Military

How big a military threat is Russia, really?

Yet knowing how to confront gray zones has been tricky for the Pentagon because the US government “strictly separates phases of peace and war,” Ms. Kagan adds. “We’ve created a model of conflict suited for the Cold War era and possibly for the early post-Cold War era, but not to this era of intense competition.”

Part of what the Pentagon has been trying to do to counter Putin is to engage in propaganda, or “information warfare,” as it’s known in military parlance. In this realm, narratives matter, and some analysts express concern that worrying too much about whether a US military move could be interpreted as provoking Putin somehow rationalizes the Russian leader’s behavior, and plays into the Russian narrative.