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- cross-posted to:
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“The times of peace are over, the post-war era is over. We live in new times - in the pre-war era; for some of our brothers, this is no longer even the pre-war era, but the period of full-scale war in its most cruel version,” Tusk said.
You are right in that way, but Russia is now in war economy and that can’t stop quickly. They will gain weapons and troops and the ability to deploy them effectively. They won’t attack NATO directly, but they didn’t attack Ukraine directly either, at first. First they sent unmarked troops to stir troubles, then marked “to solve” the troubles. They are more than able to sustain paramilitary groups in various border areas for decades. No such activity will be enough to create an article 5 situation and all of it will degrade NATO and resolve of the members.
If Russia tries to deploy covert forces to destabilize any nato country I’m fairly sure that triggers article 5.
Only if NATO agrees it happened. Nations just have to find pretext or plausible deniability to avoid escalation – which they will when the alternative is inevitably nuclear escalation.
Russia is proving that the systems of NATO are highly vulnerable to a bad faith and cynical actor’s aggression. NATO needs to change to prove Russia wrong. And the USGOP, among others, are proving him highly right.
How? They will deny it, there will be no marks. It will start gradually. Likely NATO nations wont support article 5, really a nuclear war, if they think there are only some small border skirmishes on an unimportant border.
And that is it. This will bring divide and distrust into nato. That’s exactly what Russia wants. They don’t want to occupy Poland, they know that’s impossible.
Because it doesn’t matter if Russia admits it or not.
If "unknown“ saboteurs are doing things aligned with Russian interests in areas of Russian interest it won’t take long until western intelligence determines that Russia is sending military and covert ops into a nato country‘s territory. That is a clear act of aggression.
Simply denying that they are doing it isn’t worth shit behind the scenes.
That by itself not. But doing it slowly by creating arming and supporting paramilitary groups can absolutely work. No doubt. Getting rid of NATO is their primary goal. Our at least reducing effectiveness.