WORLD ROUNDUPVladimir Putin Is Testing the West—and Its Unity | Jair Bolsonaro Is Running Out of Options | Engaging China Can Check Russian Power in the Arctic, and more

Vladimir Putin Is Testing the West—and Its Unity  (Economist)
NATO must resist Russia’s efforts to corrode it from within.

Venezuelan Boat Attacks: Utterly Unprecedented and Patently Predictable  (Gabor Rona, Lawfare)
The unlawful policies and practices of the previous post-9/11 administrations laid the foundation for the Trump administration’s current legal overreach.

Legally Available Options in Response to Russia’s Penetrations of NATO Airspace  (Michael Schmitt, Just Security)
On Sept. 19, three Russian MiG-31 Foxhound fighters penetrated Estonian airspace over the Gulf of Finland for approximately 12 minutes. Finnish jets intercepted them, NATO scrambled Italian F-35s deployed to Estonia as part of the NATO Air Policing mission, and Swedish fighters monitored the Russian aircraft after they left Estonian airspace. Predictably, Russia claimed its aircraft were on a “scheduled flight … in strict compliance with international airspace regulations and did not violate the borders of other states, as confirmed by objective monitoring.”
This was only the latest in a series of Russian intrusions into NATO airspace. On Sept. 13, a Geran-2 drone flew into Romanian airspace, where two Romanian Air Force F-16s tracked it for nearly an hour before it departed. The Geran-2 (an Iranian-designed Shahid-136) is a loitering munition, also known as a kamikaze drone. The incident followed the breaching of Polish airspace by more than 24 drones, including Geran-2s and Gerbera decoy drones, for a period of seven hours on September 11. Polish F-16s and Dutch F-35s intercepted them, shooting down four, while German Patriot missiles in Poland went on high alert. NATO promptly launched Operation Eastern Sentry to enhance its defenses on its Eastern flank.
The operational purpose of the Russian actions is perhaps clear. Moscow is apparently testing NATO’s readiness, including command and control, defensive protocols, reaction times, force disposition, and defensive gaps or weaknesses. Such probes are classic indications and warnings (“I & W”) of escalating adversary intentions, or even preparation for attack. And Russian forces continue to probe NATO defenses, most recently by flying combat aircraft along Latvia’s border last Friday, sparking a scramble by Hungarian interceptors. (Cont.)