Poland Is The Strategic Fulcrum

The rest of NATO should pay attention.

Allan J. Feifer | September 9, 2026

A conspicuous lack of geopolitical knowledge has left many here and in Europe unable to identify real enemies. But not so the Baltic states, where decades of subjugation remain fresh in the minds of people who only recently regained their freedom. They see Russia for what it is: a warmongering Putin intent on restoring Greater Russia.

Yet even as NATO provides a formal Article 5 shield for these nations, another, more ambiguous arena of conflict receives far less attention in the West: the “grey zone” between peace and open war. Here Russia applies pressure through sabotage, cyber intrusion, disinformation, political interference, and other activities designed to destabilize its neighbors without provoking a military response. For the Baltic states, this shadow conflict is not theoretical; it’s a harbinger of what’s coming. Moscow undermines sovereignty by exploiting the space below the threshold of war, where Western legal structures and political hesitation expose Western weakness.

You might notice that I did not mention Ukraine once in the preceding paragraph. That’s because the grey-zone conflict has been ongoing longer than the war in Ukraine. Russia’s campaign of deniable aggression commenced well before the 2022 invasion. Moscow has spent decades testing Western tolerance through political interference, little green men, disinformation, cyberattacks, espionage, economic coercion, sabotage, and exploiting ethnic and political divisions. The Baltic states have experienced this pressure since regaining their independence. Russia’s actions against Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine beginning in 2014 demonstrated a broader strategy. The 2022 invasion was not the beginning; it simply marked the moment when Russia moved beyond the pretense that its ambitions were other than naked aggression.

Poland does not see Russian behavior as disconnected provocations or merely Putin being Putin. It sees a recurring strategic threat from a power whose ambitions have repeatedly brought it war and........

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