outcomes. At 1:1 it does not.
Every breakthrough comes at a severe cost in casualties. A 3:1 advantage does not produce better results, but raises the absolute losses.
The key constraint on retaking lost territory is therefore not military capability, but the political willingness of NATO members to tolerate the cost.
The speed of the attack sets both the length of the operation and the casualties it generates, a relationship the study calls the velocity dilemma.
The study
When Deterrence Fails: Simulating a European Counterattack in Latvia and Assessing the Consequences of Casualty Rates is an MSc thesis in Geopolitical Studies from Charles University in Prague, defended in September 2026 and supervised by Jan KofroĊ.
The study begins from the premise that deterrence has failed, that Russian forces have seized and occupy the Latgale region of Latvia, and that NATO must respond to restore its territory and uphold the principle of collective defence. The scenario is not a prediction that Russia will attack Latvia. It is an instrument to examine the cost of retaking territory once it is lost.
What are the operational outcomes and casualty implications of a NATO offensive against an occupying Russian force in Latvia?
Method
The offensive is modelled with Stephen Biddle’s formal model of force employment and run as a Monte Carlo simulation across three scenarios with different force ratios. The results are tested with a sensitivity analysis and checked against Kuhn’s historical casualty rates from twentieth-century battles. They are then interpreted through the literature on casualty aversion in democracies, to judge whether NATO members could sustain the political cost of the operation.
Conclusion
Retaking occupied territory would be costly and could strain the cohesion of the alliance, since some members for whom Russia is not a direct threat are unlikely to accept severe casualties to retake a peripheral region of another member state. A decisive victory could also risk further escalation against a weakened Russia. And a limited incursion may be attractive to an aggressor precisely because reversing it is so costly.
The study concludes that NATO’s best option is to strengthen deterrence and its ability to repel an incursion at the border, rather than to expel it later.
Full text
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