alt Hacker News>First, it assumes the people of Belarus is willing to start a war with NATO
I think there is a more than 50% chance that Belarus is reintegrated in some form into Russia within this century. It's very clear that there is no plan for sovereignty post-Lukashenko and all of the opposition(like in Russia) has been exiled(so powerless). This is probably the 2nd biggest miss of EU foreign policy in the 21st century after Ukraine, they basically put Lukashenko in the same basket as Putin even though up until 2020 he did everything he could to maintain his sovereignty and got hit with horrible sanctions. But IMO it's too late now.
>Second, while Kaliningrad might be defensible (though I doubt that)
Russian military doctrine is kind of nebulous, but the one thing it is extremely clear on is that Kaliningrad will be defended using nuclear weapons. Exactly because it's basically not defensible using conventional means.
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Actually I think Lukasenko only plays dump & wants to wait it out, expecting Belarus to be left standing in a quite good position once Russia goes down the failed state route.
The point is you don't have to attack Kaliningrad. A siege trivially collapses the place. The place is wildly vulnerable on all sides despite the short distance to Belarus. This isn't a "the Kerch Bridge is outside of missle range" situation. Literally every way in and out of the enclave can be exploded on a daily basis, even without striking the enclave itself.
So if the idea is to invade the Baltics, but "not allow an invasion of Kaliningrad, without nuclear retaliation"... well then we've going to have a nuclear war and everyone loses, simply because you can't retake the Baltics without Kaliningrad, and NATO isn't going to allow the Baltics to be lost.