The NATO Putin Should Fear Is One America No Longer Controls

A jet goes blind over the Baltic, and the problem is suddenly much larger than one aircraft.

An RAF plane carrying British Defense Secretary John Healey last week lost GPS for a three-hour flight after he visited British troops in Estonia, a fellow NATO ally. .

Pilots used another navigation system and officials said it was unclear whether Healey's plane had been deliberately targeted.

The plane landed safely-which is precisely why the episode matters.

No missile had been fired, no NATO border had been crossed in the old-fashioned sense. Yet the alliance still had to decide whether anything serious had happened.

NATO’s answer to incidents like this has long been calibrated in Washington. It is typically measured, lawyerly, slow to escalate.

That calibration is what made Vladimir Putin’s gray zone strategy work.

As American leadership wobbles in the Trump era and front-line Europe loses patience, the calibration is breaking down.

Putin spent years trying to weaken America’s grip on NATO. He may not enjoy the alliance he is helping to create.

The Gray Zone Meets NATO Hesitation

The useful phrase here is the "gray zone.”

It means the contested space below open war where cyberattacks, sabotage, drone incursions, airspace violations and electronic interference create pressure without always producing clean attribution.

NATO says Russia's hostile actions toward allies and partners-hybrid warfare that includes airspace violations, cyberattacks and sabotage-are increasing in frequency.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Military Balance says NATO's eastern flank faces growing Russian gray zone threats, including UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), incursions and sabotage, and that front-line states are adding fortifications, surveillance systems and short-range air defenses.

Czech President Petr Pavel told The Guardian recently that Moscow had learned to "almost meet the threshold for Article 5, but always keeping it slightly below that level."

Pavel urged NATO to "show its teeth."

He floated "decisive enough, potentially even asymmetric" responses, including disabling Russian internet or satellites, cutting Russian banks from global systems or shooting down aircraft that violate allied airspace.

Of course, not every murky incident carries Vladimir Putin’s signature.

But the danger is that ambiguity becomes a Russian weapon when NATO’s slowest and most cautious actor holds the brake on the alliance’s response.

America: Backbone and Brake

There's a material reality to the current alliance that Europe cannot quickly escape.

American leadership of NATO provides the expensive backbone that is tough to replicate even slowly, if at all.

Intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, air-to-air refueling, strategic airlift and other high-end military enablers that give NATO its teeth.

Europe's dependence remains so deep that the defense think tank RUSI argues NATO allies seeking more independence from Washington should first build capacity in missions only the U.S. military can now perform.

That’s the hard limit on any dream of a European NATO replacing America, not to mention the scale of U.S. nuclear weapons.

Yet American leadership has also been NATO's escalation brake.

President Donald Trump touched that brake when he answered a question about U.S. commitment to collective defense under Article 5 last year by saying, "Depends on your definition."

European officials were preparing for possible U.S. troop reductions while NATO leaders pushed higher defense-spending targets.

The usual conclusion is that U.S. uncertainty helps Moscow by weakening NATO, and there is truth to that.

But there's another conclusion one could draw: U.S. uncertainty may convince front-line Europe to stop waiting for Washington-managed consensus before it acts against Russia.

Front-Line Europe Is Already Less Patient

Poland is not behaving like a country waiting for reassurance from a distant patron.

It was NATO's largest relative defense spender in 2025 at 4.48 percent of GDP, followed by Lithuania at 4 percent, Latvia at 3.73 percent and Estonia at 3.38 percent.

After Russian drones entered Polish airspace in September 2025, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said the idea that 19 breaches were accidental "simply defies imagination".

Sikorski later said NATO and the EU should consider a no-fly zone over Ukraine to protect European airspace, while stressing that Poland could not make that decision alone.

The Nordic-Baltic Eight foreign ministers said in April that Europe faced an "urgent need" to take greater responsibility for shaping its future, according to a joint statement.

Baltic Sea allies created Baltic Sentry after repeated damage to undersea infrastructure, and Carnegie analysts argued that Russia-linked shadow-fleet activity in the Baltic requires creative and proactive regional responses.

These fall short of declarations of European strategic independence. But they are clear signs of a dangerous interval, either coming or already here.

Europe, largely more hostile to Russia than the U.S., is becoming increasingly willing to act before it is fully able to control the consequences.

Ambiguity Can Make NATO Less Predictable

Moscow denies many of the accusations that make this environment so combustible.

The Kremlin denied responsibility after GPS jamming allegations involving European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's aircraft in late August 2025.

Russia's Defense Ministry also said it had "no intentions to engage any targets on the territory of Poland" after the September drone incursion.

NATO should not build policy on suspicion alone, though a healthy dose of skepticism should be applied to anything emerging from Russia.

But governments don't respond in the cold back-and-forth of a courtroom. They respond to these kinds of patterns under much greater intensity, with alert conditions, radar tracks, civilian warnings, flight restrictions and political pressure.

Reports of GPS jamming and spoofing have surged across Europe since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, affecting aircraft, ships and drones. Russia says such measures are defensive.

In early May, NATO jets were scrambled NATO jets after drones crossed into Latvian airspace from Russia, while regional officials have also acknowledged cases in which Ukrainian drones appeared to stray after Russian jamming.

Ambiguity can restrain NATO, but repeated ambiguity can also radicalize the allies closest to the danger who are desperate for a deterring response.

Russia, famously the bear, is now poking one.

Putin Underprices European Blowback

Putin may have spent years trying to loosen America's grip on NATO, and in Trump he has found a useful facilitator of this goal, albeit for different reasons to the Kremlin's.

But the alliance Putin gets may be less pliable than the one he wanted.

A U.S.-dominated NATO gives Moscow a visible center of gravity and gives Europe a superpower referee.

A more European NATO, as the White House is pushing for, would still need U.S. power for a major war, and the weight of Washington's nuclear deterrence to check Russia's own arsenal.

But gray zone retaliation can include cyber responses, sanctions enforcement, maritime inspections, diplomatic expulsions, counter-sabotage operations and stricter air-policing rules before Article 5 is even invoked.

All of those carry the risk of severe escalation as European hawks win the argument for a more punishing response to Moscow. That is the blowback and miscalculation Putin may be underpricing.

America has been NATO's shield, but also its brake. If Europe concludes the brake no longer works, Putin may find that the danger was never Article 5 alone.

It was everything just below it.

2026 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.

This story was originally published May 28, 2026 at 10:35 AM.