Executive Summary

Western assumptions that both Ukrainian and European skies can be defended against Russian air attack are unsafe. In addition to MIT Professor Postol’s analysis of Western air defence technology shortcomings, operational experience also shows that current Western systems cannot adequately defend against a multi-dimensional saturation air attack combining drones, conventional ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles - a conclusion borne out in the Red Sea and Gulf War III. Monies provided to Ukraine for these purposes will likely be squandered, and it is equally unlikely that European airspace can be adequately defended for the remainder of this decade. This reinforces the need to consider a diplomatic pathway, as an alternative to Europe’s current path to war.

Introduction

On 4 May 1982, early in the Falklands War, my aircraft was first on scene after HMS Sheffield had been mortally struck by an air-launched Exocet missile. Later in the campaign my ship, HMS Invincible, was a target for a second Exocet attack: the missile struck the MV Atlantic Conveyor, not us - due to target misallocation, not successful air defence, since none of the six Sea Dart missiles we fired intercepted the Exocet. I was airborne again during a third Exocet attack, this time defeated, with three of the four accompanying attacking aircraft downed. Fifteen years later, in command of the Type 42 destroyer HMS Cardiff, I served as Anti-Air Warfare Commander (AAWC) for Standing NATO Force Mediterranean (SNFM), responsible for directing the maritime defensive air battle. Because of these experiences, I do not accept two conventional air-defence assumptions routinely made by the Western political and military commentariat, about the NATO-Russia confrontation.

First, more Western air defence missiles will not allow Ukraine to defend its skies. Second, the skies of European states are not safe from Russian missile attack, notwithstanding the NATO Article 5 guarantee. As the technical analysis of MIT Professor Ted Postol shows, I am not alone in this conclusion. But to see through the commentariat mist, we need a basic understanding of the principles, tactics, and the technical challenges faced by air defence commanders, operators, and systems.

Challenges in Air Defence Operations

Air defence, at sea or over land, is a fast-paced contest: attackers win by achieving surprise or using overwhelming numbers; defenders win through rapid, coordinated, efficient use of their defensive weapons. Defenders typically design their force laydown using three layers. An outer layer of fast jets on combat air patrol, cued by airborne early-warning radar - though jets cannot engage ballistic or hypersonic missiles. A middle layer of area defence missiles, with range from 20 to well over 100 miles, defending a large volume of airspace. An inner layer of point-defence missiles or guns - think of this as the last line of defence for a single ship, or an airfield, or a brigade. Air defence must, though, be conceived and designed as a system. It is not just about weapons, but also sensors, interceptors, command and control (C2), all working together as one.

Challenges in Air Defence Tactics

To start, before any shot is fired, the commander must integrate his force sensors and use these to build and maintain a Recognised Air Picture. The sensors are linked by military networks, called datalinks, and the contacts classified Friendly, Hostile or Neutral using Identification Friend or Foe (IFF). Force readiness states must also be maintained, rising from White, through Yellow, to Red as the possibility and then actuality of an attack develops. “Air Raid Warning Red” broadcast on a ship’s Tannoy is unforgettably galvanising, and the accompanying action alarm sends shivers up my spine to this day.

When battle is joined, air defence engagements, at sea or over land, tend roughly to follow the same sequence:

• Detect & Identify - this involves finding, tracking, and correctly classifying a target. This must be done within seconds, using imperfect radar, data links, and human judgement. US commanders in the Red Sea have described having as little as nine to fifteen seconds to decide whether to engage, which accords with my own experience^.

• Allocate & Engage - this involves deciding, across a raid of multiple threats, which weapon system should engage which target, in which order. This was my role as AAWC for Standing NATO Force Mediterranean in HMS Cardiff: one commander and operations room team, with an imperfect picture, deciding in seconds how best to defeat an attack.

• Intercept & Defeat - intercepting missiles need to be cued as they launch, that is pointed in the direction of their target. Mid-course guidance and correction is then needed in flight. Before a terminal phase, in which the missile’s own seeker must acquire a small, fast, manoeuvring target, often through decoys and countermeasures.

Although all steps are necessary for the system to function effectively, because of the pace of the air battle, each step is an opportunity for mistakes to be made or things to go wrong - this is particularly the case when the attacker uses multiple weapons, with the intention of saturating the commander’s and system’s capacity to respond.

Challenges in Air Defence Technologies

If the operational and tactical challenges of air defence can be overcome, then success still rests on the ability of the air defence missiles (or guns) to strike their targets, and here the technological challenges are concerning.

