US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insisted earlier this week that a Russian incursion into Nato territory would not trigger US intervention, and that America’s role would be confined to selling arms to Europe.

Speaking to Fox Business, Bessent described the Trump administration’s foreign policy doctrine with a clarity we have not heard from the President himself. “Now Putin has started making incursions into the Nato borders,” he said. “The one thing I can tell you is the US is not going to get involved with troops or any of that. We will sell the Europeans weapons.”

In other words: the US did not perform a policy U-turn this week, as some of the more naive European political observers were hoping for. Quite the contrary. The US is signalling to Russia — and Nato — that it will not respond to the current wave of Russian provocations in Europe. Vladimir Putin is testing Nato’s resolve. And he is getting the result he was hoping for from the White House.

You can often tell a country’s official policy by looking at revealed, not stated, preferences. It is Bessent’s message — not Donald Trump’s wide-ranging, meandering speech at the UN — that is US policy. The Trump administration, then, would not trigger Article 5 in the event of a Russian attack on a Nato ally.

The incidents Bessent was referring to were related to Russian hybrid attacks deep inside Nato territory. There were drones over Poland, Russian jets in Estonian airspace, and, although not confirmed as Russian but still suspicious enough, drones over Copenhagen airport. A less reported incident that happened last week was an interaction between Russian fighter jets and German navy frigate on the Baltic Sea, as relayed by German Defence Minister, Boris Pistorius in an address to MPs. German forces did not respond, he said. “We are thus showing a clear response to Russian behaviour, but without alarmism,” Pistorius said. “In other words, we are not falling for Putin’s provocations; we are not falling into this trap of escalation.”

While that may sound like a well-calibrated message, this is not how Putin will interpret it. While the Russian leader does not have the capacity to fight two simultaneous land wars, he has the resources to continue his land war in Ukraine, and engage in a hybrid war in western Europe, exposing the political weaknesses of Nato leaders. It is likely Moscow will increase the provocations.

This new situation requires European countries to rethink their defence strategies. Should we ever get into the calamity of a war with Russia, it will not consist of the kind of trench warfare imprinted on the continent’s psyche from the First World War. It will be drone warfare, as we are increasingly seeing in Ukraine. Europe’s out-of-date air-defence systems are not equipped to handle this, which means the continent must rely once again on the retreating US security umbrella.

Bessent’s comments this week ought to be a wake-up call, or Moscow’s increasingly unanswered provocations will eventually call Europe’s bluff.

This is an edited version of an article which originally appeared in Eurointelligence.

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Wolfgang Münchau is the Director of Eurointelligence and an UnHerd columnist.

EuroBriefing

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