My new piece for Telegraph Blogs looks at NATO’s preparedness (ie lack of) for a new assertive Russia:

It is hard to imagine any situation in which Moscow decided that a full-scale military attack on central Europe would be a productive and winning idea. But what about something far more specifically linked to an argument asserting Russia’s “legitimate interests”?

Take Narva, an historic, predominantly Russian-speaking town in eastern Estonia two hours’ drive from St Petersburg. A half-hearted local attempt to join Russia back in 1991 through the doomed proclamation of a “Prinarovian Republic” fizzled out.

What if renewed demands for autonomy appear, prompting heavily armed “self-defence” irregulars to pop out of nowhere and reject all rule from Tallinn? What if Russian troops one night walk over the border and proclaim that Narva is now in Russia? What if Estonia’s attempts to respond are crippled by a massive cyber attack from somewhere in Siberia that turns off anything that needs electricity? Meanwhile Western media outlets are swamped by paid Russian trolls hissing that it’s all the West’s fault.

Nato will have been directly invaded. But, hey, it’s only a small invasion. And does anyone elsewhere in Nato actually care if a town full of Russian-speakers is abruptly bundled into Russia, or at least care enough to risk a much wider conflict?

Hitherto the answer to all these questions – above all in Moscow itself – has been that it’s best not to go there. Why take risks? Russia already has a staggering 17m square kilometres sprawling across eleven time zones from Finland round to Alaska. That territory is difficult enough to control and secure: why want more?

Plus Russia can’t be strong without joining the world economy as a more or less normal partner. If playing along with the rules and obligations that come with a modern economy means not messing with international borders, that’s a good deal for a few decades as Russia catches up after the disaster of communism.

Nato in turn has concluded that with Russia playing it sensible, defence efforts can be cut or moved elsewhere. Plus, Nato tells itself, no one in their right minds in Moscow will want to use force to mess with borders in Europe: that means ripping up the whole post-Cold War moral and political settlement that has benefited everyone enormously. Once that starts to unravel, how to stop a slump straight back to 1930s-style madness?

Lots of questions. Not very good answers.

It’s all about negotiating theory, where the battle is ostensibly about land or property but in fact is about who has the greater willpower and – if it comes to it – ruthlessness:

As we saw in the Vietnam war, it was not only about the size of the heavy US bombing stick. The communist Vietnamese offered another challenge. In effect they told Washington that they would tolerate more pain than the Americans were ready to impose. They were, in a word, tougher.

Of course it’s easier to present a tough face to the world when you do not have to grapple with domestic public opinion or forthcoming elections. Nonetheless they were indeed very tough. And duly won.

And who is better at calibrating risk? A few tightly-knit top people in Moscow? Or rambling NATO with all its governments and process?

Responding to all this in a principled, measured way (or even analysing it sensibly given the degradation of analytical and diplomatic capacity in Whitehall under successive governments) is hugely difficult. It means accurately working out what Vladimir Putin personally wants to achieve, and how he assesses the costs and benefits of alternative policies.

Above all it means being ready to stand up to a Moscow that, like the Isis lunatics wrecking Iraq and quickly putting their war-crimes on YouTube, now seems to project a weird intensity and willingness to win whatever it takes. This is uncharted psychological territory in modern world affairs. Vladimir Putin is not afraid of going there.

It’s taken me years of patient manoeuvring to get into one of these prominent pieces a reference to the great James Thurber and his New Yorker cartoons. At last achieved.

But maybe this supreme one is an even better metaphor for NATO in its current state of languid nonchalance?