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By Vytautas Leskevicius
chief policy advisor at the Geopolitics and Security Studies Center
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About 10 years ago, in one of the meetings of a major Western organization, I made a fairly straightforward point: Moscow will escalate if it wants to. No matter what we do or do not do.
My line drew fierce rebuttals from peers. Those “new Allies,” they seemed to allude, did not quite understand the rules of the game.
Nearly five years into Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the same argument still raises quite a few eyebrows.
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The usual line was: NATO had to show it is defensive. Nonprovocative. And, throughout, it has to show restraint.
I hope that by 2026 our rules reflect the realities better.
The Russo-Georgian war in 2008. Crimea in 2014. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And now sabotage, attacks on infrastructure, GNSS interference, cyber operations and drone incursions.
Moscow has escalated repeatedly, drawing new and more dangerous lines of its own.
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Western messaging toward the Kremlin has changed much less: we still shy away even from talking about the possibility that we, the West, may escalate, too.
Our deterrent messaging goes something like this. We are strong. We spend a lot on defense and will spend more. Our economies are much larger than Russia’s. Our militaries are getting more ready. Therefore, we can remain calm.
Mark Rutte’s recent remarks in Germany were another reminder. Against the backdrop of Russian sabotage and drone incursions, he called on Allies to “keep calm, carry on, and support Ukraine.”
After almost 20 years, does reminding Moscow that NATO is defensive and avoids escalation affect its decisions?
Moscow escalates when it believes the price is bearable. If it needs a justification, it will find one. If it cannot, it will invent one.
Russian drones carrying explosives enter NATO territory. Almost daily. Sabotage and attacks on infrastructure have become routine.
And still we reach for the “sub-threshold” euphemism.
Below what threshold?
If a drone carrying explosives physically enters NATO territory, we can call the wider campaign hybrid, but the drone itself is not hybrid. It is there. If infrastructure is physically destroyed, the destruction is not virtual.
Calling this sub-threshold may be politically convenient. But unless we can say where the threshold is and what happens when it is crossed, the concept loses deterrent value.
One drone: restraint. Several drones: restraint. Another incursion: restraint. Investigate. Attribute if we can. Express serious concern.
Moscow may conclude that the threshold is not really a line at all, but something that moves as Russia approaches it.
This is not how NATO always thought about deterrence.
MC 14/3, agreed in 1967, and the so-called strategy of "flexible response," belong to another era. But its basic message was clear: prevent the potential aggressor from predicting NATO’s specific response, while making him conclude that an unacceptable degree of risk would be involved regardless of the nature of his attack.
Uncertainty about NATO’s response, but very clear message that any aggression could bring unacceptable costs.
It said the response would be chosen by NATO, on NATO’s terms. The opponent was not invited to define its acceptable limits by declaring beforehand what it would regard as escalatory.
Today we sometimes understand escalation management in almost the opposite way: we make our own restraints increasingly predictable.
This explains why I am not persuaded by one standard objection to setting clearer red lines: Russia will test them. Also, that it will help mobilize Russians against the West.
There is an analogy in child psychology, obvious to any parent. If a parent sets a new rule, the child will test it. Perhaps two or three times. What establishes the rule is not saying it louder each time, but what happens after it is broken. After several tests, the child normally knows whether the red line is actually red.
Russia is not a child. But testing a stated boundary is hardly unique to children. Children react to the credibility of our actions. Not just words. So does the Kremlin.
Moscow will test it. The question is what Moscow learns from the test. If the response is another discussion about restraint, the Kremlin learns one thing.
If the response is inevitable, while its timing, scale, means and geography remain ours to determine, Moscow learns something else. This does not require responding kinetically to every hybrid act, nor abandoning escalation management. It requires us to stop assuming that our restraint restrains Russia.
Moscow does not have to know exactly what we will do. Often it should not know. But it needs to know that crossing our lines will bring a response.
Not necessarily the response Moscow expects. Not necessarily where it expects it. Not necessarily when it expects it.
That would be an adequate and responsible policy of escalation management and deterrent messaging.
Vytautas Leškevičius is chief policy adviser at the Geopolitics and Security Studies Center and former Lithuanian Ambassador to NATO.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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