Early last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that many officials in Europe have expressed concern that Russia will expand beyond its ongoing war in Ukraine and start eyeing other regional targets. As last week neared its end, those fears appeared prescient. The New York Times reported:
Russia’s war with Ukraine spilled into Romania, a member of NATO, on Friday when the Romanian authorities said that a Russian drone had hit an apartment building in a major port city, wounding two people. It was the first known time that a Russian drone had caused damage and injuries in a major urban area on the territory of the Western military alliance.
Russian drones have repeatedly crashed without causing casualties along the Danube River border between Romania and Ukraine since 2023. But the drone crash on Friday, on the roof of a residential compound in the port city, Galati, sharply escalated tensions between NATO and Moscow.
The developments were quickly condemned by a great many European leaders, and Matthew Whitaker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, said in an online post, “We stand with our NATO ally Romania and condemn this reckless incursion on its territory. Our thoughts are with the injured in Galati. We will defend every inch of NATO territory.”
The sentiment was certainly welcome, though it was difficult not to notice that it was not echoed by Donald Trump, whose weakness toward Vladimir Putin has been especially humiliating in recent months. In fact, the American president had nothing to say about the incident at all despite a seemingly endless stream of online missives about a great many unrelated topics.
What’s more, while the Russian drone hitting an apartment in Romania sparked international concerns, it was also part of a pattern of incidents that have unfolded since Trump returned to the White House. Last September, for example, more than a dozen Russian drones entered Polish airspace, prompting NATO to scramble fighter jets to shoot them down.
Around the same time, there was a 12-minute incursion from Russian pilots violating Estonian airspace.
In general, while Trump rarely misses an opportunity to thump his chest and brag about his toughness, the Republican’s reaction to these incidents can charitably be described as muted. In fact, when asked in September about what transpired in the air above Estonia, President Bystander appeared rather clueless, telling reporters he hadn’t been briefed on what transpired.
That came a day after a related question, in which Trump replied, “Well, I’m going to have to look at it. They’ll be briefing me in a short while.”
In recent weeks, the Republican president has repeatedly criticized NATO as a “paper tiger” because its members chose not to participate in his misguided war with Iran, but he has offered no comparable criticisms of Russia for incidents inside NATO member nations.
I wonder why that is.
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