In Reply to: It's the other side of that coin that's important posted by CoastalBruin on September 22, 2026 at 12:16:07
In my opinion, Putin would be unlikely to directly challenge Western Europe. A more plausible strategy would be to target a Baltic country—not necessarily to occupy it, but to test whether NATO would actually uphold Article 5.
Even without the full alliance, combining the Scandinavian and French air forces with the Polish Army would give NATO a tremendous ability to inflict damage on Russian forces.
That creates a difficult calculation for Putin: he would need to keep any attack small enough that NATO might hesitate to respond with its full military power, but significant enough to demonstrate that Article 5 could be ineffective even if the Baltic country formally requests assistance.
Ukrainian and Baltic officials have also warned about the possibility of a false-flag operation, in which Russia could try to make it appear that a NATO member was the aggressor. Under NATO's framework, Article 5 concerns an armed attack against a member, so deliberately creating ambiguity over who initiated the conflict could complicate the alliance's response.
Right now the Baltic/Polish/Belarus/Russian armies have massed along their borders.