Putin’s Poland play is to discredit NATO as ineffective; Trump can’t let it succeed

Make no mistake. The Russian incursions into Polish airspace on Tuesday night were an attack against NATO territory. Given the number of drones that crossed into Poland — and to Poland only — any veneer of plausible deniability is unusually thin, in contrast to more isolated incidents recorded earlier in the war in Poland and Romania.

One can only speculate about the reasons for the sudden Russian recklessness. It is notable, however, that only a week ago, Poland’s new president, Karol Nawrocki, received a very warm welcome in the White House, including a flyover honoring a celebrated pilot of the Polish Air Force, killed recently in an accident.

It is hard to see the Russian move as anything but a middle finger directed at Poland and the United States. But while Vladimir Putin expects NATO to do very little in response, there is still time to prove him wrong.

First of all, it is important to admit that the incursions caught the alliance off guard. To deal with a small fraction of the threat that Ukrainians fight off every night, the alliance scrambled some of the most expensive weapon systems in its arsenal: the F-35 jets.

Quite aside from the question of effectiveness — open-source information suggests that at least some of the drones simply crashed instead of being shot down — using $100-million aircraft to chase drones worth $100,000 would not be a sustainable way of defending NATO airspace in a war. There are few tasks more urgent for Eastern European countries than to get their air defenses in shape that can withstand similar Russian incursions in the future.

Secondly, the aggression has put the alliance’s ability to respond to a test. That doesn’t mean an all-out armed retaliation against Russia. Yet neither should the response be another round of expressions of support and solidarity with Poland, and “concerns” about Russian behavior — which is exactly where both NATO and the EU seem to be headed.

Russia’s advantage in its ongoing confrontation with the West is it continues to escalate, but remains below the threshold of an actual hot war — though Tuesday’s drone attack came dangerously close.

There is a long list of obvious, overdue responses that the US administration and its European allies must enact. It starts with turning up the heat on economic sanctions, including on the purchasers of Russian fossil fuels — as envisaged by the bipartisan legislation proposed by Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal.

Seizing hundreds of billions in Russia’s sovereign assets that are safely parked in the West is another piece of low hanging fruit.

Finally, a proper response must entail giving Ukraine additional resources and capabilities — and intelligence support — to strike against targets deep inside Russian territory.

Most importantly, a response that will effectively dissuade the Kremlin from testing NATO’s resolve again must be disproportionate — while still staying below the level of an actual military confrontation. Again, the list of possible measures is long — think offensive cyberwarfare, sabotages, blackouts, seeding chaos and disinformation into Russian public debate on social media, and finding wedge issues that would help destabilize the Russian regime.

There is only one purpose behind Russia’s escalation: to expose NATO as vacuous and ineffective. Should the Kremlin succeed at that goal, more aggression against Poland and other Eastern European countries will be forthcoming, including likely a takeover of one or more of the Baltic States.

The attack is also a personal affront to President Trump, whose next steps will be watched closely both in the United States and around the globe. Letting himself be humiliated, once again, by the Russian dictator is not just bad policy, but also terrible politics. 

Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC. Twitter: @DaliborRohac.