Europe Prepares for War

Under pressure from the U.S. and threats from Russia, most NATO member nations have pledged to spend 5% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defense and individual nations and smaller regional blocs are taking measures of their own: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are building a network of physical barriers as part of a “Baltic Defense Line”; the Nordic nations are implementing a “total defense” strategy; and the European Union (EU) has launched a Black Sea strategy to bolster regional defense and infrastructure in Southern Europe.

It’s all part of a paradigm shift in European defense policy that Lt. Gen. Sean Clancy, head of the EU’s military committee, calls a “global reset” driven by the heightened threat from Russia, and a fear that Europe’s stalwart defender for eight decades – the United States – may pull away from the continent.

Recent actions, including Russia’s drone incursion into Poland in the early hours of September 10 have only accelerated the urgency. Polish and NATO forces shot down several of the 19 drones that entered Polish airspace, marking the first time since the launch of Russia’s now three-and-a-half-year war on Ukraine, that any NATO member has engaged militarily with Russia.

“Europe today is moving towards a war footing,” Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe, told The Cipher Brief. “Europe is not a single entity of course, but we’re in a much different place than we were even a year ago, in terms of nations realizing the threat and realizing they have to do something about it.”

“The continent is on a rearmament footing,” Liana Fix, Senior Fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations, told The Cipher Brief. “It is not seeking or desiring war. But European leaders have recognized – especially with the fear of U.S. abandonment by [U.S. President] Donald Trump – that their core duty is to provide security to their citizens, and that they are currently unable to do so without the United States. That is a huge gap to fill, which is why defense efforts – new production lines, factories, and so on – are multiplying at such a rapid pace.”

That said, it’s a mixed picture, given European politics and geography. Spikes in defense spending and military preparedness are far more pronounced in countries that share a border with Russia, or have a history of enmity with Moscow.

“Let’s face it, this is the region, and these are the countries – Norway, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland – they’re the countries in Europe that one way or another directly face Russia,” Toomas Ilves, a former President of Estonia, told The Cipher Brief. “And we have a history (with Russia). That’s the whole point.”

And while that urgency is felt less in Western Europe, where increased defense expenditures are less politically palpable, the signs across much of the continent are unmistakable: to an extent not seen since the height of the Cold War – and in some places not since World War II – Europeans are girding for war.

Need a daily dose of reality on national and global security issues? Subscriber to The Cipher Brief’s Nightcap newsletter, delivering expert insights on today’s events – right to your inbox. Sign up for free today.

Last month, famously pacifist postwar Germany announced the opening of Europe’s largest ammunition factory, built by the defense giant Rheinmetall, that will produce 350,000 artillery shells annually, a sizable chunk of the continent’s plans to manufacture 2 million shells a year.

“This is remarkable,” Lt. Gen. Hodges said. “Number one, it’s a new ammunition factory being built in Germany. Number two, even more remarkable, they just had the groundbreaking ceremony 15 months ago. That’s lightning speed in Germany, to go from shovel to ready-to-produce ammunition.”

The “war footing” also means that Rheinmetall and other European defense companies now rank among the continent’s hottest investment properties. Seismic shifts have come to the Nordic countries as well. For years, Finland pushed for other nations to end their use of anti-personnel landmines, after it joined the Ottawa Treaty that banned their use or production. Now Finland is leading a group of countries – Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania – in the opposite direction; all five are withdrawing from the Ottawa treaty, citing the Russia threat. Finland and Lithuania have actually announced plans to begin producing landmines in 2026.

The small Norwegian town of Kongsberg – population 27,000 – hasn’t been on anything like a war footing since the 1940s, when resistance fighters in the town blew up a munitions factory run by occupying Nazi German forces. Now Kongsberg is home to a weapons manufacturer, local breweries have taken to making Molotov cocktails, and the town has been busy refurbishing Cold War-era bomb shelters. “The lesson we learned from Ukraine is that everybody pitched in,” Odd John Resser, Kongsberg’s Emergency Planning Officer, told the AP.

Norway, which shares a border with Russia in the Arctic north, published its first national security strategy in May, warning that “after decades of peace, a new era has begun for Norway and for Europe.” The country stopped building bomb shelters three decades ago and earlier this year it announced plans to install bomb shelters in all new buildings.

Russia’s aggression in Ukraine should be a “wake-up call for all,” Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre told the AP. “We must strengthen our defense to prevent anything like that from happening to us.”

While Poland and the Baltic nations are no strangers to threats from Moscow, their history has been marked by Russian invasions and occupations in the Soviet and Tsarist periods. They are perhaps on more of a war footing than any nations in Europe, save of course for Ukraine itself.

On September 1, Poland launched Iron Defender-25, its largest military exercise of the year, involving 30,000 Polish and allied troops. Poland has vowed to sharply boost the size of its army to 500,000, increase the pace of training, strengthen its borders, and spend more on military equipment.

In June, Estonia broke ground on its part of the Baltic Defense Line, which aims to build six hundred bunkers along each country’s border with Russia, part of a network of defenses including land mines, anti-tank ditches and so-called dragon’s teeth, to run as deep as 30 miles from Russian frontiers.

“Certainly, Estonia and Poland are two of the leaders in Europe who are taking the threat seriously, who literally can look across their borders and see Russia and feel the threat,” Lt. Gen. Hodges said. “And Finland too, because of its geography and its very small population, has a tradition of comprehensive defense where the population is prepared and they have a pretty sober assessment of it, which is why they have more artillery than any other country in Europe. (These countries) are prepared.”

In the Netherlands, far from Russia, Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port, is reserving space for NATO military shipments and planning amphibious exercises. The port’s CEO, Boudewijn Siemons, has said there will be designated periods for “military cargo handling,” including the safe transfer of ammunition. Siemons has also urged stockpiling critical materials at Rotterdam and other key ports — including copper, lithium, and pharmaceuticals — to help ensure resilient supply chains in the event of war.

And with eyes to the south, the EU’s new strategy for the Black Sea calls for bolstered regional defense and infrastructure, again citing growing threats from Russia. The plan includes upgrades in transport systems—ports, railways, and airports—for military mobility, particularly in Romania and Bulgaria, and a new “Black Sea Maritime Security Hub” with the twin missions of enhancing situational awareness and protecting critical infrastructure.

Experts stress that the threat assessments and preparations look very different in different parts of Europe. The “war footing” in Tallinn or Warsaw looks nothing like it does in Paris or Madrid.

“The most fundamental observation here is that geography still counts,” Doug Lute, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, told The Cipher Brief earlier this year. “The closer you are with a land border to Russia and now a newly aggressive, revanchist, neo-imperialist Putin’s Russia, the more these hard defensive measures count.”

While Poland holds its military exercises, and the “Baltic Defense Line” takes shape, some countries in Western Europe appear far more relaxed about the threat. And their politicians face questions about why social welfare spending should drop in favor of defense and security.

Spain, which sits in southwest Europe, far from any Russian border, spent only 1.3 % on defense last year, and was the one NATO member that refused to sign on to the alliance’s 5% spending pledge earlier this year. Spain and other nations are facing a skeptical public, for whom the Russia threat, and thus the need to move to anything like a war footing, is a tough sell.

Ilves, the former Estonian President, said some of these countries are “a little recalcitrant.”

“Belgium really doesn’t want to do this,” he said. “Spain is probably the least interested in doing anything. And then of course we have the usual slackers” – among whom he listed Slovakia, Hungary and Austria, which he says “have always been against anything that really might look bad to Russia.”

Ilves sees what he calls “a slow change” across Europe, “moving in the direction of taking defense far more seriously.” Fix believes that “the whole continent is changing, but some parts faster than others.”

“Now, Western European countries such as Germany are much closer to an Eastern European threat perception,” she said. “For example, Spain is now where Germany was in 2014, and Germany is now where Poland was in 2014. Europe is moving but starting from different positions.”

Ilves believes the differences have as much to do with history as with geography.

“The experiences that we have gone through, the brutality, the deportations – these are things that people know about,” Ilves said, speaking of the suffering of the Baltic nations during the Soviet period. “That makes a huge difference, as opposed to countries that have never had any experience with that. And this was all rekindled with (the Russian attacks against) Bucha in March of 2022, right after the war (against Ukraine) began, and the first pictures and the evidence started coming from there. My great-grandfather was shot with 140 other people in the courtyard of a medieval castle. The Russians still do this now.”

The Cipher Brief Threat Conference is happening October 19-22 in Sea Island, GA. The world’s leading minds on national security from both the public and private sectors will be there. Will you? Apply for a seat at the table today.

