OPINION:
Russian ruler Vladimir Putin has exhausted President Trump’s patience. Last week at the United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Trump was asked, “Do you think that NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft if they enter their airspace?” His response was revealing: “Yes, I do.”
For those who have followed the war in Ukraine since Russia’s unprovoked attack in 2022, Mr. Trump has signaled his desire to have that war end. During his 2024 campaign, he insisted that he would end the war in a matter of days. Today, he willingly confesses that such a prediction was somewhat Pollyannaish.
He has solemnly come to realize that Mr. Putin is untrustworthy and has no intention of ending the war under any conditions except those favorable to him. Indeed, the former KGB colonel subscribes to the age-old Russian view that “what is ours is ours and what is yours is negotiable.” That is not a formula for peace, as Mr. Trump appears to have concluded.
The effort to cajole Mr. Putin was as unproductive as a sheep casually discussing with a wolf about what will be on the menu for dinner. The Russian dictator has one goal: to reassemble Eastern Europe into the former Soviet Union. The problem is that since those countries, including Ukraine, escaped Soviet domination, they have no desire to return to it. Indeed, many of them are now NATO members, preferring to be under the protective wing of European allies.
Mr. Putin knows this and has decided that testing NATO’s resolve by violating its airspace will result in a sheepish response from the alliance, demonstrating to former Eastern Bloc countries that they have chosen a paper tiger as a protector. That may be as bad a miscalculation by Mr. Putin as his decision to set into motion NATO’s expansion into Scandinavia in 2023. Nevertheless, his recent military provocations involving overflight violations above Poland, Estonia and Denmark signal that he has no intention of retreating from his aggressive behavior.
Indeed, he is doing what wolves do: stalking for prey.
Enter Mr. Trump’s pithy comment suggesting that NATO should shoot down Russian aircraft. It’s an overdue suggestion that acknowledges the timeless wisdom of punching a bully in the nose to deter being pushed around by an aggressive intimidator. Yet this is a bully with a nuclear arsenal second only to the U.S. Although there is risk in that, President Trump is also signaling that he is fed up. Sadly, even his suggestion that NATO confront Russia over its territorial airspace is not enough.
Nor are threats of sanctions alone sufficient to challenge Mr. Putin. As long as China and India are willing to give Russia economic relief through oil purchases, Mr. Putin will be sufficiently bolstered to continue the war. Therefore, until Russia is seriously confronted with a new reality to its European aggression, there will be no change, and the war will continue to take lives and treasure. Russia thinks it can wait out that dilemma. Ukraine is less capable, and the U.S. and Europe seem more impatient than resolved to be decisive.
Military action is necessary, and should happen immediately. First, the U.S. and NATO should declare a defensive no-fly zone over all of NATO and Ukraine. Russia’s incursions provoke this defensive response. Second, NATO air defense units should be forward deployed on Ukrainian territory, again as a defensive measure. Indeed, NATO is justified in safeguarding its territory.
Third, if Russian forces attack any NATO forces, it will reserve the right to counter hostile acts, even those originating from Ukrainian or Russian territory. Finally, a ban on all Russian oil exports, on land and at sea, must be implemented, along with 100% secondary sanctions on countries that accept imports.
There will be those who denounce the steps determined to counter Mr. Putin’s aggression. They will claim this will produce World War III. They will seem to have forgotten the results of Munich in 1939, when Western powers capitulated to the dictator of that era. We cannot cower now, or we will set the conditions for a war in Europe that will inevitably involve the U.S. No one wants that to happen, but it surely will if we allow Mr. Putin to bleed Ukraine to death.
Mr. Trump’s instincts to end this awful war are sincere, but now is the time to declare a bold defensive initiative by NATO that makes clear to Russia that it and the U.S. are resolved to end this war, even if they must act militarily to do so. Mr. Putin’s overflights are designed to intimidate NATO. Now he must beware that Ukraine is becoming a de facto member of the alliance, for which he again has himself to thank.
• L. Scott Lingamfelter is a retired U.S. Army colonel and combat veteran (1973-2001) and former member of the Virginia House of Delegates (2002-2018). He is the author of “Desert Redleg: Artillery Warfare in the First Gulf War” (University Press of Kentucky, 2020) and “Yanks in Blue Berets: American U.N. Peacekeepers in the Middle East” (UPK, 2023). He is authoring a new book on the future of warfare.
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