NI: What happened over Poland? – The question of cui bono is best answered as the Europeans, rather than the Russians

This is a photo from publics. This is one of the drones flew into Poland. Its nose wrapped in tape, as if it repaired before the launch. This is clearly not a factory-made drone. Such garbage could not have flown in from Russia – Russia makes high-quality drones. But this could be a second-hand drone that was found in Ukraine, repaired in Ukraine and launched into Poland.

By ballooning this incident with the Russian drones, NATO’s supporters in Europe and America believe they can force Trump to change course on Ukraine. He shouldn’t, ‘The National Interest’ writes.

The same people who have spent the last five years doing everything in their power to get the United States and NATO more directly involved in the ongoing Ukraine War are at it again.

A recent incident involving upwards of 19 suspected Russian drones — specifically Gerbera-type unmanned aerial vehicles — breaching the airspace of NATO member Poland has triggered a cascade of recriminations and accusations. The drone swarm, successfully downed by Polish and Dutch warplanes, did not cause any injuries in Poland and did not last very long in Poland’s well-defended airspace.

For whatever the Kremlin’s word is worth, it has denied intentionally launching the drones at Poland.

Why Would Russia Want to Attack Poland?

Both Poland and the rest of NATO’s leadership, having met after the drone incident under the auspices of a NATO Article IV declaration, determined that for “the first time in history NATO planes have fired on potential threats in allied airspace.”

This comes on the heels of weeks of posturing from key NATO members, like Britain, France, and Germany, all of whom are making noise about increasing their defense spending for the first time in since the end of the Cold War and threatening to deploy their troops to Western Ukraine as “peacekeepers” of some kind.

The consensus both from official NATO sources and the defense punditry class is that the Russians deliberately launched the attack at Poland’s borders as a means of testing NATO’s resolve. Of course, the Gerbera drones — which, remember, are notoriously inaccurate — were easily detected and shot down in short order.  

So what is really going on here?

At least some of NATO’s members in Europe are chomping at the bit to broaden NATO’s involvement in Ukraine. Less than 24 hours after the downing of the Russian drones, virtually every pro-NATO voice in the West has taken to the press and given nearly identical talking points about the alleged Russian attack on Poland.

So, by ballooning this incident with the Russian drones into a grand conspiracy on the part of Putin’s Russia to escalate the war against NATO, NATO’s supporters in Europe and America believe they can force Trump to fully invest in Ukraine’s defense — and in so doing to get Trump to restore the primacy of NATO in US foreign policy.

Therefore, the question of cui bono is best answered as the Europeans, rather than the Russians. After all, the Poles and their NATO allies had no problems in tracking and shooting down all the Russian drones well before they threatened anyone or anything in Poland.

What, precisely, did the Russians gain by putting NATO on alert? If Moscow really wanted to attack Poland or any other part of NATO, they probably would have used far more lethal systems — in far larger numbers—than the 19 Gerbera drones.

As things stand, we don’t yet know for sure what happened in the skies above Poland. What we do know is this is not the first time something like this has happened and, in the previous instances, the incidents were either accidental or not the Kremlin’s fault. It will take weeks and months to know what precisely happened; until an investigation is conducted, the last possible thing America should be doing is jumping to conclusions that lead to a wider war and greater levels of US military commitment.

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