OPINION:
It is probably a good thing the public does not know what CIA Director John Ratcliffe did in his meeting on Aug. 26 with his counterparts in Moscow.
It is a pretty good bet that they talked about Russia’s drifting — willingly — into a war with NATO.
As this newspaper reported Friday, workers at Leipzig/Halle Airport discovered a drone (presumably Russian) carrying what German prosecutors said was “800 grams of PETN explosive and a detonator.”
According to The Times’ report, a second drone collided with a DHL cargo aircraft, and a third was found on Aug. 14 west of the airport.
Any of them carried enough explosives to kill people.
Had any of the explosives gone off, Germany would have been faced with a Russian attack on its soil. It could not have ignored the attacks. Or could it?
The German government has stayed calm and not yet blamed Russia for what the Germans called a “hybrid” attack. (A “hybrid” attack was used to cover Russian aggression in Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 with Russia’s “little green men,” soldiers in uniform but not wearing insignia that would reveal to which army they belonged.)
In secret talks with fellow NATO leaders, the Germans must be blaming Russia.
These attacks indicate that Russia is becoming more desperate about its war in Ukraine. Leipzig airport is a major cargo hub used by both NATO and Ukrainian forces to supply Ukraine.
Is Russia more willing to be identified as an attacker within NATO’s borders? It appears so.
Russian President Vladimir Putin now holds most of the cards. He can press ahead with more drone attacks or back off. He can attempt, as is rumored, a massive ground attack on Kyiv in the hope of winning the war outright.
He can also continue his hybrid attacks on Germany and other NATO suppliers.
What he cannot do is maintain the status quo in a stalemated war. Mr. Putin and his generals are clever and ruthless. They will devise new plans for hybrid attacks on Ukraine and its allies, but such attacks will be vastly harder to conceal than the 2014 attack in Crimea.
There could be attacks on NATO air shipments of arms and weapon systems by stealthy drones. There could be attacks on sea cargoes of gasoline, weapons and the like by stealthy naval drones.
It would be difficult to prove that Russia was responsible for those attacks, but the question will always be: Who benefits? The answer will always be the Russians, and a Russia-NATO war will grow closer with every such attack.
Neither we nor Russia wants the Russian war in Ukraine to blow up into a world war. Mr. Ratcliffe certainly delivered that message last week, but again, Mr. Putin seems willing to take greater risks than he has before.
Will he risk a war with NATO? NATO is far weaker than it has been in decades. It literally fired its last bolt during the 2011 operation to oust Moammar Gadhafi.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is warning of Russia’s escalations in Ukraine and the possibility of a wider war. We are not ready for such a war.
Our defensive missile arsenal has been greatly depleted in Iran and cannot be replenished in less than two or three years. We have lost one E-3 AWACS battle management aircraft, and seven KC-135 refueling aircraft have been lost or damaged in or near Iran.
By 2027, our Air Force is scheduled to retire more aircraft than it will replace. As this column has said repeatedly, the U.S. Air Force is an indispensable part of any major defensive or offensive operation. We simply cannot do without it, and it is weaker than it has ever been.
So what are we getting for our $1 trillion defense budget this year? We are getting accelerated production of defensive missiles, a massive down payment on President Trump’s missile defense system and a lot more — but we are not getting the things we need to make our military stronger and more effective.
There is no easy answer to all this. Mr. Trump must show us that he is truly making our armed forces more capable than ever before.
To do that, he needs to reexamine the military’s budget and ensure that we are investing in better, more capable weapon systems so our armed forces are ready to meet whatever challenges the world brings to our door.
• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and a contributing editor for The American Spectator.
Follow the author
Please read our comment policy before commenting.