I feel like a crazy person when I see people say that EU is trying to de-escalate with Russia.
Putin is ramping up his provocations to get a response. He keeps going up up up.
EU is saying we will not respond to provocations until they cross a certain line. But what line? What response does that line call for?
You aren't communicating where the line is, or how close Putin is to the line, or what the response will be.
The further you move the line, the more extreme the response has to be. Is the line killing civilians? If so, how many? 5? 10? 1000? Without a clear threshold, deterrance fails. Instead, you merely make the ultimate response more extreme.
The response for killing 2 people is going to be a lot less than for killing 20,000. Where is the line?
This is not de-escalation. It is escalation. You are ramping up the response curve. Instead of having small responses to small events and medium responses to medium events, you're setting up a situation where you have no response until something huge happens and then you have a single enormous response.
This isn't how you avoid war, this is how you make war inevitable. You are banking on Putin himself deciding not to cross the line you aren't communicating to him, knowing full well it is in his nature to push until he hits resistance. Strategic ambiguity only works if the adversary believes crossing an unknown line carries immediate peril. But here, ambiguity is being used to cover for inaction, which Putin instinctively feels compelled to probe.