Helen Saulnier 
Whilst U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) planners have extended focused on getting ready for the contingency of a substantial-scale conflict with Russia, the Ukraine war has designed a exclusive set of conditions that make a a lot more limited Russian assault plausible. This Perspective outlines the traits of the potential Russian attack that are appropriate to informing a U.S. or NATO reaction, including Moscow’s probable motivations for launching the attack, what the United States could consider to achieve in its reaction, and how various styles of U.S. or NATO responses might assistance to advance U.S. ambitions in the conflict.
Using four hypothetical confined Russian attack situations, the authors check out how variations across two proportions of a U.S. or NATO response — the proportionality of a achievable kinetic response and the nature of non-kinetic responses — could direct to trade-offs in the pursuit of different U.S. targets. From this examination, the authors recognize crucial concerns to help U.S. policymakers weighing how to handle several contingencies.
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