Article 5 doesn’t mandate the use of military force in support of an ally, and it certainly wasn’t meant to be exploited by false flags (or even genuine accidents) like Poland’s liberals seem to want to do.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico recently made headlines for telling his compatriots that he’ll do his utmost to keep their country out of war with Russia, including if it’s asked to participate in such a conflict through Article 5. During the same event, he also warned that European NATO and Russia are closer to war than ever, adding in reference to those of his counterparts who just visited Ukraine that “I am deeply concerned that they are merely looking for a pretext for a major conflict between NATO and Russia.”
This is especially true as regards Poland’s ruling liberals, who appear to be plotting a major escalation against Russia, but only if they can manipulate the conservative president into going along with it. Liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk has been fearmongering about a Russian attack since spring but has ramped up his rhetoric to the point of hysteria this month while Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski provocatively claimed that “Russia is at war with Europe” already. They might thus cook up a false flag with Zelensky.
On that topic, former conservative Polish President Andrzej “Duda Belatedly Confirmed That Zelensky Tried To Manipulate Poland Into War With Russia” when speaking last year about late 2022’s Przewodów incident after leaving office, which saw an errant Ukrainian air defense missile kill two Poles. At the time, “Ukraine Tried To Trick NATO Into Starting World War III After It Accidentally Bombed Poland” by lying that it was a Russian missile, but Duda didn’t take the bait despite some thinking that he would.
Likewise, September 2025’s accidental Russian drone incursions into Poland (likely caused by jamming veering them off course) didn’t result in his successor Karol Nawrocki taking the bait either after Tusk’s government lied that a Russian missile destroyed a house when it was an errant air defense one. The Polish deep state’s failed attempt to manipulate Nawrocki into war with Russia just one year ago serves as the precedent for reasonably suspecting that something similar might be attempted yet again.
Nawrocki’s spokesman recently accused Tusk of pushing “a fabricated lie to electrify public opinion” after claiming to have received a CIA report warning about an impending attack by Russia, and Trump confirmed that Nawrocki has the situation “under control”. The US is also reportedly planning a huge European military drawdown, which it wouldn’t countenance if it seriously expected that Article 5 might soon be tested by Russia. Neither Nawrocki nor Trump is therefore expected to fall for any false flag.
On the off-chance that they did, and Sikorski’s previously proposed plans to either intercept Russian projectiles over Ukraine or impose a no-fly zone there are approved by Nawrocki at the credible risk of sparking World War III, then Fico wants his people to know that Slovakia won’t be dragged into the war. After all, Article 5 doesn’t mandate the use of military force in support of an ally, and it certainly wasn’t meant to be exploited by false flags (or even genuine accidents) like Poland’s liberals seem to want to do.
Last week’s Lithuanian drone incident was likely a Ukrainian false flag as explained here, and when that’s coupled with the latest fearmongering about Russia from the European elite led by the Tusk-Sikorski duo, there are reasons to expect that a false flag is being planned in Poland. So long as Nawrocki stands firm, especially if Trump (to whom he tends to defer) wavers, then the major escalation that’s being planned against Russia at the credible risk of World War III will be averted. It might all come down to him alone.
I know I've already said this, often even, but now... I am truly, truly worried.
It seems that the entire European establishment, the plutocrats, their political and media lackeys, seem seized by a panic crisis in the face of the situation and especially the economic, social, and political prospects, and that, as usual in European history, they want to escape the immense tsunami composed of all the accumulated crises, through war. Or rather, they do not want war but want to make their population believe in it in order to allow a forced and totalitarian federalization of the EU, an unprecedented Orwellian restriction on public freedoms and individual rights.
The EU is collapsing under debt. Unlike the USA, it has no mineral or energy resources, and far from attracting brains, it attracts only the poorest and welfare profiteers from all the shit-holes of the world. It no longer creates intellectual patents, it is no longer intellectually audible. Its native demography is disastrous, its industry in tatters. Macron has a 16% approval rating, Merz 10, and almost the same in the UK. In Spain, for 10 years, illegitimate and arch-minority governments have been succeeding one another. In Italy, the hopes raised by the neo-fascist Meloni have collapsed in the face of hallucinatory inaction and incredible clumsiness.
All this little world seems in panic and sees only the militarization of the continent to save the furniture.
To this day, I find the situation far more worrying than it was at the beginning of the summer of 1914.
Putin keeps his calm. For how long?
I remain obsessed with this phrase from Putin and I would like our warmongers to keep it in mind, if indeed they know it:
"I keep from my childhood in the streets of Leningrad the principle that one must always avoid a fight as much as possible, but when it becomes inevitable one must strike first, fast, hard, and decisively."
No one will be able to say they did not know.
Fico won't be given a choice.