World War 2.5

By Nick Catoggio

Thursday, August 27, 2026

 

It’s not often that the director of the CIA swings by Moscow for a tête-à-tête. The last time it happened before this week was November 2021, when William Burns felt obliged to warn the Kremlin in person that we knew what it was planning for Ukraine.

 

The physical presence of America’s top spy was obviously meant to communicate the gravity of the White House’s concern. Hence the suspense surrounding CIA chief John Ratcliffe’s surprise visit to the Russian capital yesterday: What unknown yet undoubtedly alarming development might have led the Trump administration to order its own extraordinary intervention?

 

Could Vladimir Putin be considering an atomic solution to the Ukrainian stalemate?

 

“The escalating spiral of strikes is leading a growing number of Russian officials to the conclusion that Putin could eventually opt to use tactical nuclear weapons as a last resort in Ukraine,” sources close to the Kremlin told Bloomberg. Yet as much as that prospect might delight vatniks and/or Tucker Carlson, it’s probably idle saber rattling (for now). Firing off a small nuke or two at the widely dispersed Ukrainian front line would likely gain Russia less militarily than it would cost in terms of international isolation.

 

Another theory: Maybe, contra Burns, Ratcliffe was dispatched not to threaten the Russians but to feel them out on a devil’s bargain aimed at curing the president’s migraine in the Persian Gulf. For instance, “if you can get Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, we’ll pull out of NATO.”

 

With Trump all things are possible, but the director of the CIA would be an odd choice to deliver that message. A grand bargain with Russia in which Europe ends up stabbed in the back is the sort of deal the president would relish brokering himself, one would think. Or, at least, something he’d farm out to a Putin-friendly toady like Steve Witkoff.

 

By the very nature of his agency’s work (not to mention its cooperation with Ukraine), Ratcliffe is the guy you send when you’re taking an adversarial position toward the Kremlin. A more likely explanation for his visit is that he was there, à la Burns, to try to deter the Russians from some dangerously reckless new action they’re planning in their near-abroad.

 

Like attacking NATO.

 

That was in fact the purpose of the visit, according to the Wall Street Journal. Earlier this month the paper reported that U.S. intelligence now has reason to believe Putin “could try to test NATO’s resolve with a limited assault on an allied country in the next few years,” with options ranging from cyberattacks to a “small-scale land incursion.” The fact that Ratcliffe felt moved to warn Russia now suggests that the timeline for the expected provocation skews more toward sooner than later, though. And if you’ve been following the news overseas, you know why.

 

Numerous weapons factories in Ukraine-supporting European countries have been targeted in mysterious acts of sabotage this year, mirroring Ukraine’s attacks on Russian logistics sites. Germany recently discovered three drones carrying explosives at Leipzig’s airport, a hub used to ship military supplies to Kyiv. And last month Russian military officials visited Kaliningrad, a small Russian exclave located between Poland and Lithuania, allegedly to oversee “readiness planning and procedures for a mobilization of the region’s residents, with details on how to house, feed, and arm them.”

 

Coincidentally, last week NATO staged an unusually large air exercise near Kaliningrad, part of a “flurry of activity” by the alliance in the Baltics lately. Today Elbridge Colby, the U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, is meeting with the head of NATO and the North Atlantic Council to discuss … something, possibly America’s defense posture in Europe, possibly matters more urgent. And news broke yesterday that Germany is negotiating with Britain to invest in the latter’s nuclear deterrent, part of a plan to extend Europe’s nuclear umbrella eastward toward Moscow.

 

It all seems ominous—except for the fact that the battered Russian military is in no condition to test Europe, right? By one estimate Russia has suffered 1.4 million casualties in Ukraine, including upward of 500,000 deaths. Ratcliffe himself claimed last month that the average Russian soldier lasts just 20-30 minutes on the battlefield before being killed or disabled. Surely a country that’s choking to death from trying to bite off a piece of its much smaller neighbor isn’t about to sink its teeth into NATO. Why is the CIA chief so worried that it might do so, let alone do so soon?

 

The answer to that question is another question: If not now, when?

 

Now or never.

 

Strange as it may sound, in many ways this is an opportune moment for Putin to confront the West. The point of a Russian incursion in the Baltics wouldn’t be to defeat NATO militarily, which is implausible given the two-front war Moscow would be compelled to wage. The point would be to defeat it strategically—that is, to gamble that the alliance would fold rather than fight, provided that the incursion is small enough.

