Germany is calling it daily hybrid warfare. Latvia's president says it has already started. The CIA has warned European partners that Russian services are eyeing sabotage against Baltic infrastructure, and a Congressional Research Service report puts the tally at 151 Russian hybrid incidents across Europe since February 2022, with the rate roughly quadrupling and then tripling year over year (Legis1 2026). Every one of those data points is being read the same way in Berlin, Riga, and Washington: NATO's deterrent is eroding, and the alliance needs to respond before the erosion becomes irreversible. That reading gets the diagnosis wrong. The incident count is not the variable that tells you whether deterrence is failing. The variable that matters is the ceiling Russia still hasn't crossed, and on that measure the pattern looks less like a collapsing deterrent and more like one that is working, at a cost, exactly as gray-zone theory predicts it should. Read More…
