EU security forged between the Russian hammer and U.S. anvil
Facing Russian hostility and U.S. retrenchment, Europe must urgently redefine its security strategy and defense posture.
In a nutshell
- Russia’s threats demand an urgent strengthening of European defense
- America’s shifts push Europe to assume greater security responsibilities
- NATO’s survival hinges on European adaptation; possible EU militarization
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Europe’s security, long ensured by NATO, now finds itself between a rock and a hard place: a hammer of Russian threats and an anvil of new American challenges.
Questions abound: How can Europe extract itself from this position? Will the alliance’s June summit in The Hague succeed and come to the rescue? What will its European member states have to do? And if the summit fails, what should Europe do then? Should the alliance build its security through the militarization of the European Union, or conclude a new European treaty and build a European defense organization?
Let us analyze these issues.
Russian threats then
At the start of the 21st century, during the first term of President Vladimir Putin, Russia embarked on a confrontational course against the West. Mr. Putin announced this publicly at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, then tested the West’s resolve with aggression against Georgia in 2008 and the gas crises from 2009 to 2014. As the reaction from European capitals and Washington was meek, he swiftly progressed with the practical implementation of his anti-Western course on a larger scale: aggression against Ukraine. The spectacular finale of the camouflaged (covert, subliminal and hybrid) operation was the 2014 annexation of Crimea – incorporating territory of another country into Russia – and the takeover of the actual, although still largely hidden, control over a large part of Donbas.
The annexation of Crimea using unmarked “little green men” shocked the democratic world, ending the post-Cold War period of hope for building a cooperative security environment in the Euroatlantic area together with Russia. The move effectively started the Second Cold War in Russia’s relations with the West.
This was met with a strategic shift in Western policy toward Russia: NATO began to return to its roots from the “out of area” operation in Afghanistan to its primary mission of defending its own territory. However, these changes were not decisive and unambiguous enough to effectively deter Russia from continuing its confrontational neo-Cold War policy. Observing the tepid nature of the West, President Putin decided to launch a full-scale invasion and war against Ukraine in 2022, treating it simultaneously – or rather primarily – as a proxy war against the West, aimed in particular at pushing NATO’s military structure out of Central and Eastern Europe.
Russian threats now
Today, Europe is at risk of further Russian threats. Whether this fate comes to pass depends primarily on the results of the war in Ukraine. From this point of view, three basic realities can be distilled. The first and worst for Europe is Russian victory – either military or political (“negotiating”). In this case, it is generally estimated that after a few years Moscow could regain the capabilities to take the next step on its neo-imperial path by committing aggression, especially limited aggression, on NATO territory.
The goal would be to compromise the credibility of the alliance and create conditions for strategic pressure on Central and Eastern Europe. One of the “attractive” options for Russia could be to improve its strategic position in the Baltic Sea by building a land bridge to the Kaliningrad Oblast (as it did with the land bridge to the similarly strategically important Crimea), and controlling the area of the Suwalki Gap between Lithuania and Poland.
Facts & figures
A narrow connection to the rest of the EU
A favorable scenario for Europe would be to deter Russia (politically, economically and militarily) so that it abandons its maximalist goals of subjugating Ukraine and preventing Kyiv from integrating with Western security structures. Such a political defeat of Russia in Ukraine, given that a military defeat of a nuclear power would be particularly demoralizing, would likely lead to a shift in Russia’s approach to both its internal and external policy toward the West. This outcome could at least delay (though not eliminate) preparations for aggression against NATO countries for a long time.
The intermediate reality that Europe faces is a continuation of the war in Ukraine in the coming years with fluctuating phases of intensification. For the EU, this would mean a continuation of the current strategic uncertainty and an intensification of the need to develop and maintain the ability to respond to many possible threat scenarios.
The synthesis of all these realities indicates that in the aftermath of the neo-Cold War course of Russian policy, in particular Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Europe must radically strengthen its defense efforts. It has no other choice.
American challenges
The need for such a European strategy is reinforced by the new American policy of President Donald Trump. In the most general terms, its essence can be described as a course to “liberate” the United States from permanent, strategic international obligations, forcing it to engage in various important world affairs in advance, in favor of concluding ad hoc agreements, partnerships and temporary alliances in accordance with current American interests, especially those of a business nature.
Such a course of American policy introduces serious risks to the effective functioning of the most important guarantor of European security, which for many decades has been the NATO alliance. The core of its strength, especially its deterrence force, has been transatlantic relations, particularly American security guarantees.
The most important feature of the new American policy toward Europe is the expectation that European countries will take on greater defense burdens and responsibility for their security.
Today, some think the Trump administration’s policy undermines and even negates the security guarantees, by adopting a completely different policy toward Russia than Europe. The policy shift encompasses Washington’s perspective on Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine, possibly going to economic war with Europe, declaring that the U.S. can only defend those allies who spend certain amounts of money on defense specified by the Trump administration, and planning to withdraw or draw down troops from Europe.
From the point of view of defense, the most important feature of the new American policy toward Europe is the expectation that European countries will take on greater defense burdens and responsibility for their security. This is a political tendency initiated by the U.S. years earlier and therefore, it should be considered permanent. What is new from the current administration is its diligence in these regards.
