You Ask, I Answer: This Month's Subscriber Q&A

Readers sent in some great questions for our inaugural monthly Q&A — thank you all! Some questions were similar, so I consolidated responses to those. Without further ado, here are your questions and my answers:

1. What would it take for NATO to send forces to Ukraine? Will NATO respond to provocations and aggression from Russia with military support in Ukraine?

The short answer: No.

The long answer: Not yet.

Things will need to get much worse before Nato members directly intervene in Ukraine. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Nato’s main priority has been to avoid escalation of Russia’s war on Ukraine into a war between Russia and Nato. This was and remains a strategic mistake. Nato signaling weakness and fear emboldened and enabled further Russian aggression. Over the three years, Russian sabotage and attacks on Nato members’ territory and infrastructure have surged, including cyberattacks, arson, damage to undersea cables, airspace violations, drone surveillance, GPS jamming across the Baltic, and even a plot to assassinate Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger in Germany.

For Nato members in Europe to send air or land forces to Ukraine would require things to get much worse than they already are – for example, for Ukraine’s military position to become so weakened that a collapse of the frontline would be imminent without European support. Even in that drastic scenario, a European military intervention wouldn’t be guaranteed. European leaders would furthermore need to see that the territorial integrity and security of the EU were under imminent threat by Russia, and deem intervention in Ukraine as lower risk than staying out. That would be a very high bar of risk to reach. Even if it were reached, any mission would likely not be an official Nato mission (read: no US involvement), but rather European-led in the context of the so-called Coalition of the Willing led by the UK and France.

In short: European leaders appear willing to let Russia punch us in the face as much