As Russian Drones Fly Over NATO Airspace, The Trump Administration Seems Ready to Give Up on Peace

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has been heating up over the last few weeks, as Russian drones have seemingly entered into North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) airspace. Amid renewed calls for action against Russian aggression, the United States and its European allies are gauging the situation and considering new punitive measures on their enemy. Ukrainian dictator (he is operating outside of his term without any elections on the horizon) Volodymyr Zelensky, who is attempting to draw NATO into direct confrontation with Russia to save himself and his country’s borders, stated, “Intelligence now indicates that the Russians are using tankers to launch and operate drones against European countries.” Of course, the tankers that he is referring to are part of the so-called “shadow fleet” that is meant to maneuver around American and European economic sanctions to allow Russia to retain the ability to export oil to other countries. Aside from economic bullying and geopolitics, the main issue at hand is whether NATO is going to confront Russia militarily to prevent incursions into allied airspace.

The largest of the incursions, where roughly twenty Russian drones flew over the Polish countryside, coincided with the Charlie Kirk assassination on September 10, and although all of the drones were either eliminated by NATO jets or crashed without much damage, Russia is being accused of intentionally causing mischief. Three Russian fighter jets supposedly remained in Estonia’s airspace for a full twelve minutes, marking the fourth time that the Estonian airspace was violated within a month (the Italian Air Force, which was stationed in the country, responded to one of the incidents). A drone was spotted over the airspace of Romania and Latvia, as well as near airports in Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands (while Lithuania was paranoid and temporarily closed an airport because it thought that drones were present).

Although Belarus, which is an ally of Russia, has come out with a statement claiming that Ukraine is jamming drone signals, which has led to Russian drones straying from their intended targets; some analysts believe that this is being done deliberately in order to test NATO for weaknesses and potential exploitation. By distracting NATO from its goals in Ukraine, Russia can force European countries to pull resources away to defend their own borders. Regardless of whether Russia is flying drones intentionally over Ukraine, or Ukraine is deliberately causing the drones to fly over NATO airspace in order to drag the alliance into a hot war with Russia, we should not expect anything good to come from this.

In fact, President Donald Trump changed his stance from Russia accidentally violating European airspace to signaling that NATO can and should shoot down Russian aircraft. This brings the war to the next phase, because if the United States military is willing to confront Russia openly and directly (or allow its European partners to do the same), there is little hope of a peaceful resolution, even after the president met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska (the hawkish Democrats had a huge problem with that one, because diplomacy is not their favorite thing). Now, the Trump administration is considering sending Ukraine Tomahawk long-range cruise missiles, and it appears that the new president is no different from the old one. The Joe Biden administration would pretend that it was staying principled and not supplying certain types of weapons that would escalate the conflict with Russia, but then, it relented months later, until the same cycle repeated with the next weapon. The military-industrial complex will fight, regardless of which party is in power, to keep the war going for as long as Americans can stomach the bloodshed of distant people. President Trump is compromised to the agendas of the powers that be.

These incursions have ramped up talks of revisiting a no-fly zone over Ukraine, and such an operation would inevitably lead to direct confrontation between NATO and Russia. NATO may look to expand its European Sky Shield Initiative to ensure protection of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants and the cities of Odessa and Lviv. If NATO defends the airspace in central and western Ukraine, it would free up resources for the nation to defend its eastern front, and it would allow the Zelensky regime to be able to more easily develop the economy in areas that would no longer require a military buildup. Even if a new no-fly zone does not develop, Poland is working on amending its laws to allow it to shoot down Russian drones over Ukraine without NATO approval (or that of the European Union). Since Poland is protected by NATO, the country (or any European nation) could go rogue and lead the United States down a path toward war with Russia. Either way, if you do not want American troops directly engaging Russian soldiers on the battlefields or throughout European or American cities, you should not support any form of no-fly zone. The justifications for it may sound good on the surface, but those advocating for it will not tell you the deeper implications.

As Russia bombards Ukrainian cities, such as Zaporizhzhia, Khmelnytskyi, Sumy, Odessa, and Kiev, with drone and missile attacks, and Ukraine strikes at Russian territory; we must ask ourselves how much longer we want this war to persist. Ukraine is dependent on American taxpayers for support, and Russia is willing to end the war with territorial concessions. Diplomacy is possible, but it is being denied by both sides. The bloodshed can end, but the powers that be benefit if we are too ignorant and passive to demand termination of the conflict. Therefore, the war will continue until there are massive calls or protests to end it. The neoconservatives and elites will not give up hope that their manipulation of Ukraine (from as far back as the Barack Obama administration and earlier) will end up leading to another country joining NATO and the weakening of Russia, and the choice is ours whether we want to play their war games.

Thank you for reading, and please check out my book, The Global Bully, and website.