“What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones?” President Trump asked on his social media account on Wednesday, hours after the Russian intrusions led to the first shoot-downs of enemy targets over NATO territory since the alliance was created 76 years ago.
He did not protest the flight of the drones, which penetrated deep over the Polish border, a far more expansive and seemingly deliberate provocation than any previous ones during the 43-month-long war in Ukraine. Mr. Trump added cryptically: “Here we go!”
The post came just hours after Israel took Mr. Trump by surprise, dropping bombs in Qatar — home of the regional headquarters of United States Central Command — without so much as a courtesy notification to Washington.
It was the latest example of the bystander phase of the Trump presidency. Much of the time, Mr. Trump insists he alone can bring about peace — to Ukraine, to the Middle East — by force of personality and his stature on the world stage. But during weeks like this one, when allies and adversaries alike appear to be ignoring him or testing American will to shape events, or both, he adopts a what-can-you-do shrug, online or in the Oval Office, as if he is an observer with minor stakes in the outcome.
It is an odd juxtaposition: He is openly seeking the Nobel Peace Prize for his interventions in six — sometimes he says seven, sometimes even more — conflicts around the world. At other times, he says there is nothing much he can do.
His response to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s move on Tuesday morning to bomb a Hamas meeting site in Qatar was puzzling enough. Mr. Trump applauded the idea of killing the Hamas leaders, though they were meeting to consider a U.S.-led, Qatar-mediated cease-fire proposal, one of the reasons the country was considered off limits for attacks on the group.
“I was very unhappy about it — very unhappy about every aspect,” he told reporters. Mr. Trump learned of the strike only after the United States picked up the radar tracks of the Israeli planes headed to drop what were likely to be American-supplied munitions on their target. But he described no price that Israel would have to pay. (Mr. Netanyahu, in public speeches, has reveled in keeping the United States in the dark, suggesting it was better for everyone if he acted first, avoiding leaks and tense debates with Washington.)
Mr. Trump reportedly had a heated conversation with Mr. Netanyahu on Tuesday, Axios reported, telling him that bombing a major American ally in the Middle East, even in pursuit of Hamas, was destructive of Israel’s goals, and of America’s. Then he had another friendlier call, as if the storm had passed. That was most likely just what Mr. Netanyahu was betting on.
The Israelis made the case that they would pursue Hamas leadership wherever it was, and sounded unapologetic about launching an attack inside Qatar’s territory. Officials said nothing, publicly, about the president’s mild rebuke.
But it was Mr. Trump’s reaction to the deep incursion into Poland’s airspace on Tuesday evening, one of the most striking into NATO territory in modern times, that was, in many ways, the most puzzling.
For the first three years of the war in Ukraine, Washington’s mantra was that it would “defend every inch” of NATO territory. The Russians were careful not to test that, and the one time a stray missile hit inside Poland, killing two farmers in November 2022, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was awakened in case the United States had to respond. It turned out to be a false alarm; a Ukrainian missile, intended for Russian targets, had gone astray.
Yet when dozens of Russian drones flew deep into Poland on Tuesday night, there was not a word from the White House until Mr. Trump’s post. Perhaps the good luck that there were no injuries made it easier for Mr. Trump to shrug off. Still, he left it to Polish leaders, and the secretary general of NATO, Mark Rutte, to issue a warning to the Russians.
Addressing President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Rutte said: “Stop the war in Ukraine. Stop the escalating war,” noting that the conflict was taking the lives of civilians and striking civilian infrastructure. “Stop violating allied airspace. And know that we stand ready, that we are vigilant and that we will defend every inch of NATO territory.”
It is hard to prove that the incursion was deliberate, but given how deep the drones went into Poland, it certainly seemed that way, a test of NATO and Polish defenses — and willpower. In a video posted on Wednesday, Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s deputy prime minister, said the drones “did not veer off course, but were deliberately targeted.” He said Mr. Putin was “mocking” Mr. Trump’s peace efforts.
To historians who chronicled the Cold War, this kind of action by Russia seemed familiar, just updated for the age of drones. “The Soviets used to slow traffic on the highway to Berlin” when it was cut off from the rest of Western Europe, Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian who has written books on that period, noted on Wednesday. “They would cause incidents at Checkpoint Charlie, and measure the reaction. American diplomats came to call it ‘salami tactics.’”
Mr. Putin may have reason to push the envelope. Nothing Mr. Trump had predicted would happen after his Alaska summit last month, including direct negotiations between Mr. Putin and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, had come to pass. And no penalties have followed, though Mr. Trump is trying to get European nations to put sanctions on China, among other nations, for buying Russian oil. He has made no promise to do the same, even though he has levied them on India for its purchases.
But as one European diplomat noted, asking not to be quoted by name, Mr. Putin is not especially sensitive to statements by NATO or its European member states. If anything gets Mr. Putin’s attention, it will be action by the United States, the nuclear superpower at the center of the alliance. And the indications from the United States in the days leading up to the incursion were, if anything, signals that the Europeans were increasingly responsible for their own defense.
Only last week, the Trump administration announced it was ending a training program for frontline European states, mostly in the Baltics, that was the most visible reminder that the United States was participating in the defense of vulnerable NATO allies. The move was cast as a money-saving decision.
But it was likely to be interpreted by the Russians as another sign that the Americans were leaving the defense of Europe to the Europeans, and that the time to test those defenses had arrived.
David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.
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