Russia Can’t Beat NATO…So, Why Attack?

Russia is on the offensive right now. Moscow is engaged in a cycle of rapid escalation against the nations of Europe, and particularly the easternmost member nations of the powerful NATO alliance. Russian drones have flown across Polish and Romanian airspace.

Russian fighter jets have breached the gap and traveled into Estonia. And mysterious cyber attacks and unexplained drone overflights have caused chaos in London, Berlin, Copenhagen, and beyond.

All the while, Russian leaders are spinning narratives, insisting that NATO is fabricating false allegations, and building the idea that Ukraine, not Russia, is on the verge of launching a false flag attack against NATO territory, for which the Kremlin will wrongfully be held responsible.

Despite the upheaval and the confusion of the last several years, it is important to understand what's happening now is not normal, even for Vladimir Putin and his cronies. Russia is ramping up the pressure, and something is coming. But beneath Moscow's bluster, underneath the consternation all across Europe, lies a contradiction.

Russia vs. the NATO alliance is not a close fight, and not by a long shot. We can acknowledge Europe's sluggish defense industrial complex. We can acknowledge the fact that the United States might not even show up to the fight.

But even still, Russia isn't anywhere near as powerful as the rest of the NATO alliance. And yet, here we are, with NATO seemingly doing everything in its power to avoid a confrontation, and Russia actively picking a fight that has no real chance to win. So, the ultimate question is really a simple one.

Why? Now, here on Front, we know where our bread is buttered, the numbers don't lie, and by the numbers a sizable majority of our viewing audience hails from NATO member nations. Not exactly a surprise.

And to be clear, so do we. I and part of our team work out of the Czech Republic, and we've got writers and production staff all over Europe and North America. So, when we discuss rising tensions between NATO and Russia, it is far from an abstract issue.

It is highly personal, and in a way, we're all in this together. So, as we discuss the prospect of a continental war between Russia and NATO, we're fortunate enough to start off with some rather good news.

If NATO decides to oppose Russia instead of simply rolling over in the face of Russian aggression, then there is no world where Russian tanks roll through the streets of Warsaw, Berlin, Rome, Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, or London over the course of the next decade and more.

Of course, if we were to take a look at the NATO alliance right now, or if we were to listen to the rhetoric of many of NATO's leaders, then we might be led to believe the complete opposite, that Russia is an existential threat not just to a nation like Ukraine or a region like the Baltic states, but to all of Europe.

But although there is ample reason for NATO leaders to emphasize the urgency of this moment, and there are open questions around just how much damage Russia could do in NATO. all-out conventional war there should be no doubt that if all of the nato members of europe brought their power to bear in a war against russia that didn't even include the united

States europe would come out ahead part of the reason for europe's advantage is just simple economics four european nations plus the nato member nation of canada each have larger and stronger economies than russia all by themselves including germany france italy and the uk combine their economies with those of spain turkey poland and the netherlands without

Even accounting for the rest of the nato alliance and you get a total gdp that is over 10 times that of the russian federation nato member nations may not use their immense manufacturing and high-tech industries to sustain a war effort at least in modern history but they've got the potential to do so and even without the united states getting involved they

Leverage some of the best military technology anywhere in the world nato's arsenals are fully interoperable europe's road and rail systems can support large-scale ground operations and the nations wield enough collective diplomatic and international power to command the support of most of the world in a head-to-head fight militarily it is not a coincidence

That russia has stalled for upwards of three and a half years in ukraine fighting a far less militarily powerful neighbor that on paper russia should have been able to quickly overwhelm back in 2022 take an accurate measure of the russian military large and well equipped but bogged down in ukraine and it is no secret that it would have far more trouble

Against europe not counting the united states nato can leverage about 2.2 million active duty military personnel even in peacetime to say nothing of the tens of millions of eligible fighting age citizens who could take part in a full-scale continental war russia pulling out all the stops to swell the ranks of its military can leverage maybe 3.5 million

Troops counting a majority among their number that are reservists ukraine with its paltry air force and limited air defenses has denied russia control of its airspace so effectively that as of september 2025 russia's losses of aircraft have forced moscow to risk some of its very costly su-57 fighters on the front lines despite knowing that there'll be a

