NATO spreading its wings ....rather foolishly like Icarus

of Greek mythology. Will someone please tell NATO what happened when Icarus didn't heed his father's advice of not flying either too near to the Sun or too near to the Sea?  

First to arrive in the Baltics is the American contingent.

From ChristianScienceMonitor:
.....US troops arriving in Eastern Europe. Is it more than symbolic?
The Pentagon is sending a contingent of 150 US troops to Poland this week, the first piece of what US officials describe as an effort to reassure Eastern European allies that the United States has their back in the wake of Russian aggression.

The contingent, which began arriving Wednesday, is the first of four such units headed to Eastern Europe for training exercises. While some military analysts say the deployments will have little to no impact on the tense military situation in the region, the Pentagon insists that its reply to Russian troops movements near Ukraine is not just a symbolic gesture.

“Anytime you put troops on the ground and doing exercises – in this case for a month at a time – it’s more than symbology,” Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a briefing with reporters Tuesday. “The kind of work that we’re going to be doing is real infantry training.
There will be a “company-sized” contingent of US troops headed to Poland for “the first in a series of expanded US land force training exercises.” In the coming days, US troops will also be heading to Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia for similar exercises, for a total of 600 troops in the region by the end of the week.....