In a landmark study, MIT Professor Ted Postol’s analysis of Patriot’s 1991 Gulf War performance, backed by a Congressional investigation, showed that the interception success against 1960s-vintage Scud B missiles was less than 10%^[1]. Postol has applied the same analytic method to US Patriot and Israeli Iron Dome engagements in the Middle East, concluding again that intercept rates could be as low as 1–3% against conventional ballistic missiles, and effectively zero against hypersonic missiles^[2].

It seems clear that, although both systems have been improved since 1991, and at considerable cost to US and Israeli taxpayers, they have not kept pace with the new attacking technologies. Two operational case studies bear out these conclusions.

Case Study I — The Red Sea

From late 2023, Houthi forces in Yemen conducted a sustained campaign of missile, drone, and small-boat attacks against merchant shipping transiting, and naval vessels patrolling, the Red Sea. No US Navy or Allied warship was successfully attacked – a genuine achievement for layered defence, using combat air patrol from US carriers, area defence in escorting cruisers and destroyers, and point defence systems across the Task Force ships. But the cost-differential was stark and unsustainable: by January 2025 the Navy had expended some 220 interceptors against 380 Houthi projectiles, at a cost near $2 billion for 2024 alone, against munitions costing a small fraction as much per shot^[3].

On top of this came the loss of three F/A-18s during these operations. One lost in a landing accident. One lost overboard from the deck of USS Harry S. Truman, during a violent evasive turn. One mistakenly shot down by an escorting cruiser, USS Gettysburg – a so-called ‘blue-on-blue’ friendly fire incident. The loss overboard and the ‘blue-on-blue’ losses are classic examples of tactical mistakes made under acute operational pressure.

The available reporting suggests that, although in May 2025 President Trump declared victory after announcing a ceasefire, the departure of USN Carrier Strike Group and supporting European escorts was, in truth, a strategic withdrawal. Forced by cost-exchange imbalance and the concern that, sooner or later, a ship would be hit. A sobering shift in the operational calculus, given the Houthis are a non-state actor, far less capable than a peer-state’s military.

Case Study II — US-Israel-Iran War

Turning to the US-Israel-Iran conflicts, when, on 28 February 2026, the US and Israel attacked Iran, it seems they did so without taking account of the lessons of the previous year’s 12-Day War.

To me, Iran responded in the 12-Day War with intelligently designed and well executed air attacks. Furthermore, those against Israel demonstrated that the IDF’s air defences were nowhere near as successful as the Israeli Government suggested, for the reasons Professor Postol has explained. This no doubt explains why, first, Israeli Government reporting restrictions were so severe and, second, why there was such a high number of post war damage insurance claims.

It seems highly likely to me that the air defence lessons of the 12-Day War were reviewed by both the Pentagon and the IDF. It also seems highly likely that, in debating the decision to attack Iran again this year, military staffs conveyed deep concerns to their political leaders. It is thus difficult for me to avoid the conclusion that the decision to attack Iran was made on purely political grounds, in the face of contrary advice from the military staffs, for which both leaders share prime responsibility.

The costs and consequences of the attack on 28 February came as no surprise to any of the miltiary or intelligence commentaors in the alternative media. First, Iran surgically targeted missile-defence sensors, thus removing the outer sensor layer, so important in air defence. A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) radar was destroyed at Muwaffaq Salti, Jordan, with further radar damage reported in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Although AEW can substitute in some ways for these losses, the overall sensor degradation – particularly the loss of THAAD radars – was bound to have degraded the air defence commander’s ability to counter Iran’s attacks. This factor surely contributed to the success of Iran’s air attacks against 20 or so US and allied sites across the Gulf, including the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, Al Udeid, Ali Al Salem, Al Dhafra, and Kuwaiti bases, with damage including one E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft and at least five KC-135 refuelling tankers destroyed on the ground. Friendly fire also proved costly, yet again, with three F-15Es mistakenly shot down by a Kuwaiti fighter. US naval forces got off more lightly, but largely because the US carriers were operating over 1,000kms offshore, to remain outside Iran’s coastal missile envelopes. The USN, it seems, had learned its Red Sea lessons.

Although we do not yet know the conclusion of the war, the reported dispersal and relocation of US capabilities away from several Gulf land and air bases tells a clear operational story. US regional air defences were – and are – inadequate.

The West’s Air Defence Gap

Armed with these insights into the operational reality and challenges of modern air defence, let us return to the two Western assumptions that I challenged in my introduction.

First, the assumption that additional Patriot batteries could allow Ukraine to defend its skies. It is surely clear that, if one of the world’s (apparently) most capable air defence networks and systems has not been able to defend its own bases in the Gulf nor those of its Gulf allies against attacks more modest than Russia’s, it is surely inconceivable that Ukraine can do better.