Prime target for ukrainian operators just counting five european air forces germany france britain italy and spain a war against europe would pit russia against about 440 euro fighter typhoons a hundred french rafales and 140 american-made f-35 stealth fighters not counting incoming orders any air defense systems any other combat aircraft or any other nato

Member states on the high seas russia has proved all but incapable of waging a naval war against cheap fast ukrainian drone vessels and would be vastly overpowered by a nato naval arsenal that includes six non-american aircraft carriers and dozens of destroyers and frigates yeah obviously if russia america were to deploy its nuclear arsenal against europe it

Would it would devastate the continent, but it would also send off a world-ending cataclysm that would leave nothing to conquer and nobody left to conquer it.

In a conventional war where the NATO nations of Europe banded together and fought their best possible fight against Russia, Moscow would stand very little chance of victory and could conceivably be so outclassed and overwhelmed that Moscow itself could come under threat.

But even despite the odds stacked against it in a head-to-head battle, Russia is still provoking the NATO alliance with a stunning frequency, always in a way that can be denied, but always in a way where NATO is more than capable of saying that enough is enough and Russia will be treated as an enemy infiltrator if it threatens NATO territory.

Russia understands that, and yet Russia continues doing everything in its power to provoke NATO into what would seem to be a battle Russia can't possibly win. But that's because Russia's goal in its escalation isn't to start a new war with the NATO alliance.

Russia's goal is to see whether there's a way to attack a NATO member without it being received as an attack on the NATO alliance. That's because if Russia can get away with pulling a NATO member state into a one-versus-one confrontation, then the entire balance of power in Europe shifts rapidly into Russia's favor.

Europe vs Russia is a foregone conclusion, but Russia vs Estonia, Russia vs Latvia, Russia vs Lithuania, Russia vs Romania, or Russia vs Bulgaria would also be a foregone conclusion.

Russia vs Poland, or Russia vs Finland's would be a much more challenging pair of contests. Just check our episode here on France breaking down a direct one-on-one hypothetical war between Moscow and Warsaw.

But those are not easy fights for Poland or for Finland, and if Russia could break through to the heart of Central Europe, then one-on-one wars against Slovakia, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, or even here in the Czech Republic are conflicts that a grinding Russian war machine is likely to win.

But of course, Russia would have to be utterly mad to start any of those conflicts because doing so would trigger NATO's Article 5 provision of collective defense. Right? It's here, in the Alliance-wide guaranteed that an attack on one is an attack on all, where NATO's structural integrity begins to show some cracks.

On its most basic level, NATO's Article 5 has the potential to fail for the same reason that any international alliance agreement or organization can fail, whether it's the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, or the 1948 Genocide Convention.

International arrangements fail, because even when nations are obligated to take or avoid a certain action, there is no enforcement mechanism to actually ensure that they honor their promises. NATO members agree to the obligation of collective defense, but they don't actually have to engage in collective defense if they choose not to.

If, let's say, Russia invades Estonia and every NATO nation except Spain honors its Article 5 commitments, then sure, Spain. could be punished, sanctioned, or suffer all kinds of repercussions over the following years and decades.

But if Russia invades Estonia and every NATO nation decides to blow off its Article 5 commitments, then none of them are going to be punished, are they? They might face negative repercussions if Russia rolls through Estonia and comes for their territory next.

But that's basically where the risk ends. And although it is impossible to know for sure, it does seem like there's an awfully strong chance that NATO members could try and wiggle out of their collective defense obligations. Of course, the specific circumstances of their situation would be important to account for.

It's unlikely that NATO would just do nothing if, say, Russia were to launch a massive ballistic missile attack on Berlin. But how concerning would an act of Russian aggression have to be to convince NATO that the fighting sons and daughters of each member nation had to put their lives on the line?

How serious would a Russian attack have to be in order to get Europe to freeze business as usual and turn its attention to a continental war effort for the first time since World War II?

That question is essential to answer, because if the answer is NATO will respond with full force to deter even the smallest act of Russian aggression against NATO territory, then fantastic, NATO's in great shape.

