Russian drone in Romania: silence in response

The lack of reaction causes many people to feel a range of feelings, from incomprehension to indignation. The Alliance continues to pretend that it does not formally have a conflict with Russia, although all its members are helping Ukraine. During the war, many "red lines" have been removed, and this process continues. But the main red line remains immovable, "sacred," and there is a consensus around it. For now. The Alliance will invoke Article 5 on mutual defense only in the event of a targeted attack on its territory. This has its own logic - imagine that Ukraine struck a Russian facility in Siberia and a drone fragment fell on Chinese territory. Obviously, China will not declare war on Ukraine for this, although it will be a difficult conversation. But in the case of NATO, the fall of drone debris is the result of systemic Russian aggression.

“We are not naive and do not expect the Alliance to trigger the collective military response clause. But the absence of any response, and statements and declarations certainly do not count, makes the Alliance weaker. Moreover, it creates a vacuum of responsibility, otherwise, where is the limit when NATO itself should respond. This is a continuation, albeit in a completely different way, of the discussion about gray zones of security, and this is exactly the kind of zone that is appearing here.”

Could the Alliance have responded sensibly? Of course. For example, the Romanians could have requested consultations under Article 4 of the NATO Treaty. It says that every member of the Alliance can do so if it feels its security is threatened. And we could be invited to them - in the form of a meeting of the newly created NATO-Ukraine Council.

There are many other options for responding, but the Alliance is hampered by a lack of understanding of what it means to not have even an indirect conflict with Russia as a nuclear power. This prevents NATO from providing Ukraine with security guarantees in times of war, and the fact of the invitation to join NATO is interpreted in this way. But it also prevents the Alliance from providing an adequate, let alone a powerful, response to a violation of NATO airspace, because it is a violation, whether it is a side effect of an attack or not. In Russia, only strength is understood and respected, and NATO must show that strength - responsibly, of course, otherwise Putin, who despises the West, will start raising the stakes again.

Source

About the author. Pavlo Klimkin, diplomat, former Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs 

The editors do not always share the views expressed by the authors of the blogs.