Nineteen Russian drones crossed into Polish territory this week, triggering a scramble of jets, the shutdown of airspace over the country’s east, and one drone crashing through the roof of a civilian home. No casualties, no explosions—but Warsaw was rattled enough to invoke Article 4 of the NATO treaty, calling for urgent alliance consultations. That’s only the eighth such invocation in NATO’s 75-year history.

Moscow insists the drones were misdirected by Ukrainian jamming. Poland and its neighbors aren’t buying it. They see a deliberate probe: gray zone tactics, the kind designed to test NATO’s “every inch” security guarantee without tripping Article 5.

Why now? Several possible signals overlap:

* To NATO: your defenses are thin, and your promises aren’t ironclad.

* To Belarus: don’t get ideas about cutting a deal with the West.

* To Trump: Russia retains escalation cards outside Ukraine, and can play them at will.

The immediate NATO response looks modest—some European jets and ships, not much more. Without U.S. weight, the symbolism is greater than the military effect. But that symbolism cuts both ways. If Russia can steadily erode NATO’s credibility with low-cost drones, credibility itself is what’s in play.

It won’t spark World War III. But history suggests that the real danger is not in the provocation, but in the miscalculation that might follow.

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