But if the answer is anything less, then that means that NATO members have wiggle room and Russia is in a position to find out just how much it can wiggle. As for why NATO would allow that wiggle room to exist?

Well, perhaps simple cowardice should be a part of the answer, but it is certainly not the entire answer. For one thing, most NATO nations are run through political systems where, unlike in Russia, national leaders are beholden to a voting public.

Take an action that leads their nation to war, that leads to the deaths of thousands of their people, and those leaders will always face serious political risk.

But that risk only increases when their troops are killed and maimed in defense of someone else's territory instead of their own, and especially if those troops are sent to fight because Russia did something that most citizens of NATO countries just don't really care about. Then there's the economics of it all.

War is destructive, it is expensive, and if NATO members were to wage a full-scale war, they'd have to pivot their economy substantially, putting an end to decades of continuous progress.

Costly military equipment would inevitably be destroyed, social concerns and everyday malaise would grow more challenging, and if NATO leaders play their cards the wrong way, they might even get people nuked.

And perhaps most important of all, the fact that NATO would win a war against Russia doesn't mean that NATO is willing to fight the kind of war that would be necessary to achieve victory. Right now, NATO is behind Russia in several key areas.

Russia's ability to produce low-cost, expendable munitions, and especially artillery, far exceeds the production capacity of NATO's European members.

NATO's air defenses are high-tech, but many have been sent to the frontlines in Ukraine, and Russia possesses arsenals of missiles, and drones that it can continually replenish and use to deliver immense pain to NATO.

The alliance is reliant on the United States for its logistical support, its space-based capabilities and its command to control all issues that would take serious time to address.

Russia's troops are more experienced, not just with the rigors of battle, but with the way that warfare works in the 2020s. Make no mistake, if Europe fully dedicated itself to a conventional war against Russia, Europe would still win, but the process of getting there would really, really suck.

Europe would take many months, if not years, to achieve the full potential of its war economy, it would have to make up its artillery and drone gaps by expending human lives, and it would need to use very expensive munitions and war machines to deal with a Russian threat for as long as it takes to build the more cost-effective alternatives that Ukraine has

Learned to rely on.

So, when we think of the threat that Russia poses against Europe, it's not so much that Russia can conquer the continent, but that Russia can inflict extreme pain on the NATO alliance at a time in history where Europe's pain tolerance and the pain tolerance of its ordinary citizens is quite low.

So, if Russia were to sneak non-uniformed gunmen into Estonia and claim a chunk of territory, if Russia were to park troops on the Baltic island of Gotland or on sparsely populated Norwegian or Finnish territory above the Arctic Circle, if it were to let a couple of missiles crash into Warsaw and then claim that it had been an accident, then every NATO

Member nation would ask itself the same question.

Is this incident really worth the pain of a continental war with Russia?

Now, for any of us considering this possibility in a neatly academic way, the answer might be obvious. Of course, NATO has to respond to the first acts of overt Russian aggression, because if the alliance fails to react, then it won't be long before Russian troop columns are marching all across Europe.

But, the way to understand Vladimir Putin's Russia is not as a tsunami wave crashing onto NATO's eastern flank.

Instead, the best comparison for Russia's ambitions are to imagine a slow, creeping flood. Russia's ambition expands like water travels. It takes the path of least resistance, it avoids strong barriers, and it seeps and flows into whatever little cracks it can find.

When it finds a natural depression in the land, it pools and concentrates, and when it finds a place where the land rises, it goes in another route. When a rival nation or alliance stands strong against Russia, Russia has no more tools to get rid of it than those creeping floodwaters have to get over a mountain.

It can erode over a very long stretch of time, but it cannot overwhelm.

Yet when Russia finds a point of weakness in its adversaries, it pours resources, manpower, time, and occasionally live munitions into the gap. So for NATO and Russia's other global adversaries, standing up to Moscow matters, and it's got to happen quickly and decisively.

On the rare occasion that adversaries are willing to do that, the results can speak for themselves.

Take the nation of Turkey, where, in 2015… … CAT Ankara got fed up with repeated Russian airspace violations and shot down a combat aircraft that had just spent 17 seconds in Turkish airspace.

