Maybe. But if the Europeans wanted to, they could claim they’ve already been attacked. The drone bomb at the Leipzig airport comes to mind as the most obvious incident, but IIRC there’s been other such minor incidents in Poland, Romania, and the Baltic countries. The fact that nothing came of any of those provocations suggests to me that European NATO is just as reluctant to get involved as the USA is (although obviously for different reasons).
They don’t want to claim that. They’re prefer to stay at arms length. Which is why, if Russia was planning a big enough escalation, you’d want to warn them off rather than get the casus belli.
Especially knowing that the US will not have their backs.
And it’s really hard to see how Putin or Russia would benefit from attacking NATO in any way. Doing so could only draw in Article Five escalation into a conflict that Russia was already having trouble chewing on on its own. It’s not like an acre of Estonian or Polish soil is somehow worth more than an acre of Ukrainian soil.
That’s why I wonder about why they haven’t responded yet, or even whether they would respond to a larger provocation. Maybe the old saw about how the European militaries are weak really is true, and they (the Europeans) think they really wouldn’t stand a chance against Russia despite the fact that Russia has been struggling with Ukraine for over four years now.
The only thing I can think of is it that it would be Russia’s best chance at breaking NATO. Say they attack Estonia. France, the UK, and Poland have to pony up and actually send their sons to die in the Baltics. If Russia believes that Paris will think “well, Tallinn is far, better to build up more and delay further escalation” then NATO is done.
If Russia thinks that the worse case scenario is they get pushed out of Estonia and then NATO stops at the border, maybe it’s worth throwing those dice.
I think they’d be wrong, but I don’t know what Putin’s thinking is.
That could be the case. But even if Russia succeeds, and NATO breaks up as an alliance, the outcome could be just as bad or even worse for Russia.
Right now, NATO membership is probably one of the reasons Poland hasn’t gone in on nuclear proliferation. If NATO ends as an alliance due to a Russian attack going unaddressed, the Poles - and maybe Swedes, Finns, Turks, Belgians, Dutch, etc. have every reason to get a nuclear arsenal. Defense spending by the member’s of NATO’s former eastern flank would only go up further. Sanctions would only increase. So Russia would end up with some Baltic land but be all the more hemmed-in than before.
Also, even if, say, France doesn’t honor their treaty obligations, some other nations like Poland and Finland probably would, because they know how much of a threat Russia actually is. And given how much Russia is struggling against just Ukraine, I think adding a few more countries to the Ukrainian side of the conflict would be catastrophic for them. The absolute best case outcome would be the dissolution of NATO, but also the devastation of Russia and the formation of a smaller but more determined international alliance to replace NATO.
It probably has nothing to do with Ukraine. It could just as easily be part of setting up a back channel to the Iranian government with Moscow as the conduit.
I don’t think anything in Russia right now can “have nothing to do with Ukraine”.
As has been suggested previously, maybe Putin wants a DefCon 2- level crisis with NATO so that he can none-too-subtly hint that he’d just as soon take the world with him if he goes down in flames. Then enter negotiations demanding terms that will end the war favorably for Russia: cementing his control over Donbas, ending all weapons and tech support to Ukraine and resuming Russian petroleum sales.
Rest assured the only thing on Putin’s list of priorities is Putin remaining in charge. Russia’s interests, much less Russians’ interests, are nowhere on that list.
Kinda like some other world “leaders” we could all name.
The last time a CIA director visited Moscow was when William Burns did so secretly in November 2021 to warn Russia off from attacking Ukraine. It’s interesting that no apparent attempt was made to make Ratcliffe’s recent visit secret
Sure, but for Putin to remain in charge, there has to be a Russia for him to be in charge of. Putin is definitely an authoritarian asshole, but he’s not a nihilist. If he wanted to take the world down in a nuclear holocaust, he could have done so already.
Reporting backing up the speculation:
I don’t believe the administration about that. The reason I don’t is because I do believe that Russia was already aware of that aspect of things.
We don’t know it’s the administration that’s claiming what the trip was about.
Russia is aware of what aspect of things? If Ratcliffe threatened specific actions, you’re claiming Russia has operational knowledge of how NATO would respond?
With what? 15yo kids, 70 yo dedushka, and North Korean slave troops, driving T34s?
Putin is looking for reason to declare mass military mobilisation, shift to a full on war time economy, and direct all industrial capacity towards the war effort.
An issue with trump’s erratic approach to decision-making is that while it does keep your counterparties guessing, there are a few bedrock principles you really need them to not be guessing about. Like whether the USA would really, no kidding, back NATO fully in an Article 5 situation.
Assuming this info about the meeting is accurate, I could see the need for a high level envoy to deliberately emphatically deliver that “We support NATO completely” message separately from the never-ending spew of mixed signals coming from the senile bloviator in chief.