This week’s NATO summit in Washington convened as the West faces what may be the most dangerous situation since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
The signs of the gathering threat are plain enough—and the leaders of the alliance must urgently begin devising a robust and decisive response.
On June 28, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would begin production and deployment of nuclear-capable short- and intermediate-range missiles—weapons that have been banned since 1987.
While Russia has likely been quietly producing these weapons for years, the timing of Putin’s public confirmation was troubling.
Coming hours after the presidential debate between President Biden and Donald Trump, the statement was something more than Moscow’s habitual nuclear bluff: It was a link in a worrisome chain of events.
First, the war in Ukraine that looked to be tilting in Russia’s favor over the winter and spring now appears to be leaning in the opposite direction.
Russia’s major offensive on Kharkiv in Ukraine’s northeast has stalled, while renewed funding for Ukraine passed by Congress and authorization of strikes over the Russian border has added significantly to Ukraine’s strength on the battlefield.
At the same time, the transfer of air defense Patriot missile batteries to Ukrainian forces will soon curtail Russia’s key advantage in attacking civilian, industrial and military objectives with impunity.
Second, Putin’s recent trip to North Korea belied the Kremlin’s propaganda claims of brilliant success in retooling the national economy for military needs.
Even the Soviet Union has been embarrassed by North Korea’s communist hereditary monarchy and its rule over a starved and enslaved population: No Soviet leader had ever visited the DPRK.
Undoubtedly Putin, too, would not have gone hat-in-hand to the Hermit Kingdom had he not been desperate for Kim Jong Un’s artillery shells and short-range ballistic missiles.
On top of that, Russia’s staggering losses in Ukraine are becoming clear.
Last week The Economist estimated that between 462,000 and 728,000 Russian soldiers were killed or severely injured from the start of the February 24, 2022 invasion to May of this year.
All told, it’s clear that Putin’s Russia is an authoritarian regime bogged down in an ineptly fought war, with an economy incapable of supplying key materiel and an army that may run out of soldiers.
Putin’s boasts about Russia’s ability to prosecute a “long war” look ever more false.
But his current predicament lends plausibility to a scenario that has been looming ever since Russia’s initial Ukraine blitzkrieg collapsed: To extricate himself from a war he can neither win nor end, and escape the subsequent political fallout, Russia’s dictator may hold the gun of nuclear war to the temple of the West.
Putin can engineer a crisis leading to a nuclear standoff with the United States in multiple ways.
He could follow up on another recent threat, made after Ukraine used long-range West-supplied weapons for strikes on targets within Russia, and place conventional weapons closer to the US and to European NATO members.
In another scenario, Putin may attack a NATO member country like Estonia or Latvia and threaten a nuclear strike if the alliance attempts a counterattack.
Both those potential targets sit on Russia’s border and contain significant populations of ethnic Russians—who Moscow may, Crimea-like, declare endangered and in need of a “rescue.”
As a condition for backing away from the nuclear precipice, the Kremlin would propose a “comprehensive settlement” on Ukraine—including a negotiated end of hostilities and a ceasefire on Russia’s terms.
Last month’s Biden-Trump debate was likely a powerful catalyst from the Kremlin’s perspective.
Moscow sees Americans distracted by a widening political crisis and riven by rank partisanship—with Washington incapable of confronting what might become an existential crisis.
For Putin, the window of opportunity has opened wider, and it will remain so at least through the US presidential election in November.
Slamming that window shut by acknowledging the danger, greatly increasing NATO’s footprint in the Baltics as a credible deterrence and communicating its readiness for a devastating response to any Russian aggression must be central to the alliance’s strategy in its 76th year.
Leon Aron is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “Riding the Tiger: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Uses of War.”
Reprinted with Permission from AEI.org – By Leon Aron
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.