 

A likely target is the Suwalki Gap, a corridor that runs through Poland and Lithuania and connects Kaliningrad with Russia’s ally Belarus. Taking it wouldn’t necessarily require a huge force. In one war game conducted last year, a contingent of 15,000 Russian troops successfully seized a Lithuanian city there. “The U.S. didn’t invoke Article 5 and Germany dithered, ultimately leaving Russia victorious in its territorial snatch and in its goal of undermining NATO,” Newsweek noted of the outcome.

 

But why would Russia try it now? Because: Even more so than usual, an overextended White House is compelled by circumstance to think twice before involving America in any new wars.

 

Set aside the president’s own fecklessness and ideological sympathies, to which we’ll return later. Logistically, the U.S. is in no position at the moment to wage a two-front war of its own. “In a potential conflict with Russia, weapons such as the Precision Strike Missile and Army Tactical Missile Systems … are crucial to repel a land invasion,” the Journal explains. Thanks to Trump’s folly in Iran, we’re a little short on both.

 

Considering how unpopular that folly has become with American voters, any president would be leery of thrusting the country into a second military conflict—especially one that would have us fighting Iran and Russia simultaneously, the closest the United States will have come to a world war since 1945. (So much for Trump the dove.) With the midterm election impending, Putin isn’t crazy for surmising that the White House would sooner betray NATO than foist another conflict on a disgruntled electorate.

 

The timing is opportune for Russia in another way. After four years of combat in Ukraine, it’s used to war and can hit the ground running if it chooses to extend hostilities westward. Europe isn’t, and can’t—for now.

 

That window of opportunity for the Kremlin is slowly closing, though, as Germany’s interest in a nuclear deterrent demonstrates. Europe is rearming, spooked by Putin’s brutality in Kyiv and America’s romance with postliberalism; the day is coming when NATO will be able to repel Russia even without U.S. support. The day is also coming when our romance with postliberalism will end and an Atlanticist will return to the White House, more willing to defend the liberal Western order against Moscow than the current occupant is.

 

Realistically, then, if you’re Vladimir Putin, your dream of breaking NATO might have a shelf life of as little as two years. So why wait? In particular, why wait until after the Ukraine war is over, when relieved Russian citizens will expect a period of quiescence to recover from their nightmare? If the rumors are true that the Kremlin is about to order a huge new military draft to replenish its manpower, why not capitalize on the surge in forces to test Europe now?

 

As Tablet writer Park MacDougald put it, the Russian leadership believes “that the West, which sustains Ukraine, is not psychologically, morally, or politically prepared for war. Russia is, and that gives Russia an asymmetric advantage.” The West will be prepared again someday. But not today.

 

Attacking Europe would do something else for the Kremlin, supplying a rationale for an ongoing national trauma that’s conspicuously lacked one for years.

 

Although they’d never admit it, the average Russian must be wondering what the point is of a conflict that’s dragged on longer than it took the Red Army to smash the Nazi empire and seems to be getting worse for their country over time. How can a few miles of the Donbas be worth four and a half years of wanton bloodletting and the incremental depopulation of Russian males?

 

Seizing European territory would give Putin an answer. We’re not fighting Ukraine, we’re fighting the entire West. And we’re winning. We took the Suwalki Gap. We broke NATO. We’ve achieved something that even Stalin and the Soviet Union never dared attempt.

 

The idea of extending the fight westward might appeal to Russians emotionally too, as they must realize that the explosions that now routinely rock their country wouldn’t be possible without material support from Ukraine’s European allies. “Moscow increasingly views the Ukrainian strikes as attacks by NATO states because alliance members supply Kyiv with weapons and intelligence,” sources told Bloomberg. Turnabout is fair play in the Kremlin’s eyes: If the Ukrainians are going to try to cripple the Russian military by targeting its supply lines, Russia will respond in kind by targeting the nations supplying Ukraine.

 

That’s the message that the explosive drones found at Leipzig’s airport were undoubtedly meant to convey. A modest invasion of the Baltics would convey it in a much grander way.

 

Escalating to de-escalate.

 

There’s one more reason Putin might want to test NATO sooner, not later. Even if he orders another military draft, the war is likely to get harder for him if it drags on.

 

Russian citizens have begun pulling their money from banks for fear that the cash-hungry government will start seizing their savings to fund the conflict. Hopes that a friendly American president might squeeze Ukraine to surrender to the Kremlin have faded amid Trump’s preoccupation with Iran and his admiration for the Ukrainian drone offensive. And Ukraine’s military capabilities continue to grow: Very soon, with help from its European friends, the country will begin striking deep inside Russia with homemade ballistic missiles.

