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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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Putin's playing a game of chicken with the Europeans, and
so far the Europeans are the chickens. The NATO has
pretty much done nothing but talk about these fighter jets
and drones intercepted a couple. Take your pick of experts
and former military bosses chiming in on the why over
the weekend, and you'll get as many different answers. Are
these incursions a mistake, No, there's too many of them now.

(00:21):
It's orchestrated clearly. 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 them 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 that

(00:41):
it shouldn't matter. It should be all for one, one
for all. The question then becomes, how do you deal
with that? And you've got to listen to a guy
called Maritz Break. He's with the Center for Advanced Security,
Strategic and Integration Studies. He says, you've got to be
more forceful with the Russians. The Turks. They shot down
a Russian jet back in twenty fifteen. You might remember
that seconds after it entered their airspace. And guess what.

(01:03):
Putin didn't go to war with Turkey, did he. The
fighter pilots from Russia learned pretty quickly just whose airspace
belongs to who. For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge,
listen live to News Talk Set B from five am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio