An August incident at an airfield in Leipzig, Germany should have received more attention. Three drones filled with explosives attacked but failed to cause major damage, according to The Wall Street Journal. One hit a cargo plane carrying military supplies to Ukraine but failed to explode, another hit a different plane, and one detonated near the airport perimeter. Western intelligence linked the attacks to Russia’s clandestine operations division.

The implications of such an attack are far more serious than the damage it dealt. Deliberately piloting explosives into another nation’s airfield constitutes an act of war, which creates a state of war. German officials said they might have invoked NATO’s collective defense provision if the casualties had been higher. Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty obliges every member nation to come to the defense of any member who is attacked, if so called upon.

Russia’s deliberate attack was a provocation, a de facto declaration of war against NATO, except that NATO has chosen not to treat it as one. Russia views Western aid to Ukraine as a declaration of hostility, and now it is escalating that hostility. If Western governments were more protective of their own sovereignty, we might be at war with Russia already. Instead, the U.S. is offering to buy the diesel fuel Russia cannot sell because of our own sanctions.

In case Europe failed to get the message, a Kremlin official secretly messaged a German contact after the failed attack to warn that more attacks would follow. Since then, arsonists have attacked drone factories in Estonia and Poland, and Slovakia thwarted a similar attack there. Starlink stations in Poland, Lithuania, and Bulgaria have also been attacked, and drones have attacked commercial ships in the Black Sea near NATO members Bulgaria and Romania.

Russia continues to needle the West with such acts of aggression, often forcing Western militaries to respond. Effectively, Russia is at war with the West already, although most of its military assets are tied down with Ukraine. And if Russia is at war with NATO, that means we are at war with Russia, too.

This might sound like overstating the case. After all, no legislature has passed a formal declaration of war. Governments such as Germany’s have chosen to smooth over infractions, rather than escalate matters further. But two nations are “at war” when a state of war exists between them, not when the governments get around to acknowledging the facts. America’s war with Japan began with its attack on Pearl Harbor, not Congress’s official declaration of war that followed.

Russia is not the only hostile nation operating with malicious intent inside Western nations. In late September, British authorities nabbed “Middle Eastern-looking” men outside of an airbase housing U.S. bombers. After some hemming and hawing, the British government eventually grew comfortable declaring that Iran was behind the attack, and on Tuesday it re-arrested two of the conspirators (formerly released on bail) for assisting a foreign intelligence service.

Quite apart from any specific incidents, the authoritarian regimes that govern Russia and Iran have arrayed themselves in a sort of anti-Western, anti-American alliance; they trade weapons systems and military drone technology, and they have a shared interest in evading American oil sanctions. (The third member of this new Axis is China, which is the most powerful and least confrontational, although it still steals American technology, hacks American websites, and threatens American protectorates like Taiwan.)

The conflict between this Eurasian bloc and Western powers has evolved since the 20th century, but it lives on with renewed vigor. In a way, the “Cold War” is back, except that it is no longer cold. Because it encompasses the entire globe, one might even call it World War III, except that nations have not yet resorted to the “total war” mentality that defined the two previous wars by that name.

For, rather than directly confronting the West’s more powerful militaries, Iran, Russia, and China have engaged in asymmetric warfare. They conduct sabotage, cyberespionage, small-scale drone incursions, and civilian terror attacks. The war is not everything, but everything is now fair game in the war.

Although bounded by oceans to the east and west, the U.S. has not escaped the threat entirely. China targets American infrastructure, data, and individual critics of its regime. Iran has placed bounties on American politicians and their families. Terrorists still attack civilian targets.

Such asymmetrical warfare hands authoritarian regimes a key advantage because it threatens to undermine the most distinguishing feature of Western society: its freedom. When infrastructure, businesses, and large gatherings of people become targets, additional security measures must be taken to secure them. When would-be attackers seek to blend in with civilian populations, then intelligence services must cast a surveillance net over the civilian population to weed them out. Just consider the ways airport security changed after 9/11, as every American submitted to being searched like a potential criminal for the privilege of boarding a plane.

This asymmetric warfare becomes even more challenging when malcontents among the West’s own populations start believing the preferred narratives of hostile foreign powers and engaging in violence against their own societies. Such ideas as: “Israel is a genocidal state,” “Western societies are immorally unequal,” and “American imperialism is the reason the world hates us,” incite Westerners to destructive behavior against their own societies — behavior that only serves the interest of far less scrupulous ones.

The broiling violence will eventually reach a level where Western governments must take drastic action. Such outcomes are already on display in France, where organized, nationwide riots have led to hundreds of arrests, with more to come. On Tuesday, French officials said they would deploy domestic military forces (somewhat similar to a National Guard) to assist police with additional manpower.

This raises the Anglosphere’s long-feared prospect of a standing army being used against a civilian population. Early state constitutions in both Pennsylvania and North Carolina counseled against standing armies of any kind. As one of the foremost anti-federalist writers, Brutus, said in 1788, “The liberties of a people are in danger from a large standing army, not only because the rulers may employ them for the purposes of supporting themselves in any usurpations of power … but there is great hazard, that any army will subvert the forms of the government … and establish one, according to the pleasure of their leader.”

In such a context, what does liberty mean? When violent disorder in the streets forces authority to deploy military forces as police forces and impose nightly curfews, how can people devote themselves to living peaceful and prosperous lives?

Because anarchy does not leave people secure in the enjoyment of their freedom, every society — even America — is willing to sacrifice whatever measure of freedom is needed to secure order. This is why the pro-Constitution faction ultimately prevailed over the objections of anti-federalists like Brutus in defending an unlimited federal right to raise armies, “because it is impossible to foresee or define the extent and variety of national exigencies” (Federalist No. 23).

“The MEANS ought to be proportioned to the END,” Publius argued. If “there ought to be a federal government intrusted with the care of the common defense … it will follow, that that government ought to be clothed with all the powers requisite to complete execution of its trust.”

For its first century, the United States could skate by with a relatively small army. Publius warned that, “Though a wide ocean separates the United States from Europe, yet there are various considerations that warn us against an excess of confidence or security. … The improvements in the art of navigation have, as to the facility of communication, rendered distant nations, in a great measure, neighbors” (Federalist No. 24).

That was before the invention of airplanes, missiles, or the internet. Over time, the world grew even smaller. By the end of World War II, the U.S. had embraced a role as global protector from which it could not easily retreat. It grappled with Soviet communism in an existential struggle, resulting in a permanently elevated threat level. The response to this threat led to a “military-industrial complex,” of which President Dwight Eisenhower warned the country in his 1961 Farewell Address.

Publius preferred a government that “combines the energy of government with the security of private rights” (Federalist No. 26). Some 180 years later, Eisenhower urged “the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” Another 65 years have passed, and foreign security threats have only grown more numerous and varied. The task of balancing freedom and security remains, and the solutions never grow easier.