Russia threatened to escalate, it complained, it lambasted Turkey, but the airspace violation stopped and since that time, Russia has been exceptionally hesitant to test Turkey's resolve.

Or take Azerbaijan, a nation that's far smaller, far weaker, and far less economically potent than Russia, but has nonetheless forced Russia to butt out of its affairs after a protracted and escalating feud over the last couple of years.

When Russia's adversaries are willing to demonstrate that it's costly to challenge them and that they will interpret Russia's actions as hostile despite Russia's attempts to deny and maintain plausible deniability, Russia backs off and it typically turns its attention to an easier target.

It's for that reason that so many Western defense experts and analysts were so disappointed with NATO's response, or really its lack of response, after Russian drones swarmed into Polish airspace.

And it's for that same reason that so many analysts were appalled when Russian jets were allowed to linger over Estonia as they pleased, despite having been intercepted by far more advanced stealth fighters that could have wiped them out without ever being detected.

It's why those same onlookers have been discouraged by NATO's unwillingness to act on the assumption that Russia is behind cyber attacks against European airports, drone flights over Danish military bases, and other acts of sabotage and infiltration, despite the fact that NATO has been raising the alarm over Russian sabotage and infiltration for years now.

It's embarrassing. But more than that, it's a clear demonstration to Russia that NATO is unwilling to offer the resistance that would get Russia to back off.

It shows Russia that NATO is willing to accept dubious narratives and the half-hearted explanation that would allow Russia to get away with the next provocation, and then the next one after that. So, if that's the conclusion that Russia comes to about the NATO alliance, then why not see how far the alliance will allow itself to be pushed? What's the cost?

Because right now, NATO has demonstrated that there's zero cost for what Russia has done. Moscow has flown unexplained, unannounced drone swarms with unclear purpose and unclear onboard armament over Polish airspace for the span of an entire night.

Moscow has flown a drone that's known to be armed and lethal over Romanian airspace, and it's flown not one, not two, but three armed combat jets over Estonia.

NATO has been unwilling to use any force even to defend its own airspace against unmanned threats, let alone when Russian lives are at risk. So even if Putin still isn't sure where NATO would ultimately draw the line and decide to take action, he knows that wherever the line is, he hasn't found it yet.

And for a world leader who takes that approach to his global adversaries, there's no reason to believe that Putin and his Kremlin wouldn't push further.

So far, NATO has proved that it will find a way out of a confrontation if it can, and if Russia can prove that NATO will continue to hesitate. even as Russia raises the stakes, then it can work the alliance into a fatal trap. The problem that NATO faces now is the same problem that hesitant global powers have faced all across history.

Once you start finding ways to tolerate what would previously have been an unacceptable offense, it becomes easier and easier to keep finding ways to justify inaction while leaders who fear confrontation only become more averse to the idea.

Their focus shifts from deterring acts of aggression to avoiding potential repercussions when an adversary nation acts aggressively. The old metric for success, a world where Russia didn't engage in confrontations or challenges to NATO, no longer feels realistic or even achievable.

NATO's new definition of success is living till tomorrow without becoming part of a war that draws in the entire alliance.

And if that's what NATO is avoiding, then Russia can get away with practically anything. Right now, the NATO alliance is caught between a rock and a hard place.

Respond to Russian provocations seriously, decisively, in full alignment with Article 5, and the alliance could find itself drawn into a continental war against a nuclear-armed nation where anything could happen, up to and including a full-scale nuclear exchange.

But fail to respond to Russia's most recent provocations, and Russia will keep pushing, trying to find out whether NATO will react to the next affront, or the next, or the next after that. Even worse, each individual NATO member has to account for all the others.

If you're the leader of, let's say, France, and you choose to react decisively to an act of Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, then you don't want to turn around and find that Britain, Germany, Italy, and the rest of your NATO allies decided not to come along for the ride.

The fact that any nation could independently choose not to honor Article 5 makes every other nation more cautious about actually honoring Article 5, even if they do have every intention of doing so. Nobody wants to enter a fight where they think they'll be joined by their friends, only to learn too late that they're going to be fighting alone.

