It’s not every day when NATO, arguably the world’s strongest military alliance, is shooting down hostile aircraft in its airspace. Yet that’s exactly what occurred recently after more than a dozen Russian drones breached Poland’s airspace, which forced NATO to scramble jets to defend a member state from a potential threat. Days later, another Russian drone drifted into Romania. Although no air defenses were activated in this specific case, the two incursions have generated a wave of alarm in European capitals that Russian President Vladimir Putin is, if not trying to destroy NATO, then at least testing its durability.
The jitters in Europe are perfectly understandable. After all, never before in NATO’s 76-year history has it engaged a Russian aircraft in its own airspace. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte slammed Moscow for “reckless and unacceptable” behavior. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk claimed that the events brought Europe “the closest we have been to open conflict since World War II.” Some international affairs commentators have gone a step further, arguing that if President Donald Trump doesn’t respond to the Russian breaches, then NATO itself could be exposed as a paper tiger and the credibility of America’s security guarantees will go in the toilet.
The entire narrative in the days since has centered on negativity and panic, as if an entire continent is now at risk of being swallowed up by the Russian menace. But it’s times like these, when the rhetoric is so fevered, when perspective is most needed.
For starters, we need to remember one crucial thing: Notwithstanding the doom and gloom about NATO not being resolute enough in the face of Putin’s escalation, the alliance responded the way we would want it to. Polish and Dutch F-35 fighter planes, supported by Italian surveillance aircraft, were quickly dispatched to NATO’s eastern flank to shoot some of the Russian drones out of the sky. NATO came together as an alliance by holding an urgent meeting of the North Atlantic Council to determine next steps. NATO then announced a surge of military hardware to the east, including additional fighter planes and air defense systems to strengthen the alliance’s capability and response time in the event similar incursions happened. If Putin was hoping to put NATO’s cumbersome bureaucracy on display for the world to see, he obviously failed.
Indeed, it’s hard to imagine what else NATO could have done to send a message to the Russians that such antics won’t be tolerated. Those calling for greater strength, determination and unity on the alliance’s part are curiously tight-lipped on the specifics of what they’re proposing. Are they suggesting NATO send reconnaissance drones into Russian airspace as a sort of tit-for-tat? Authorize a no-fly zone in Ukraine to defend against the hundreds of Russian drones and missiles that slam into the country on a weekly basis, as Poland’s foreign minister proposed? Conduct a symbolic precision strike on Russian territory, akin to climbing up the escalation ladder and creating a security crisis with the world’s largest nuclear power just to demonstrate to Moscow that NATO is displeased? Something else?
Fortunately, NATO’s brain trust doesn’t appear all that interested in courting a confrontation with Russia in response to a drone flyover that, while certainly unprecedented, was nevertheless dealt with efficiently and without much fuss. NATO’s central purpose is to defend its member states from attack, real or perceived, and that’s what NATO did. All of those itching for a bigger response would do well to keep that fact in mind.
None of this is to downplay Russia’s conduct or to suggest that sending drones into another country’s airspace isn’t an offense. It most certainly is, particularly when the country operating the drones is also prosecuting a war in Ukraine next door. The Russians are fans of what security specialists refer to as “hybrid warfare,” or the practice of engaging in hostile acts that keep adversaries off balance but don’t fall into the general definition of conventional war. According to the London-based think tank International Institute of Strategic Studies, Russian sabotage operations in Europe increased by 246% between 2023 and 2024, including everything from attempted assassinations of major European arms dealers and arson to the cutting of undersea cables in the North Atlantic. Activities like these can’t be taken lightly, nor is anybody suggesting as much.
But we shouldn’t pretend there are easy, cookie-cutter solutions for these types of operations either. The Russians lean on hybrid tactics because they land in a gray zone — they’re often too serious to ignore, but not so serious as to warrant military retaliation by the country on the receiving end. The challenge is responding proportionally — that is, retaliating to ensure accountability but not to such an extent that it sets off an escalatory spiral that, in the worst case, could turn deadly. In the past, the United States has responded by kicking Russian diplomats out of the country, sanctioning Russian government entities and launching cyberattacks of its own. None of this, however, has done much of anything to convince Moscow that the costs of continuing these operations outweigh the benefits.
And therein lies the problem. It’s extremely difficult to deter a country from acting in the gray zone. Some might even consider it impossible. The drone swarm in Poland is a visible, highly publicized illustration of what the Russians have been doing for decades. Don’t expect them to stop. And don’t expect the United States or its European allies to overreact either.
