The Atlantic Alliance increases its Rapid Intervention Force

 The summit of the Atlantic Alliance in Madrid promises to be the most difficult in its history; with the end of the dualism of the cold war, with a bipolar world, which was based on the balance of terror, the acceleration of contingent evolution forces the Western military alliance to think and act in a preventive and more incisive manner than in the past. Nuclear deterrence is no longer enough in a scenario where we have returned to traditional warfare models, which we no longer imagined could occur. If in the background remains the Chinese question and that of Islamic terrorism, which is exploiting the increased attention on the Ukrainian war to regain consensus among the increasingly poor populations, the urgency to contain Russia is the most urgent issue, both from the point of view political, than military. A possible affirmation of Moscow would create a deleterious precedent for the world scene, with the non-respect of international law as a method of affirming the projects of the strongest states: it would mean a concrete danger for democracies, with governments increasingly obliged to respond quickly and not. mediated by parliamentary logic and, consequently, even more delegitimized. The temptation of almost autocratic executives would be a logical result in a situation where absenteeism and distrust of the electoral body signal a progressive detachment from the institutions. It is not impossible that within Putin's project, an accessory result to the result of the reconquest of Ukraine, is precisely that of weakening Western democracies, an objective, moreover, traveled several times with the intrusion of Russian hackers, is in phase of electoral recurrence, and in trying to direct the approval of Western public opinion towards sovereignties. In this general framework, which is perhaps less urgent than the war in progress, but is equally important, the Atlantic Alliance intends to take a further measure to contain Moscow, in addition to continuing to supply Kiev with increasingly sophisticated weapons, to profoundly change the structure the rapid intervention force, which will increase from 40,000 to 300,000 units; this does not mean, for now, that all the troops will be concentrated in the areas bordering Russia, however, the request for active protection by the Baltic countries and Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, in this phase determines an increase in the soldiers of the Alliance in these territories, as well as a greater capacity to mobilize in case of need. In practical terms, it is not a question of recruiting new military units, but of contributing with already trained soldiers, belonging to the national armies that make up the Atlantic Alliance, and ready for combat with a rotating presence system. From a political point of view this is a clear signal to Putin, who thus sees an increase in the presence of opponents right on the Russian borders: a result obtained only with his completely wrong calculations: what will need to be verified will be whether the Kremlin will be able to contain its own opposition without exceeding with provocations: the probability of an accident will be more and more possible if Moscow continues to fly over the skies of the Baltic countries with its air vehicles. At the point where the military situation in Ukraine has developed, the measure adopted by the Atlantic Alliance appears necessary but brings a potential clash with the Russian military forces even closer, also because from Moscow they proceed to make the meetings of Western leaders coincide with acts completely outside the normal military logic, such as indiscriminately hitting targets of an exclusive civil nature, causing free deaths and devastation, which have the sole purpose of terrorizing the Ukrainian population, but also of making public the threat to Westerners. If this tragic practice reveals an intrinsic weakness of Russia, both military and political, the impression is that Putin has realized that he cannot carry out his goal and that therefore he will intensify the violence in spite of everything: it is a question of a tactics already tested in Syria, where, however, the opponents were much weaker and less organized; if Russian military strength has been overestimated by the Kremlin itself, this could lead to a refusal of any compromise towards peace by deliberately dragging the West into war, precisely because Putin, at this point, cannot afford to be defeated. In any case, the US must be credited with an error similar to that of not having intervened in Syria, that is, that of not having involved Ukraine in the Atlantic Alliance or in some other form of protection: Putin, in that case, probably would not have moved.