If Vladimir Putin attacks Poland, it will be his last failure and he will leave Polish soil with a broken nose, writes Polish journalist Andrew Retman in an analysis for EUobserver.
American intelligence warns that Russia is planning an attack on Poland to test NATO's resolve. According to Washington officials, a provocation is possible in the next few months.
Retman points out that this would be the fastest way to end the war in Ukraine and that such a military adventure would be the final failure of President Vladimir Putin.
The attack could be a limited ground invasion from Kaliningrad or Belarus or a missile strike on critical Polish infrastructure, US intelligence reported. Its goal would be to destroy NATO by showing that the US does not comply with Article Five for collective defense, and to scare the population of the EU.
The US warned before February 24, 2022, that Putin was about to invade Ukraine completely. And that would be in line with his strategy: fail, escalate.
He failed to bring about regime change in Ukraine through political subversion, so he escalated with a military invasion. Now he is failing in the war in Ukraine, so he is starting a continental war, no doubt accompanied by the rattling of nuclear weapons, to try to impose himself, the logic goes.
But in Poland, such a move would also mean its demise.
Even if US President Donald Trump were to withdraw US forces from Poland, Warsaw has the third-largest army in NATO and is the best-funded. It fortified its borders with Kaliningrad and Belarus years ago. Even if France, Germany, Italy, and Spain also show hesitation about Article 5, the United Kingdom, the Scandinavian and Baltic states, as well as Ukraine, would immediately help Poland repel Russia and strike back.
Meanwhile, Putin’s military and economy are exhausted by five years of losses in Ukraine and Western sanctions. The new Russian emperor will return from Poland not only naked but with a broken nose.
All of Putin's allies in the Global South, including Brazil, China, India, and South America, would abandon him, as I doubt that China's Xi Jinping, for example, would be happy to see the world economy burn in the flames of World War III just to help an aging Russian loser hang on to power a little longer, the author writes.
If his war with NATO also fails, the only remaining step on the escalation ladder is a nuclear strike.
The moment Putin's nuclear forces from the 12th Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense begin to remove warheads from their silos or his nuclear submarines begin to rise from Murmansk, Western intelligence will know. But it won't know how small his strike will be or where Putin plans to strike, which is likely to prompt the Pentagon to push Trump to strike first, just to be on the safe side.
If I know this from interviews with former NATO officials, then Putin and the Russian generals know it too - and they are not as illiterate or poor as they once were to happily join him in his funeral.
All of which is why I am optimistic that Putin's "fail, escalate" cycle will soon end with final failure (his fall from power), not final global escalation.