Even if there were sufficient Patriot batteries to deploy - which there are not - and even if those batteries were fully effective against Russian missiles - which they are not — the numbers still do not work. Based on my professional experience, my quick rough-order-of-magnitude (ROM) calculation - limiting air defence to key cities, critical infrastructure, logistics nodes, and the 1,000km front line, and including a maintenance reserve - suggests a minimum of 75 Patriot batteries would be required to provide a meaningful defence. Against a total of just around 100 Patriot batteries worldwide.

As I understand it, Ukraine currently has fewer than a dozen batteries; even the 25 that Zelensky has requested would be just a third of the 75 requirement. Furthermore, with Professor Postol’s calculations of roughly 3% effectiveness against conventional ballistic missiles and effectively zero against hypersonic missiles, it’s highly questionable whether even supplying all 75 batteries would make a substantive difference against Russia’s saturation attacks.

Second, it’s equally questionable - for all the same reasons - to think that NATO can defend Europe’s skies. Especially given Europeans have already sent a significant number of their own air defence systems to Ukraine.

Let’s take the United Kingdom as a brief case study. The only UK weapon with credible area air defence capability against Russian-class systems is PAAMS in the Royal Navy’s 6 T45 destroyers, each with Aster missiles reaching roughly 120km. Let’s assume – very optimistically – that 4 of the 6 vessels are deployed to defend Britain’s skies, illustratively one each to: the Thames for London; Faslane as Britain’s nuclear submarine base; Milford Haven for energy infrastructure; a fourth split between naval or energy nodes. Each vessel can theoretically cover a circle of radius 75 miles and guide up to 16 missiles simultaneously, which is impressive. But with just 48 Aster missiles onboard, and the general practice of firing 2 missiles at each incoming target, each ship’s weapons will be gone after just 24 salvos.

By contrast, Russia’s missile and drone attacks into Ukraine have repeatedly exceeded 500 weapons per night, and on several occasions in 2026 close to 1,000.

Conclusion

This analysis should make for uncomfortable reading – especially for Western defence policy planners, of which I was once one. Put simply, our air defence systems are not up to the job. Nor is this likely to improve significantly before the end of the decade.

The West has credible capability against drones, but here the cost-differentials are against us. We have very limited capability against conventional ballistic missiles. We have no capacity to intercept a manoeuvring hypersonic missile. Integrate all three of these weapon types into an intelligent saturation attack, as consistently achieved by Russia over the last 24 months, and it is air defence ‘game over’ for NATO.

Having been under air attack, and later responsible for defending a task force against air attack, I do not say all this to alarm us, but rather to alert us. First, to the obvious waste of European taxpayers’ money about to be spent on (not) helping Ukraine defend her skies. Second, to the illusory nature of the air defence immunity our politicians seem to believe NATO provides us.

I set out the potentially perilous costs and consequences of successful air attacks by Russia against Europe in my The Coming War with Russia^[4] article. So I hope that the operational and tactical insights here, on reality of our air defence vulnerability, can played into our politicians’ risk assessment as they choose to ‘ramp up’ their support for Ukraine’s missle and drone attacks deep into Russia. I also hope that such a risk assessement will, in turn, encourage our leaders and their diplomatic and military staffs to at least consider an alternative to the current pathway to war to which the E3 leaders appear determined to commit us. An alternative pathway called diplomacy.

___________________________________________________

Commodore (Rtd) Steven Jermy RN is the founder of Mor Gallos and the author of Strategy for Action: Using Force Wisely in the 21st Century (2011). He offers strategic advisory services to organisations in the energy, defence, and geopolitical risk sectors. Enquiries: advisory@morgallos.co.uk

^[1]Postol, T.A., biography, Declassify This! / MIT, web.mit.edu/course/17/17.919/www/postol_bio.html; US General Accounting Office, September 1992, concluding only 9% of Patriot launches resulted in a definite Scud kill.

^[2]“Israel’s Iron Dome system doesn’t work, says missile defense critic,” The Boston Globe, 13 October 2023, in which Postol put Iron Dome’s real intercept rate at 4–5%, possibly as low as 1%.

^[3]“U.S. Navy Year in Review,” Proceedings, US Naval Institute, March 2025, usni.org; “Navy fired more than 200 missiles to fight off Red Sea shipping attacks,” Stars and Stripes, 16 January 2025.

^[4] [INSERT LINK] Steven Jermy, “The Coming War with Russia,” The Strategic Arena (Substack).

