Ryan Bridge: Putin's game of chicken

Putin’s playing a game of chicken with the Europeans and Europeans are the chickens.

NATO’s so far done nothing but talk about these fighter jets and drones.

Take your pick of experts and former military bosses chiming on the why over the weekend, and you’ll get 10 different answers.

Are these incursions a mistake? 

No. Too many now.

So he’s doing this for one of two reasons. To keep more territory in Ukraine. Freak the Europeans a bit. They might buckle and give him more of what he wants.

OR. He’s picking off countries one-by-one to test the NATO response.

Lining up his next target.

Does NATO respond differently to a Polish incursion than a Danish one?

The point of NATO is it shouldn’t matter. All for one, one for all.

The question then becomes how to you deal with it.

I’m inclined to agree with Moritz Brake.

He’s with the Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies.

He says you’ve got to be more forceful. 

The Turks shot down a Russian jet in 2015 seconds after it entered their airspace.

Guess what? 

Putin didn’t go to war with Turkey.

Fighter pilots learnt pretty quickly who’s airspace was who’s.

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