European leaders arrived at the Munich Security Conference this week beset by challenges from both east and west: the looming threat of an aggressive Russia, compounded by sudden confirmation of some of their worst fears about the direction of the US under Donald Trump.
In a double blow to Ukraine on Wednesday, Trump announced he had agreed directly with Vladimir Putin that talks would begin on an end to Russia’s war, while his secretary of defence Pete Hegseth laid out what the cost to Ukraine of that end would be. In comments closely matching some of Russia’s core demands, Hegseth told allies in Brussels that Ukraine’s territorial integrity was an “illusory goal”; there would be no Nato membership for Kyiv, and no US support for its future defence against Russia.
Promises of peace for our time, bought through appeasing an aggressor with the territory of its European victim, will do little to reassure those who have observed Russia’s preparations for further war. There can be few doubts that in the absence of credible security guarantees from the US, a respite from the grinding attrition will allow Russia to rebuild its land forces faster in order to resume fighting sooner — whether in Ukraine or targeting a Nato member state.
Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary-general, has been increasingly blunt in describing the challenge that Europe faces. “I am telling you very clearly: we must prepare for war,” he said in an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper earlier this month. “That is the best way to avoid war.” The German chief of defence, Carsten Breuer, agreed in Handelsblatt, adding that the threat from Russia was “deadly serious”.
Last week, Denmark’s Defence Intelligence Service was the latest to put a timescale on when Nato must be ready, with an assessment that Russia would be able to move against another neighbour in as little as six months.
Such sentiments are losing their power to shock. Indeed, in the three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, comparisons of the kind heard in recent days between Europe’s situation today and the late 1930s have become almost commonplace. Like all historical analogies, this one is flawed, but for the opposite reason that many western Europeans would assume. In some respects, the danger to Europe’s democracies today is greater, not less, than it was 90 years ago.
Once again, Europe is threatened by a revisionist power that is willing to risk all-out war to achieve its aims of territorial expansion. And once again western democracies will be involved in countering that aggression, whether they like it or not, because they have Nato treaty obligations to countries (including, once again, Poland) that fear they may soon be targeted by Russia.
Vladimir Putin’s stated aim of revising the “historic, strategic mistakes” that led to the creation of the borders of eastern Europe that we see on maps today directly concerns almost all of Russia’s western neighbours. Russia-watchers point out how the country’s transition to a war economy, and its long-term plans for rebuilding its armed forces, have broader aims than the subjugation of Ukraine. And for all Trump’s claims that Putin “wants peace”, there is no discernible inclination in the Kremlin to consider any path other than conflict.
Russia’s Nato neighbours are fully aware of the threat, and are investing heavily not only in their own rearmament, but in fortifying the border from the Arctic down through central Europe. But unlike in 1939, western Europe is utterly unprepared. Decades-long reliance on the US for defence has left European militaries hollowed out, while even before Trump’s return to the White House, the attitude of the US itself to European security was the most ambivalent it had been since before the second world war.
Meanwhile, the crash rearmament of the late 1930s hasn’t happened anywhere west of Warsaw; so the UK, for example, lacks a comprehensive air defence system of the kind that enabled it to survive 1940.
Neither is western Europe insulated any longer by distance. Even though the war is currently at the far end of the continent, Russia has been practising delivering damage against those it perceives as adversaries at ranges of thousands of kilometres, through missile and cyber strikes and sabotage delivered by proxies.
The danger to Europe lies in the interplay of three crucial factors: American disengagement, western European denialism and Russian determination.
American disengagement
Europe’s America problem did not start with Trump or Hegseth. Washington has been explaining for years to anyone willing to listen how Europe is slipping down its list of strategic global priorities — and the object lesson of the very different US approach to defending Israel against attack compared with defending Ukraine should have comprehensively rammed the point home well before Trump’s inauguration.
It is only refusal to think about the problem that led to alarm in some western European capitals on Trump’s return, as leaders were faced with the possibility of having to meet their own defence obligations. But the renewed alarm this week is a measure of how little action resulted.
