European leaders say Russia is provoking NATO. How will the alliance respond?

0:00It's Consider This, where every day we go deep on one big news story. Today, NATO countries say Russia is testing them. How will the alliance respond? NATO's Article 5 is clear. An attack on one is an attack on all. But what counts as an attack? What about a drone packed with explosives discovered at the airport in Leipzig, Germany last month? Germany's foreign minister, Johann Waddeful, said Russia was responsible. Russia denies it. What about sabotage? The UK arrested a man this month for allegedly working with Russian spies. Then there were the flares fired by a Russian warship at a Danish helicopter.

0:45And then, on Thursday, a warning from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a warning that Russia was planning more provocations.

0:57Drone or missile attacks on frontline NATO countries that Tusk says Russia will pretend are accidents intended to weaken the alliance's willingness to respond collectively. He said difficult tests lie ahead. Consider this. NATO is bracing for hybrid warfare from Russia. It's a challenge with no easy answer.

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2:50It's Consider This from NPR. The hybrid warfare that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk predicted in the gray zone between fraught peace and active conflict, it puts NATO allies in a tricky bind. To understand what their options might be, I spoke with Richard Haas, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. So Prime Minister Tusk says he's basing this on intelligence he received from NATO, from Ukraine, from U.S. agencies. We don't know details of what the intelligence said. How seriously should we take this warning? I also don't know the details, but I would take it seriously because there's a certain logic to it from Vladimir Putin's situation.

3:34First of all, if Putin wants to do it, I don't think there's anyone in Russia who can stop him. He's essentially – he's deinstitutionalized that country. Why would he want to? Why would he want to escalate? One is to put pressure on European countries who are helping Ukraine economically or militarily. And he basically wants to say this is not cost-free. So this is a form of deterrence, if you will, or interference in them to get them to change their policy. The other possibility, and the two are not mutually exclusive, is things have not gone great for him in Ukraine. So what he'd like to do is score something of a geopolitical win.

4:13Just imagine he does something, again, as was suggested in the so-called gray area. We're not talking about the Red Army, 50 ,000 troops coming across the border. We're talking about stuff that's much more subtle. And that's probably going to be below the level where many in NATO would directly respond. It would certainly, I would think, be below the level that Donald Trump would want to respond. Indeed, it's not clear to me what sort of a provocation would be required for Donald Trump to respond, since his enthusiasm for NATO is, shall we say, finite. So Putin may say this is a real opportunity to deliver something of a historic blow to NATO.

4:54That's interesting because, by way of context, there's been a series of recent incidents along NATO's eastern flank already. In the last week alone, we're tracking a Russian drone that hit a passenger train in Ukraine, but just over a mile from the Polish border. Poland's military says they found a Russian drone with a warhead off the Polish coast. It sounds like you're saying subtle might be a key part of this strategy. If you march an army and move tanks over a border, NATO is going to have to do something. But if you just keep pinging with drones, it makes it a little bit harder to figure out what to do.

5:28100 percent and but it's demoralizing all the same for nato because what it will do is you'll have debates and it will expose fissures within nato because some will say we have to respond others will be against it then there won't be a consensus on exactly what to do again i think there'll be a big gap between those europeans who want to act and the this the trump administration which which does not which shall we say has viewed putin and russia benignly from the from the get-go So, yeah, I think from Putin's point of view, this is a low risk, high reward sort of undertaking, particularly if he keeps it relatively modest in what he does.

6:08I am compelled to note that Russia denies these accusations. Russia's foreign ministry is calling them contrived, far-fetched. How seriously do you take the denials? About as seriously as you do, I should think. So if you were the secretary general of NATO and you're sitting in Brussels watching all this, listening to this, what's the move? How should NATO respond? What I would do is probably push for a couple of things. One is I would try to head this off. And one thing comes to mind in particular, which is to do more help for Ukraine, to basically tell Putin, if you are to do these things, we're not looking for a war with you.

6:52You're not looking for a war with us. But this is not going to be cost free. So certain things that we have held back doing for Ukraine, delivering this or that weapon system with some new tranche of money, I would find things to put on that list for Putin. As you know, it looks like the Congress is finally getting around to passing a sanctions bill against Russia. The problem with the bill they're going to pass is what it does is it gives the president power to introduce new tariffs against countries that trade with Russia. But it gives him discretion, so he may not. Plus, one of the countries and the biggest trading partner of Russia is obviously China.

7:33We're not going to introduce new sanctions against China because China will then cut off the export of rare earth minerals to the United States. And they're essential for lots of the things we do. So I don't think those kinds of sanctions are going to matter. You're going to laugh when I tell you what I think is the best thing we could do. What is it? It argues for wrapping up the war with Iran. The best sanction we could give to Russia is energy prices that begin to go down dramatically. That would actually have an enormous impact on Russia's economy. So it's another argument I would say for thinking seriously about looking for a diplomatic off-ramp in Iran.

8:10We have just a few seconds left, but in that time, just zoom in on the U.S. role, because concurrent with everything we've just been describing, President Trump says the U.S. is making progress in establishing a permanent U.S. army base in Poland. Where does the U.S. fit in? Well, this is an opportunity to stand by the Poles and stand by NATO. Poland is probably the most robust country vis-a-vis Russia. So the real question is, will we take advantage of this opportunity? I sure hope so. Richard Haas, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. Always good to speak with you. Thanks.

8:47Thank you. This episode was produced by Tyler Bartlam and Connor Donovan, with audio engineering by Tiffany Vera Castro. Our director is Jonas Adams. It was edited by Christopher Intagliata and Tinbeet Hermes. Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorning. Before we go, a word of thanks to our Consider This Plus listeners who support the show, you make it possible for NPR journalists to report the stories you hear every day. Supporters also get every episode without messages from sponsors. To learn more, visit plus.npr.org.

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