For the powers, the salami tactic is attractive. It consists of cutting steaks progressively. With the enlargement of NATO, violations of international law, regime changes and the international proliferation of its military bases, the United States reduced the security and international impact of the Russians and ignited Moscow’s outrage. But considering all the actions in isolation, they did not seem so scandalous, at least to justify a violent response. However, over time, the United States was achieving an expansionist goal; the Kremlin, looking back and seeing that salamia ended, desperately invaded Ukraine, with the intention of hiding a little.

Since then, the war between Ukraine and Russia is basically a proxy war: NATO is fighting Russia with the Army and the State of Ukraine. This does not mean that Kiev has at its disposal all the military means that the West has. In that too, Washington has used the salami tactic. It is known that since 2014 NATO has been in full swing in Ukraine to train the army and prepare it for war, with bases for, among other things, spying.

But once Russia began to invade Ukraine, the Western leaders declared that they continued to provide political, economic and military aid for the defence of Ukraine, but not for attacking Russia. If tanks, aircraft and Western missiles were used against the Russians, Moscow could interpret it as a declaration of war. That is why, instead of giving weapons of attack, mercenaries and military equipment at the same time, Ukraine has been given little by little.

Washington has been able to exploit the salami tactics well. If we look back, there is no doubt that de facto the West is at war with Russia. NATO and Kiev have forced many of the red lines that the Kremlin has put in its ranks and Moscow has done nothing about it. It is in this logic that we should also read the invasion of Russia that the Ukrainian army carried out this summer.

But Ukraine is losing the war. Russia reconsidered the conflict as a war of attribution in the fall of 2022 and since then, despite the problems, its roadmap is progressing with increasingly better results. There are not many alternatives. Peace negotiation would be one way. The problem is that NATO and the Ukrainian Government have difficulty explaining to the Ukrainian population that it will have much less territory than the 2022 peace agreements provided for in exchange for many deaths and destruction. For the Ukrainians, however, it is less bad than continuing in the war.

The problem is NATO, because its image and prestige would be greatly eroded. So Washington has only two options left. The first, another nation (Georgia, if there is a change of government in the October elections?) The opening of a second against Russia or, the second, the fragmentation of salamia by launching missiles on the territory of the Russian federation between Ukraine and NATO, which would probably not change the course of the war.

Would the Kremlin respond or focus on the victory of the Ukrainian war by keeping its head cool? If Russia were to give a strong response to a Western country or use a tactical nuclear weapon, the event could favour direct confrontation between NATO or one of its alliance partners and Russia. In this way, Russia would be opened a second front outside Ukraine and other armies could start fighting next to the Ukrainian side. All possible scenarios are terrible and perhaps distant, but the dangers of salamia tactics are always there.