Focusing on whether Trump could withdraw the US from Nato has obscured the reality that no country needs to leave the alliance for it to collapse when tested. As anybody who has read Nato’s founding treaty knows, the much-vaunted Article 5 commitment to treat an attack on one member as an attack on all doesn’t oblige allies to respond, leaving those that do honour the spirit of their commitment rather than the letter potentially isolated. Trump, just as any other Russia-friendly Nato leader, could decide that no action is required to confront Russia in order for “peace and security” to be restored.
While there’s an understanding within US European Command of Russia’s plans and the threat they pose — including, directly or indirectly, to the US — that appears not to have been evenly spread across the Pentagon, even under the previous administration. Now, Trump team members are calling for major cuts to the US military presence in Europe. If these happen at the same speed as the new administration’s slash-and-burn tactics in other areas, they will be far too fast for Europe to react or compensate, leaving a dangerous and inviting gap for Russian assertiveness.
The principle of “extended deterrence” — under which the US remains the strategic guarantor for its allies against nuclear attack — has not (as yet) been challenged by Trump or his administration officials. That guarantee, a far more unilateral one than the mutual obligations of Nato membership overall, seems a curious exception to Trump’s transactional approach to security commitments.
Either way, Europe now has to reckon with the US not as a pillar of Nato unity, but as a startling and unanticipated challenge to it. With Canada and Denmark both suddenly wondering if their strongest ally has transformed overnight into their most immediate problem, Russia’s long-standing ambition to divide the alliance is several steps closer.
Western European denialism
Europe, meanwhile, remains divided between the front-line states that recognise the risk and the urgency of mitigating it, and much of the continent’s western hinterland that remains semi-quiescent. There is a stark contrast between Poland’s global shopping for arms, with defence spending rapidly approaching 5 per cent of GDP, and the UK at the other end of the continent refusing to countenance spending enough simply to maintain current capabilities.
Even the most forward-leaning erstwhile heavyweights of “old Nato” are focused on incremental increases to defence budgets, rather than the transformative investment that is needed.
The assumption still reigns, west of Warsaw, that war is something that happens to other people, a long way away, and will never come to the homeland. The problem is that Russia now presents plenty of circumstances under which that assumption could be fundamentally wrong.
Some front-line states already enjoy deep reserves of capacity and a clear understanding of what is required to ensure that the economy, society and the country as a whole continue to function while Russia is working hard to prevent them doing so. Others further west will find it near-impossible to rebuild the civil defence systems, stocks and mindset that in some cases were destroyed with astonishing haste in the 1990s.
But the need is clear both to build strong military defences and civil resilience for when those defences are tested. Neither will be a quick or cheap process.
Russian determination
That leaves the question of why, and how, Russia might attack beyond Ukraine.
The popular perception that Russia’s armed forces are incapable of harming Europe because they were eviscerated in Ukraine in 2022 has been slow to dissipate. The fact that Russia’s land forces had been built back bigger by early 2024 is now more widely recognised — as is the way some Nato militaries have become not more but less capable since 2022 as a result of donations to Ukraine not being replaced in inventory.
But what is too often overlooked is the uncomfortable reality that Russia’s primary means of striking at enormous distances remain largely unscathed. Ukraine has swept the Russian navy from the Black Sea, but elsewhere it remains intact; and the air force has suffered losses, but not primarily to its fleet of long-range bombers and missile carriers.
Russia’s capacity to continue waging war is also debated. There’s a growing belief that the war is unsustainable without irreversible long-term damage to the Russian economy. That may be true — but as noted in the Munich Security Report, it’s showing few signs of dissuading Russia from pressing on regardless, including spending almost one-third of total state expenditure on defence. Russia thus still has capability to do serious damage — and is maintaining it with support from partners such as Iran, China and North Korea that is only likely to grow.
In the 2010s, the stock scenario was for Russia to seize a slice of territory in one or more of the Baltic states, and then challenge Nato to respond — after having first assured itself that a unified response would not be forthcoming, and Nato’s raison d’être would thus evaporate, followed swiftly by the alliance itself.
After a period of almost a decade when those scenarios were off the table, they are once again under active discussion, precisely because of Russia’s clear determination and the questions over US commitment to Nato and European security.
Britain’s chief of the defence staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, has more than once stated confidently that Russia will not attack Nato. That puts him at odds with his counterparts across the alliance, who have repeatedly stated with equal confidence that this is precisely what Russia intends to do.
The root of the difference may lie in Radakin’s explanation that Russia will not attack because it knows Nato’s response would be “overwhelming”. That caveat, at least for now, remains a given: nobody seriously suggests that Russia wants to tangle with the combined might of the alliance if it is still backed by the US.
But the unfortunate detail is that this is not the only kind of attack possible. Russia is already waging a proxy campaign of arson, murder and sabotage across Europe, to which the continent struggles to respond.
Where once Russia-watchers focused primarily on a Russian move in the Baltics that would be accompanied by nuclear threats to keep Nato out of it, now they think through what would happen if those threats were backed up with a demonstrative non-nuclear attack on one or more European cities.
Because the best way to focus, for example, German minds on whether their country would be willing to trade Hamburg for Vilnius would be a practical demonstration of what that really means, delivered through a range of possible methods.
In mid-January, a conference in London attended by members of parliament and government officials heard from military and industry speakers how little warning would be available if Russia were to launch a strike with its latest generation of missiles, arriving from far off in the Atlantic or the Arctic Ocean.
But the attack doesn’t have to be this overt and undeniable. There could be massed and co-ordinated sabotage or cyber attacks on critical infrastructure or hospitals, or a sudden full-scale activation of Russia’s plans for planting incendiary devices on airliners, causing not just devastating numbers of casualties but the complete immobilisation of air traffic.
European countries should already be thinking carefully about the impact of any such major attack, and how their publics would respond if the conflict with Russia were suddenly brought home to them.
In already divided societies, the population could well ask why they are suffering devastation over an issue they may perceive as marginal. Even governments that until now have been stalwart supporters of Nato might find that they are not sufficiently robust to withstand civil disorder at home, and mounting public pressure not to incur further damage, destruction and misery from Russia — with or without accompanying Russian nuclear scare tactics.
This would mean that Russia had successfully neutralised Nato in precisely the way it would desire to — after which individual countries in eastern Europe would be at risk of being picked off one by one at a time of Moscow’s choosing.
An overt attack of this kind on Europe might in the long term be catastrophic for Russia. But if we have learnt anything from Russia’s war on Ukraine, it is that Russia does not have to be correct in its judgment of when is the right time to go to war for the consequences to be devastating for those in its path.
‘Si vis pacem’
Looking back at the 1930s, we used to wonder how it seemed that everybody could see war coming but do nothing to stop it. Now we understand, as we see the same mistakes repeated one after another.
Instead, credible European deterrence of Russia is key to avoiding disaster. Europe has seen huge investment in countering terrorism by individuals and groups. What it needs now is also investment in countering state terror of the kind delivered by Moscow.
There is no excuse for pretending that defence is unaffordable. The costs cited for reducing the likelihood of a devastating war are trivial compared with the amount EU states have spent — for ludicrous example — on compensation paid to consumers for higher energy bills.
Poland sets the example through clear recognition that the cost of deterrence — or being ready for defence if deterrence fails — is vastly less than the devastation that would result from being unready. Countries claiming that transformative investment in defence is simply impossible are deliberately making the opposite choice.
Nato’s decade-old spending targets measured as a percentage of GDP in a way now serve as a distraction from the problem. They still have some utility as a measure of shame for those governments unwilling to meet their obligations to keep their countries and their citizens secure, such as the UK. But GDP targets only measure input, not output: and by now, what that spending actually buys is a far more urgent criterion of military relevance.
An even more precious commodity than funding is the time that Ukraine has bought Europe by standing as its first line of defence since 2014. Enough of that time has already been squandered through refusal to recognise the danger. History may never forgive the current generation of European leaders if their procrastination continues.
Keir Giles is a senior consulting fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House. His most recent book is ‘Who Will Defend Europe? An Awakened Russia and a Sleeping Continent’ (Hurst)
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