Thread by @andrewmichta

🧵It’s high time for strategic clarity, so here we go: #Russia breached #Poland’s airspace, sending 19 drones (maybe more) into what is @NATO territory. The US reaction has been ambiguous, with POTUS calling Russia’s breach of the West’s security fence possibly a “mistake.” 1/10

Responses from European allies have also been wanting, with resounding speeches, promises of more help for #Poland etc., but practical assistance that amounts to an AMD battery and a few additional aircraft. Let’s be clear: We have witnessed yet another failure of deterrence.2/10

This lack of a decisive @NATO response could start alliance fracturing. The worst endgame would be to have an attack on a NATO ally—whether Poland or others—effectively reduced to a discrete problem set instead of a shared responsibility. If it comes to that, NATO is done. 3/10

Putin attacked Poland, a @NATO ally and so far got away with it. He has exposed the weakness of our alliance system, hollowed out by decades of myopic fiscal decisions that starved allied militaries of funding, and by incessant political meanderings that made it ineffective. 4/10

@NATO works if the United States leads. The Trump administration has a unique opportunity to capitalize on its success at the last summit where the allies committed to 5% of GDP on defense. It can leverage Europe’s new deference to Washington’s leadership now on display. 5/10

Or Washington can stay on the current trajectory that treats Europe as a de facto secondary theater. But if we continue undervaluing the Atlantic theater, we will also lose credibility in the Pacific. The end result will be the United States pulling back into our hemisphere. 6/10

If the goal is for the US to become the dominant regional power in the Western Hemisphere, while we shed our commitments and redefine our interests elsewhere, then let’s say so. Nothing is more destabilizing than security commitments to others not backed by political will. 7/10

Let’s also be clear that this new “multipolar world” that China and Russia have touted is an even bigger chimera than “complex interdependence” our ideologues of globalization loved to talk about. Historically “great power concerts” emerge after a major conflict, not before. 8/10

The reaction to Russia’s drone attack against Poland (or rather the lack of a decisive response) will be remembered as a point when tectonic plates for @NATO have shifted. It will be remembered as a defining moment for transatlantic relations and for the US ability to lead. 9/10

An American boxer once said: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”—implying that what you do in a crisis shows what you are made of. Russia just punched us in the face, and so far got away with it. There is no going back. So, what are we prepared to do? 10/End