War footing or not, there is a separate question: is the continent ready to counter the Russian threat? All the experts interviewed for this article – and others interviewed previously by The Cipher Brief, stressed the importance of a united European front, and the specific imperatives of air defense and military mobility. A “war footing” isn’t complete, they said, without the railways and bridges, airfields and ports ready to move troops and material.

“The major challenges that we have in Europe are air and missile defense,” Lt. Gen. Hodges said. “There’s not nearly enough. All you’ve got to do is watch what Russia does to Ukraine every night. Imagine that slamming into Riga and Vilnius and Tallinn and Gdansk, and then all the major ports that Europe depends on. It’s not only about protecting civilian populations, it’s about protecting critical infrastructure.”

Hodges also cited shortfalls in Europe’s ammunition stocks, which have been made plain during the war in Ukraine – and which explain why he and others were heartened by the opening of the Rheinmetall ammunition facility. “These are areas where I think effort is being made,” he said. “We just have a long way to go.”

Hanging over the European security questions is the future of the U.S. military presence. The U.S. currently has between 90,000 and 100,000 troops deployed to Europe – 34,000 in Germany – and all are being looked at as part of a Pentagon-led Global Force Posture Review. Multiple reports have suggested that a 30% reduction of U.S. forces is on the table – though President Trump said recently that the 8,000 American forces in Poland were there to stay. “We’ll put more there if they want,” Trump told reporters at a meeting with Polish President Karol Nawrocki.

“This force posture review, it could mean anything,” Ilves said. “It could mean that U.S. troops pull out of here, which would be a big blow. And that’s one thing that Europe has to prepare for in case that happens.” But he also noted that President Trump has vacillated between abandoning Europe and offering robust support.

“If the United States withdraws from Europe today, Europeans would not be able to defend themselves against Russian aggression,” Fix said. “This is why Europe’s defense efforts are being ramped up – not only because of Putin, but because of the unreliability of Trump.”

The International Institute for Strategic Studies published a report earlier this year estimating that it would take Europe 25 years and nearly $1 trillion to replace U.S. military support were Washington to withdraw completely from the continent. The report found that key gaps for NATO members would involve aircraft, naval forces, and command infrastructure.

“Where America is absolutely the key is all of the enablers, all of the things that make an army potent – long-range precise fires, deep technical intelligence, developing kill chains and target folders in order to strike,” Gen. Phillip Breedlove, a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, told The Cipher Brief. While he doesn’t believe Russia poses an imminent threat to Europe, given the weakness of its military and economy, he said that the Europeans will ultimately need to manufacture or obtain a long list of high-end hardware on their own.

“There are a few things that really only America can do,” Gen. Breedlove said, listing rapid aerial transport, high-performing air defenses, and sophisticated intelligence systems. “They really don’t have the kind of strategic lift that America brings.”

Lt. Gen. Hodges, who lives in Germany, said he was surprised this summer to see a mobile troop-recruiting site on the beaches of northern Germany, and plenty of people engaging with the recruiters.

“There was a big camouflage Bundeswehr truck with several NCOs, and there were people there all day long talking to them,” he said. “They were very positively received. Two or three years ago, I don’t think that would’ve happened.”

Experts noted that while an act of raw military aggression beyond Ukraine may be years away, if it ever comes, the “gray-zone” war that can include cyberattacks and the cutting of undersea cables, is already well underway.

Europe’s leaders “need to recognize that Russia’s at war with us, even if it doesn’t look and feel like war in the traditional sense,” Lt. Gen. Hodges said, referring to those gray-zone actions. “And so, we should make that very clear to our populations and to the Russians that this is unacceptable.”

Nations far from Europe “should be concerned for the simple reason that only when it is united does Europe stand strong against Russia,” Fix said. She noted that it took two Russian invasions of Ukraine – 2014 and 2022 – and two elections of Donald Trump – for Europeans to finally and seriously reinvest in their own defense.

“Divided, each European country is too weak on its own,” Fix said. “If they think in terms of solidarity for the whole continent – what NATO Article 5 essentially says, an attack on one member is an attack on all members – then they cannot allow themselves to be foot-dragging.”

Are you Subscribed to The Cipher Brief’s Digital Channel on YouTube? There is no better place to get clear perspectives from deeply experienced national security experts.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.