 

It’s all (or mostly) downhill from here. The poor prognosis for the Russian economy led one European consultant to tell CNBC, “If I were Putin, God forbid, I would probably decide that it is in my interest to escalate now and try to finish the war on my terms, than wait until the money ends sometime in the future.”

 

It seems counterintuitive that a nation that desperately needs a war to end might choose to expand it, but there’s logic to it. It’s known in military doctrine as “escalate to de-escalate,” which we’ve discussed here before.

 

“Escalate to de-escalate” is a close cousin of “the madman theory” made famous by Richard Nixon. The idea in both cases is to scare the hell out of your enemy by making them believe you might do something so wildly reckless (usually involving nuclear weapons) that they see little choice but to appease you. A “small-scale land incursion” by Russia into the Baltics would be a perfect example. Instantly it would force the West to the brink of its most dangerous military conflict since World War II, risking all-out war with Moscow …

 

… unless, of course, certain concessions were made that convinced the Russian army to withdraw peacefully from NATO territory and end its offensive against Ukraine.

 

Cut off all military support to Kyiv and convince Volodymyr Zelensky to sign a peace deal coughing up the Donbas and we’ll give back the Suwalki Gap. How’s that for a de-escalatory bargain?

 

Europeans wouldn’t want to accept that offer, fearing that doing so would encourage Russia to stage additional not-so-small-scale land incursions in the future (see, e.g., Ukraine 2014 and Ukraine 2022), but they might not have a choice if the president of the United States wanted to accept it. Do we think he’d accept it?

 

I’m not sure.

 

There are obvious reasons he might, starting with the fecklessness and ideological sympathies I mentioned earlier. Trump has always craved détente with authoritarian Russia; no president since the Cold War has been more reluctant to confront Moscow militarily than he is. He’s also a ripe target to be terrorized by an “escalate to de-escalate” ploy, as he’s been bleating about the Ukraine war as a prelude to World War III since his last presidential campaign—and chastised Zelensky about it to his face during the latter’s infamous Oval Office visit in 2025.

 

The president is also chronically aggrieved at Europe, more so than ever lately after America’s NATO allies declined to join his silly war in Iran. It’s easy to imagine him reacting to news of a Russian invasion of Poland with a shrug: “They didn’t help us with the Strait of Hormuz, why would we help them with Putin?” I wouldn’t even put it past Trump to dial up the Kremlin and offer to recognize their authority over the territory they’ve seized if they can persuade Iran to reopen the strait. He’s a fan of quid pro quos, you may have heard.

 

If nothing else, he might decline to join a military effort to oust Russian troops for simple fear of what war in Europe would do to the U.S. economy. Which wouldn’t be the first time that he sold out to a rogue regime to spare himself a presidential legacy of economic hardship.

 

Still, to believe that Trump would meekly surrender to a Russian incursion into Europe means believing he’d compound his current show of weakness in Iran with a second, more consequential show of weakness toward Putin. That seems unlikely. You can’t obsess about “strength” as much as the president does and run around losing—or ducking—fights repeatedly. If you do, some of the kids on the schoolyard whom you’re hoping to bully in the future might begin to draw certain lessons about you.

 

There are also plenty of Russia hawks in Congress and more than a few in and around the White House, of whom Ratcliffe appears to be one, who’ll egg him on to show some spine. If Trump were planning to sit idly by while the Kremlin stages a sneak attack on Europe, it’s strange that Ratcliffe would have been deputized to formally warn them against doing so, no?

 

My guess is that the president would approach a Russian incursion into NATO territory the way he’s approached U.S. backing for Ukraine, splitting the baby by reducing America’s support without ending it altogether. Kyiv doesn’t get free weapons from us anymore, but it does still get intelligence. NATO wouldn’t get any American troops to help push the Russians out—RIP, Article 5—but Trump probably would pledge intelligence, some weapons, and perhaps a few fun bonuses like access for Ukraine to Starlink inside Russia to help with long-range targeting.

 

But before the fighting got going, he and his team would be desperately trying to broker a ceasefire in which Russia withdraws in exchange for, say, promises of an urgent international diplomatic effort to settle the war in Ukraine plus sanctions relief to ease the pressure on the Russian economy.

 

I suspect Putin would take that deal, having scored a moral victory by dividing America from NATO. Trump would take it too, as it would revive his dream of midwifing a compromise to end the war and give him a chance at a diplomatic win after the Iran debacle. And Europeans? They’d have to decide whether rejecting his proposal, risking a total break with America and having to fight Russia alone, is preferable to grudgingly acquiescing. As ever, the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.