But NATO is still in a position to choose between the easy option and the right option.

And make no mistake, there is a correct choice here, no matter how unpalatable it may be. Russia doesn't win a fight with NATO, but a one-on-one fight against most NATO members would end with anything from a clean sweep by Russia to a hard-fought victory that was ultimately worth it for Russia to chase after.

The prospect that Europe absolutely must avoid is for Russia to start gathering momentum, capturing nations one at a time and converting their economic strength, their technology, their wealth, their manufacturing capacity, their captured war-fighting assets, and their people in order to strengthen the Russian war effort.

At this point, Russia has gone over fully to a wartime economy, and while war economies become quite problematic in peacetime, they can sustain as long as there are more wars to be fought.

Break apart the idea of a unified NATO. alliance, and Russia provides itself with a practically endless supply of individual wars to fight, all in service to a growing empire that can't hold itself together if it stops fighting. That is an exceedingly grim vision of the future, but it's the worst-case outcome in the situation we're living through today.

Or really, it's the second worst outcome, because nuclear Armageddon always deserves the top spot. And although NATO hasn't yet found its spine and issued any real response to Russia's provocations, there's still time. Vladimir Putin has proved that NATO won't take the hardest possible line against Russian aggression.

After all, if it were going to take that stance, then Russia's drones and its MiG-31s would have been disappeared from NATO airspace the hard way. But the alliance still has plenty of room to draw a firm red line for itself and enforce that red line in a way that deters any substantive act of Russian aggression in the future.

If NATO decides to be the sort of alliance that says, you get one warning, and then it's game on, every time Russia tries a new provocation, then that's perfectly fair, as long as NATO responds like it's game on if those warnings are ignored.

In fact, it's perfectly fair for NATO to draw the distinction that it's fine if Russian drones or fighter jets occasionally violate NATO airspace as long as nothing blows up, if, that is, NATO is willing to rock Russia's**t, if something does blow up.

Wherever NATO decides to place its red line, it's got to decide quickly because further Russian escalations are coming. We mentioned a few of the options in front of Putin earlier in this episode, but it's worth running through them again.

Putin could strip his men of uniforms and insignias and send them into a country like Estonia, similar to his conduct in Crimea and the Donbass region of Ukraine in 2014.

He could send patrols into Norwegian or Finnish territory above the Arctic Circle, not threatening anybody in the open, snowy wastes, but making themselves known and forcing NATO to decide how it'll respond to Russian troops taking over NATO territory, even if that territory is unoccupied.

Putin could send ships to the Swedish island of Gotland, population more than 60,000, and blockade or even capture the island to see how NATO responds.

He could strike population centers' military bases or industrial targets in Eastern Europe and claim that the strike was a Ukrainian false flag attack, as Russian troll accounts and mill bloggers seem to be laying the foundation for as we speak.

Or Russia could surge troops into the narrow Swarwaki gap on Polish and Lithuanian soil that separates Russian ally Belarus from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. If and when Russia eventually finds NATO's red line, Russian lives will be lost.

But for Moscow, that's an acceptable loss in a way that NATO members still don't seem to fully comprehend. Russia throws away thousands of lives every week in Ukraine, and for all practical purposes, the loss of a couple of fighter pilots above a Baltic forest would be negligible.

Those lives are something that Russia is willing to gamble with, because the power of a Baltic forest would be negligible. payoff, if Russia goes unpunished, could be that Russia learns NATO simply isn't a threat.

If NATO does respond with force, whether by shooting Russian planes out of the sky, hunting down little green men in the forests of Estonia, or sinking a Russian landing ship off the Gotland coast, then Russia will express its outrage. It will threaten. It will demand an apology.

It will try to extract concessions, and it will accuse NATO of wanton aggression. But in its behavior, Russia has been completely consistent over the last couple of decades. If it meets that sort of resistance, then despite the sheer force of its rhetorical temper tantrum, it will back down.

NATO can call that bluff, and when it does, the alliance can put an end to this. But if Russia learns that it can provoke NATO without having to fight NATO, then the alliance is in for some very difficult years ahead.