Europe faces a double existential threat. The first part is of its own making. The second is a Russian military attack on NATO. The Norwegian chief of staff, Eirik Kristoffersen, was quoted this month in Bloomberg as saying that NATO has only two or three years to equip itself to face a strengthening Russian military. A less dramatic assessment was given by the German chief of defense, Carsten Breuer, who estimated in April that a Russian attack could be five to eight years away. Either way, the scenario is nevertheless alarming and therefore explains the West's balancing act so far: at once wanting to strengthen Ukraine, at the same time keeping the reins on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to avoid pushing the Russians into a wider, possibly nuclear, conflict. 

The other juggling performance for the West is having to maintain sagging economies whilst needing to reinforce geopolitical concerns. It is this Janus-faced the quandary of liberal democracy policy as a four or five-year term, public opinion, and omnipresent economic matters that compromise long-term planning. 

The Russians, on the other hand, having committed to military reform following military actions in Georgia in 2008, such as with the New Look military reforms, have a long-term strategic goal. The poor performance of the Russian military in Georgia, however, was at a time of increasing economic power. Although the New Look suffered from the endemic problems of corruption, rivalries, and so on, Russia embarked on the State Armament Program from 2011 to 2020, focussing on modern reequipment, for both strategic and ground forces. 

How to Look at the Russian Military 

The other important aspect is the experiential one. The Russian forces have a great deal of experience in practice: Crimea, Syria, and the war in eastern Ukraine. The move away from a conscripted force toward a professional cadre has been on the whole, successful. NATO forces, on the other hand, are inexperienced and beset by political divisions from Germany to Hungary. They will need to develop a coherent plan to counter the Russian military growth, and these thoughts were high on the agenda at the recent NATO summit in Washington. 

Despite the excursion into Kursk, the Russian military, despite large troop losses in Ukraine, is able to reconstitute its forces. Ukrainian intelligence suggests the Russians can replenish forces by up to 30,000 per month. Inadequate training of troops, however, will mean that Russia may not see significant breakthroughs in 2024. Nevertheless, Vladimir Putin's February 2024 decree incorporated the areas of occupation into the Southern Military District (SMD) which aims to provide, in Shoigu's phrase, “self-sufficient groupings of troops.” 

This, in effect, means a permanent Russian military command structure in Ukraine. The question facing NATO is how quickly and with what quality the Russians can improve their military capability. The medium-term view is therefore applied to the Russian State Armament Program in 2027. Russia faces problems in the future, despite its robust performance, such as ground force losses in Ukraine. The most serious is how to sustain equipment levels. Despite having improved its precision-guided targeting abilities, the necessity to fulfill equipment shortages will need a constant supply of support from allies such as Iran and North Korea. Consequently, the prosecution of combined arms operations will be limited.  

Russia's use of asymmetric warfare in terms of cyber tools, AI, and disinformation has been an asset but with increasing technology sanctions from the West, this aspect of Russia's policy will struggle. Consequently, a key factor of Western strategy will be to curtail the technological inputs into Russia's Military Industrial Complex (OPK). This could see a decline in the military-industrial functionality in Russia. Recapitalization of hardware and slowing innovation will hamper the Russian military build-up. 

The tech aspect and the geopolitics surrounding China will be crucial for Washington and Europe in out teching Moscow. However, Russia will still pose a significant military threat in the mid-term. The OPK is in a constant battle to outwit the West and this is partly successful by bypassing sanctions. Chatham House notes Russia's particular skill in bypassing sanctions:

"Adaptation to the current sanctions regime has been one of the strong suits of Russia’s military industry, Moscow benefits from insufficient external enforcement of sanctions, loose secondary sanctions regimes, and gaps in export controls on third-party countries."

The overall geopolitical situation is complicated. Not least by the aforementioned allusion to the first part of the existential threat. This is the looming prospect of deindustrialization in Europe from years of outsourcing to China and rising energy prices. Economics and war are closely related. Deindustrialization, particularly in Germany, could lead to the collapse of the European Union project for Europe. A unified strategy is paramount but with the complex policy conundrums of economic well-being, nationalism, and military-industrial security, Europe faces an uphill struggle. The high cost of energy makes Europe an expensive base for future industrial production. This will have knock-on consequences for the industrial military reboot of European security.  

About the Author: 

Brian Patrick Bolger, University of Liverpool. He has taught political philosophy and applied linguistics in universities across Europe. His articles have appeared in the US, the UK, Italy, Canada and Germany in magazines such as 'The Spectator’, ‘Comment Central’,‘The Times’,'The American Spectator', 'Asian Affairs', 'Deliberatio', 'L'Indro Quotidiano Indipendente di Geopolitica',  ’The National Interest’, ‘GeoPolitical Monitor’, ‘Merion West’, ‘Voegelin View’, 'The Montreal Review', ’The European Conservative’, ‘Visegrad Insight’, The Hungarian Review' ,’The Salisbury Review’,  ‘New English Review’, ,  ‘American Thinker’, ‘Indian Strategic Studies’,  ‘Philosophy News’. His new book- ‘Nowhere Fast: Democracy and Identity in the Twenty First Century' is published now by Ethics International Press. He is an adviser to several Think Tanks and Corporates on Geopolitical Issues. 

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