For this reason, the solution to this problem can no longer be postponed or even stretched over many years. Europe urgently needs to take up this American challenge “under fire” from the war in Ukraine. The closest step in this process is the upcoming NATO summit in The Hague, where European countries should make a decisive attempt to save the alliance in its current role.
Saving NATO
The starting point for such an attempt must, of course, be acceptance that the new American policy toward Europe cannot be changed. That is why, in rescuing NATO, Europe should take American expectations into account and meet the updated requirements made by the alliance’s central actor. If European countries truly want NATO to continue to be their main instrument of hard military security, they must take on the responsibility of initiating the necessary strategic adaptation of the alliance to new conditions. They must also be fully aware that it is unlikely that all the existing mechanisms of NATO’s functioning can be saved. Such a process can be described as the “Europeanization” of NATO.
It is obvious that what European countries are already doing − increasing spending on their defense − must continue. There is no controversy in this matter; there are only differences of opinion as to the scale and pace of this process. But spending alone is not enough to take on more responsibility for defense. If the U.S. openly says that it is not ready to engage – at least to the full extent, if at all – in all tasks important for European members, then new mechanisms should be introduced. This could take the form of the alliance carrying out certain tasks with only European efforts, with variants of selective American support or even without such support at all. And this requires at least two changes.
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First, Europe must accelerate and increase the pace of acquiring strategic capabilities that are currently in short supply. This is especially true of air and space capabilities, including intelligence, strategic aviation, air-to-air refueling and missile defense. It requires the European countries themselves to properly prioritize their defense allocations. The primary issue to be agreed with the U.S. is the timeframe for Europe to acquire these capabilities, during which the Americans would ensure the continuation of Washington’s existing support.
The second task seems more complicated, albeit much less expensive. It is to build European operational capabilities: the ability to conduct allied operations without the participation of U.S. troops and command structures. This would require, above all, an appropriate reform of NATO’s military command system at the strategic and operational levels. Its essence should be a reorganization of commands that ensures their effective functioning and command of subordinate troops in operations both with and without the participation of American officers and troops. Such a reorganization also takes time, which must be agreed upon with Washington, as in the previous case.
The key to preserving NATO is the U.S. agreement to provide a transition period for the alliance to adapt to new threats and challenges. Without settling specific issues, the NATO summit in The Hague should, at a minimum, agree on and adopt a NATO adaptation strategy for the coming years. However, if this is not achieved and NATO is threatened with paralysis, not to mention its disintegration in the event of the U.S. withdrawal, Europe will have to quickly look for alternative political and strategic options for its security.
Scenarios
Europe’s security is at a critical juncture and its future is highly uncertain and difficult to predict. Hence, it is necessary to consider various concepts of European security organization, planning and requirements to implement the most effective strategies and move to operational readiness of the chosen model.
Possible but facing major political risk: European security on EU foundations
The EU is a natural candidate to organize comprehensive security for Europe, including military security, in the case that its main pillar, NATO, cannot function effectively or falls apart altogether. Therefore, without waiting for NATO’s fate to be decided, it is necessary to consider conceptually, and possibly plan (without yet taking practical implementation steps), an alternative security option in the form of the European Defense Union. Within this task, three groups of problems must be resolved.
The first is to increase the defense potential of the member states – from defense expenditures, to the quantitative and qualitative development of the armed forces, to increasing the production capacity of the continent’s defense industry. Tasks in this area are already defined and their implementation has begun. The only problem is its pace.
The second group of challenges is operational. Until now, Europe has avoided duplicating NATO’s operational capabilities and, therefore, today has very limited capabilities to conduct military operations independently. For this purpose, it can only use the Eurocorps command. The Northeast Corps headquarters in Szczecin in northwest Poland near the border with Germany is at the disposal of three EU member states: Poland, Germany and Denmark, and could be directed for joint use by the EU.
Similar resources in European countries can be used to build operational capabilities for the needs of the European Defense Union, patterned on NATO’s current military command structures at the strategic and operational levels. The European Defense Union could be organized according to the NATO model – common commands, and national armies.
The key obstacle to the development of an effective European Defense Union on the basis of the EU is the political dimension. Because there are neutral countries in the EU and those that could likely oppose the bloc’s “militarization” in opposition to Russian threats, it is difficult to expect the necessary political consensus on this issue. Therefore, it seems that the optimal decision-making path could be to launch an enhanced (defense) cooperation procedure for this purpose.
Somewhat likely: A new European security treaty organization
If building a European Defense Union on the basis of the EU turns out to be impossible to implement, it will be necessary to consider the preparation of another alternative option: creating a new European security treaty among interested countries. This would involve establishing a kind of European clone of NATO – a European Treaty Organization. Such an organization should be built primarily based on the current NATO structures if and when the U.S. hands them over to the Europeans. A practical political nucleus for this option could be, for example, a coalition of those willing to organize security guarantees after a possible truce in the Russian-Ukrainian war, which is currently being developed under the leadership of France and the United Kingdom.
Most likely: Russian threat persists and the Europeanization of NATO begins
Of the scenarios considered, the most likely today is the continuation of the war on Ukraine, or Russia largely prevailing in holding onto Ukrainian territory. In such conditions, there will be an initiative to save NATO’s strategic credibility, with the launch of contingency plans for the Europeanization of the alliance’s current operational structures. This could serve both the needs of a renewed NATO and the preparations for the alternative options of the European Defense Union or the European Treaty Organization.
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