How miscalculations and misperceptions could lead to US-Russia conflict

Despite President Biden’s promise not to involve U.S. troops in the war between Russia and Ukraine, a miscalculation from either side during the tense struggle could risk dragging NATO into the conflict.

The fear of a deadly escalation in the conflict has been at the center of the Biden administration’s response in recent days, with the Pentagon last week denying a request from Ukraine to transfer Polish MiG-29 fighter jets to the country’s armed forces through the U.S.’s Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

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“The intelligence community has assessed that the transfer of MiG-29s may be mistaken as escalatory and could result in significant Russian reaction that might increase the prospects of a military escalation with NATO,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters Wednesday. “Therefore, we also assess the MiG-29s to Ukraine to be high-risk.”

But perhaps the largest risk to an escalation of the conflict would be a no-fly zone enforced by NATO, something Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow for Defense Policy John Venable told Fox News Digital would be an unlikely risk for NATO to take.

“The complications associated with establishing a no-fly zone are enormous and would involve more risk than NATO or the US would accept under almost any circumstance,” Venable said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin     
(Yuri Kochetkov/Pool/Associated Press)

Author and former DIA intelligence officer Rebekah Koffler told Fox News Digital Thursday that a no-fly zone presents the most risk among known scenarios, but currently-unknown actions could inadvertently cause an escalation during the “fog of war.”

“Usually the path of the escalation is difficult to predict, it can come out of nowhere in the fog of war,” Koffler said. 

Koffler argued that the current conflict in Ukraine is…