During the Cold War, under NATO’s MC 14/3, “Overall Strategic Concept for the Defense of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Area,” the Alliance adopted Flexible Response. Its logic was that NATO had to possess – and visibly demonstrate – the capability and political will to respond across the entire spectrum of aggression. By responding to any provocation – a combat aircraft approaching NATO airspace, a warship entering territorial waters, troops repositioning toward a border – the Alliance sought to deny Moscow the belief that it could exploit a local weakness, conduct a limited fait accompli, or probe the Alliance without consequences.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. The danger was that failure to respond could create a false perception of weakness, encouraging further escalation rather than preventing it. It was based on Cold War deterrence theory: “the manipulation of risk” and the need to prevent an adversary from believing aggression could remain limited or cost-free. Thomas Schelling described deterrence as fundamentally dependent on communicating both the ability and the willingness to act. Herman Kahn similarly stressed escalation dominance: the ability to respond at successive levels so the adversary could not find a safe rung on the escalation ladder. The objective was a calibrated response – sufficient to preserve deterrence, restrained enough to retain escalation control.