By Noah Rothman
This
post is in response to The Gray Zone
Descends on Leipzig (Again)
Andrew Stuttaford has been a devoted chronicler of the “gray zone” provocations that cannot be directly pinned on
America’s adversaries but sure do have a conspicuous tendency to advance their
interests. His latest dispatch on the subject follows the discovery of an
explosive drone discovered at Leipzig airport, in Germany, earlier this month.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has pledged
that the people or groups behind this and other hybrid attacks on German soil
“will pay for them.” But, Andrew asks, how? The logic of the “gray zone” attack
is that there is no return address, no chain of custody that links the attacker
to the state sponsor.
That’s what makes CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s surprise
visit to Moscow so inauspicious. The White House took unusual steps to conceal the director’s itinerary before he departed for
Moscow on a U.S. Air Force C-17 out of Riga, Latvia. No one in the
administration is commenting on the trip for the record. On background, sources
will only confirm that the trip is real. “Publicly available flight tracking
data does not show the C-40B on the next flight to Moscow,” the Washington
Post reported.
“The aircraft is a modified business jet used to transport senior government
officials.”
The details are sparse, but the backdrop against which
this rare in-person meeting is happening is portentous.
Ratcliffe’s trip comes as Ukraine’s long-range strikes on
Russian infrastructure have precipitated an energy crisis in Russia. Moscow’s
worsening manpower shortages have made Western analysts fear that the Kremlin
will attempt to escalate its way out of the crisis that Vladimir Putin imposed
on his people. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal revealed
that U.S. intelligence suggests that Russia will test the NATO’s resolve
to challenge Moscow’s ambitions with a provocation that risks all-out conflict.
“U.S. and European leaders increasingly see signs of
Russia conducting probing attacks to test NATO’s resolve, including Russian
cruise missiles that have landed in Poland and drones flown into Romania,” the
report read. “The possible threats range from a cyberattack on a NATO country
or sending unmarked armed groups to occupy territory to a limited incursion on
the alliance’s eastern flank.”
The “gray zone” provocations in parts of Europe that
Moscow regards as sensitive are likely part of the multivalent Russian threat.
U.S. intelligence is reportedly convinced that the Kremlin was behind the event in Leipzig.
It is highly likely, according to Latvian intelligence, that Russian military
intelligence was behind the explosives smuggled into Europe in summer 2024.
“Security officials in Lithuania said last year the four parcels were part of a
test run for a Russian plot to trigger explosions on cargo flights to the
United States,” CNN reported last year.
These operations raise the risk of miscalculation to
unacceptable levels. Perhaps Moscow wants to confront the West with a “Why die
for Danzig?” moment. The Kremlin asks us to consider, Would the West
really maintain its support for Ukraine if the world were in the balance? But
alliance dynamics are sticky things. And if Moscow succeeded in sponsoring
attacks that killed NATO civilians on or over NATO soil, there is no guarantee
that an escalating series of reprisals and retaliations would not take on a
logic all its own and spiral out of control.
Whatever Director Ratcliffe’s mission in Moscow is, this
is certainly more than a get-to-know-you confab.
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