Defeating Russia's Ambitions In Europe

Dan Goure

Russia, Eurasia

NATO must confront the very real possibility of major conventional conflict with Russia.

It has become absolutely clear to any reasonable observer that it is not possible either to give Russian President Vladimir Putin what he wants nor to simply ignore his threats and wait him out. Like a shark, he must continually move and feed. Success only breeds the need for a greater aggression under the umbrella of self-perception of invincibility. Ironically, passivity or accommodation in the face of Russian aggression will only produce more of it. Resistance to Russian subversion and aggression is, in the new Putinist dialectic, evidence of aggressive intent. Either way, the West is faced with a continually aggressive adversary probing for weakness. In this way, the current situation does resemble the late 1930s.

For the first time in more than a generation, NATO must confront the very real possibility of major conventional conflict with Russia. This has completely overturned NATO’s defense strategy as well as the budget and force structure plans of virtually all member countries. The Alliance’s Supreme Commander, General Breedlove, described NATO’s new strategic challenge very clearly. “For the last 12 to 14 years, we’ve been looking at Russia as a partner. . . . We’ve been making decisions about force structure, basing investments, et cetera, et cetera, looking to Russia as a partner. Now what we see is a very different situation.”

Russia is playing a very weak hand. There is no way that Moscow can win a protracted Cold War or even a conventional confrontation with an Alliance that has 20 times Russia’s gross domestic product and four times its conventional military power. This is a major reason that it places such heavy reliance on its nuclear forces for deterrence and on threats to use nuclear weapons to dominate a local crisis. The Kremlin hopes that should such a crisis occur, NATO will accept a small defeat rather than risk a big war. It is primarily with the goal of intimidation in mind that Russia has devoted so many scarce resources to developing advanced ballistic and cruise missile capabilities. This is also why it has gone to great effort and expense to launch cruise missiles against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) targets from both the Caspian and Eastern Mediterranean Seas. The real target of these attacks is the will of NATO’s leadership.

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