FOREIGN POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
INTRODUCTION Europe, a seeming bastion of stability since the end of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, has once again grown dangerous.1 Russia’s fullscale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, which had followed eight years of lower-grade conflict, has brought the heaviest fighting the continent has seen since World War II and raised the specter of Russian nuclear weapons use. Although Western states have not gotten involved directly, they have backed Ukraine with weapon deliveries, imposed heavy sanctions on Russia, and issued their own (mainly nonnuclear) deterrent threats in response to Russia’s. Moreover, the NATO alliance is poised to enlarge. Sweden and Finland applied to join in May and were invited to do so at NATO’s June summit in Madrid.
operational tempo throughout Europe in an effort to send deterrent signals to the other and assurance messages to allies after Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea, and fomentation of war in Donbas in 2014. These fueled a sharp increase in incidents in which Russian and Western forces, operating in proximity, endangered one another. But, throughout this period, both NATO and Russia balked at constraining these activities and attendant deployments, because both saw these risks as a feature, not a bug, of their deterrence stances, intended to remind the other party of the potential costs of escalation.
Europe, a seeming bastion of stability since the end of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, has once again grown dangerous.
It is too early to judge the outcome of a war that has already brought many surprises, not least of them Ukraine’s fierce and effective resistance, the hollowness of Russia’s early military strategy, and continuing gaps in its capacity both in terms of personnel and equipment. But many if not most plausible futures, including that of a protracted conflict, will bring years if not decades of continuing enmity between Russia on the one hand and NATO members on the other, most likely with Belarus in Russia’s camp, and Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova in NATO’s. That enmity is poised to translate into troop buildups on both sides, an influx of weapons into partner countries, and increased military exercises. Especially if Russia is trying to camouflage military weakness like that evidenced in Ukraine, it may rely on more bluster and coercive threats, and potentially further aggression. All of this sets the stage for more crises, each with significant risks of escalation, which, as this war has already demonstrated, threaten the world as a whole.
Notably, NATO’s posture since 2014 was not intended to prevent Russian escalation in Ukraine—it was intended to deter attacks on NATO member states. Russia’s posture, meanwhile, was not designed to set the stage for escalated war in Ukraine, but to emphasize the costs for NATO of direct conflict with Russia, including the aforementioned risk of nuclear escalation. Thus, in terms of immediate goals, both were and remain successful: Russia has not attacked NATO member states, and NATO members have been careful to avoid direct engagement with Russia as they support Ukraine. But the very fact that Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine underlines the instability of those postures and the limits of the security they can deliver.
If it comes to pass, such a standoff will likely magnify patterns set over the past eight years, when NATO member states and Russia both increased their force presence and exercise
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