Will the Ukraine crisis pull the U.S. into a war with Russia?

The rapid escalation, observers say, has made the once-theoretical risk of direct confrontation between Russia and the West a tangible possibility with little hope of the tension subsiding, maybe for years to come.

xe2x80x9cMy worry is that therexe2x80x99s a miscalculation, a misunderstanding, an accident, a mistakexe2x80x9d that touches off more widespread conflict, said Jim Townsend, who managed Europe and NATO policy at the Pentagon during the Obama administration.

xe2x80x9cHow long could we have this kind of risk? xe2x80xa6 I donxe2x80x99t see it ending.xe2x80x9d

Russiaxe2x80x99s advance through Ukraine has brought the Kremlinxe2x80x99s forces closer to NATOxe2x80x99s borders. Should those troops remain in Ukraine and Belarus, the xe2x80x9ccontact linexe2x80x9d would shift xe2x80x9csignificantly west,xe2x80x9d said Sam Charap, a Russia expert with Rand Corp. xe2x80x9cAnd that changes the strategic landscape.xe2x80x9d

xe2x80x9cPoland has relied on Belarus to serve the function of a buffer,xe2x80x9d he added. xe2x80x9cIf thatxe2x80x99s no longer there, thatxe2x80x99s just a totally different ballgame.xe2x80x9d

Russiaxe2x80x99s moves compelled Western officials last week to activate the NATO Response Force and its Very High Readiness Joint Defense Force for the first time in the alliancexe2x80x99s history. The mobilization, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, is meant to deter a Russian attack and prevent the war in Ukraine from spilling over into any NATO-allied country.

President Biden has ruled out putting U.S. troops in Ukraine, but he has authorized the deployment of an additional 14,000 military personnel along with elite F-35 fighters and Apache attack helicopters to allied countries in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, a sign of how seriously the United States hopes to ward off the Russian threat.

Gestures and statements such as Stoltenbergxe2x80x99s and Bidenxe2x80x99s are designed to dissuade Russian President Vladimir Putin from intentionally challenging the alliancexe2x80x99s resolve, but some wonder whether the message is getting through.

Alina Polyakova, president and CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis, said the Russian leader may be xe2x80x9cready and willingxe2x80x9d to test the alliancexe2x80x99s commitment to its collective defense. She pointed out that NATOxe2x80x99s 40,000-member response force xe2x80x9cpales in comparison to Russiaxe2x80x99s military capabilitiesxe2x80x9d in the region; the Kremlin has about 150,000 troops in and around Ukraine.

Russian forces have a history of playing dangerous games in NATO border areas. Recently, Russian fighter jets have conducted low or near-pass flights over U.S. ships in the Black Sea and U.S. surveillance aircraft flying over the Mediterranean. The potential for such maneuvers to result in a collision or confrontation xe2x80x94 and for that incident to spiral into a greater fight xe2x80x94 grows exponentially greater amid an active war.

Ukrainexe2x80x99s land borders with four NATO countries xe2x80x94 Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania xe2x80x94 have also emerged as potential hot spots. Observers are particularly concerned about the potential for humanitarian calamities as more than 500,000 refugees use those routes to flee the country.

Absent a peace deal, few expect that Ukrainians will lay down their arms even if Russia assumes formal control of their country. The resulting insurgency would make the business of occupation xe2x80x9croughxe2x80x9d for Russia, Townsend said, noting that Russian soldiers patrolling the countryxe2x80x99s borders will be operating xe2x80x9con a knifexe2x80x99s edge xe2x80xa6 because theyxe2x80x99re expecting a Ukrainian insurgent behind every tree.xe2x80x9d

But it would take a xe2x80x9creally serious incidentxe2x80x9d to touch off a wider war, said Anthony Cordesman, a national security analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who said the casualty count would need to be so high or seem so deliberate that NATO could not dismiss it as a mistake.

Ukraine and its border territories are also not the only places that could precipitate the sort of direct conflict with Russia that the United States wants to avoid. The intensity of the Russian onslaught in Ukraine has prompted Finland and Sweden, which share borders with Russia in the Arctic Circle and have long adopted a neutral posture, to publicly contemplate joining NATO xe2x80x94 a move that Russia warned last week would precipitate xe2x80x9cmilitary consequences.xe2x80x9d

The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, meanwhile, exist in a constant state of geographical vulnerability to assault, due to shared and often snarled borders with Russia and Belarus. Certain roads crossing Estonia dip in and out of snippets of Russian territory; the Baltics as a whole, meanwhile, could effectively be cut off from the rest of Europe via the Suwalki Corridor, a 65-mile stretch of Lithuanian-Polish border that lies between Belarus and the tiny Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, on the Baltic Sea.

All NATO members, meanwhile, remain potentially vulnerable to cyberattacks, which Russia has proved in recent years to be adept at manipulating to its advantage. The NATO secretary general has said cyberattacks could trigger the alliancexe2x80x99s collective defense pact, but it remains unclear what type or magnitude of assault it would take to warrant such a response.

How likely Russia is to pick battles along new fronts may depend on how long Ukraine can keep up its resistance. The more Russia is worn out from the fight there, experts say, it becomes less likely Putin will want to pursue other ambitions where the long-term risk of failure is far greater.

The moment of truth will come if and when a NATO member decides to call upon its allies to help battle back any direct Russian aggression. The collective defense pact has been invoked only once in NATOxe2x80x99s history, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. It is untested when it comes to a war in Europe.

xe2x80x9cThe credibility of the alliance is on the line,xe2x80x9d Townsend said. xe2x80x9cIf our credibility is found wanting, if NATO proves that itxe2x80x99s not quite able to do the things that wexe2x80x99ve talked about being able to do, then that is a win for Putin.xe2x80x9d

Yet even if the 30 NATO member nations are able to maintain the unity that they have found in recent weeks to stave off further Russian aggression, it is almost impossible to avoid some spillover effects from the Ukrainian experience thus far, observers say.

While officials are not seeing Russiaxe2x80x99s recent nuclear threats as cause for panic, nobody knows what kind of backlash the free-falling ruble could create in a nation of 144 million people, most of whom receive their information through pro-Kremlin media. There are also global implications for financial markets that are often an afterthought in national security discussions, such as the agricultural sector, where Ukraine and Russia together produce over a quarter of the worldxe2x80x99s wheat supply.

xe2x80x9cNo matter what happens now, therexe2x80x99s going to be some forms of spillover, whether xe2x80xa6 general instability arising from refugee flows or broader global implications because of Ukrainexe2x80x99s key role in some of these export markets,xe2x80x9d said Polyakova, with the Center for European Policy Analysis, predicting there will be xe2x80x9cmore conflicts that the United States and Europe have to manage.xe2x80x9d

xe2x80x9cThatxe2x80x99s the reality wexe2x80x99re looking at already,xe2x80x9d she added, xe2x80x9cregardless of what exactly the outcome in Ukraine is going to be.xe2x80x9d