It would go too far to say that Putin is looking for an open fight with NATO. Putin knows that the majority of his combat power is committed to Ukraine. He knows that he would lose a conventional war with NATO. But he would not hesitate to fight NATO in Ukraine, especially if he could pin the blame for any escalation on the United States. Russian military doctrine welcomes escalation — even nuclear escalation — in a bid to bully an opponent into submission. We don’t have to guess here: Putin warned the West on Saturday that Russia would view any nation declaring a no-fly zone “as participants of the military conflict.”

We should not give Vladimir Putin the obvious opportunity to “escalate to deescalate.”

For these reasons, a no-fly zone over Ukraine — limited or otherwise — would be a colossal failure to see more than one move ahead. Moreover, this decision is of such gravity that Congress should not leave it up to President Biden. Congress should move to exercise its constitutional authority by passing a resolution in both houses directing the president to ask permission before declaring what would be fundamentally an act of war against the Russian Federation. We can scarcely think of a better occasion for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority over the decision to declare war.