Executive Summary

NATO, EU and E3 leaders are taking Europe down a path to be ready for war by 2030. In the light of European bellicosity, Russia could decide to start this sooner. If so, the US would be unwilling to fight Russia on Europe’s behalf. Unable to defend itself against Russia’s conventional ballistic/hypersonic missiles, Europe would suffer a rapid defeat and very high military losses. Even after suing for peace, destruction of Europe’s energy system would plunge Europe into economic crisis. Europeans should be invited publicly to debate these risks and have their views heard.

1. Introduction – Understanding War’s Nature

As European leaders’ calls to be ready for war with Russia by 2030 grow ever louder, we would do well to consider the advice of war’s greatest philosopher, General Carl von Clausewitz:

‘Wars must vary with the nature their motives and the situations that give rise to them. The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgement that the statesman and the commander have to make is to establish by that test the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something which is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive.’[1]

We should think hard on the nature of war with Russia: how our leaders’ public statements are heard in Russia; when such a war might start; how it might unfold; what its consequences and costs might be. This article builds one such scenario.

2. The Strategic Context

To begin, we must understand how we got here. It is clear, to anyone familiar with strategic history, that the roots of the crisis run back to 1989. When the Berlin Wall fell, there was an opportunity to build a durable, inclusive European security architecture - one that accommodated Russia’s legitimate security interests. That opportunity was squandered. Through the 1990s and 2000s, despite the original reassurances offered to Russia, NATO expanded relentlessly eastward. Prescient voices of caution - Kennan, Matlock, Burns, Kissinger, Mearsheimer— were dismissed or ignored. So too were Russia’s explicit and repeated red line warnings.

The Russo-Ukraine War must be understood in this context. The West is replete with conventional opinion that Russia intervened for imperial ambition. But all the credible evidence suggests that Russia went to war because it concluded - rightly or wrongly - that NATO expansion represented an existential threat. In Russia’s eyes, this was – and still is – a defensive war of survival.[2] Not surprising given that Kaja Kallas, EU foreign policy lead, has called publicly[3] for the breakup of Russia. Whatever one thinks of Russia’s methods, understanding its motivation is critical to understanding the nature of our future war with Russia.

3. Russia responds to European Escalation

Notwithstanding this fundamental insight, the publicly stated intention of the E3’s leaders - Macron, Merz and soon, no doubt, Burnham - is to increase the supply to Ukraine of long-range precision drones and cruise missiles, all capable of striking deep into Russian territory. In response, Moscow’s public warning is unambiguous: if this continues, directly targeting European production facilities will not be ruled out.

If E3 leaders choose not to take this warning seriously – a logical assumption, given that they have ignored all of Russia’s previous warnings – it is quite possible, even likely, that such a conflict could start this year, much earlier than Europe’s planned 2030. The second half of 2026 is thus taken as the start line for this scenario.

In September 2026, with its warnings ignored, and attacks into the Russian heartland increasing with E3 increased weapons deliveries, Russia acts. Conventional ballistic missile and hypersonic strikes destroy key E3 drone and missile production facilities in the Britain’s Midlands, the Ruhr, and outside Bordeaux. NATO Article 5 is invoked. But Article 5 does not require military action - it requires each member to take ‘such action as it deems necessary’. The shallowness of the guarantee upon which E3 leaders assumed they could rely is now exposed.

Spain and Hungary decline to commit forces. Italy, Poland, and several Eastern European members equivocate. More importantly, the White House, after recently appearing to shift to support operations against Russia now has urgent second thoughts. Having just lost a war in Iran, with badly depleted ammunition stockpiles, no domestic appetite for US troops fighting and dying on the other side of the Atlantic, and the mid-terms ahead, ‘Extending Russia’[4] does not look like such a good idea. The White House quickly concludes it is not in the US national interest to join a war with Russia on the European mainland. After spent years talking about strategic autonomy without creating it, the E3 now know what this means.

4. The First 3 Months of the War

Nevertheless, trapped in the political narrative they have constructed, the leaders of the E3 and smaller willing nations - perhaps the Dutch, Scandinavians, and Balts - respond.

The only place where an offensive is possible is in the air. But Europe’s strike packages now discover what Ukrainian pilots have known for years. Whilst a small proportion of European cruise missiles find their targets, the majority are destroyed by Russia’s layered and well-practiced S-400 and S-500 networks, which also exact an unsustainable toll on European pilots and aircraft. Without American suppression of enemy air defences – and perhaps even with it – there is no further prospect of achieving air superiority nor any effective counter attack.

In response to the air strikes, Russia takes the gloves off, determined once and for all to remove the threat from Europe to its people and homeland. Russia strikes airfields, training bases, dockyards, logistics hubs, and marshalling yards, inflicting 1,000s of military casualties amongst European forces before they can even deploy. The Europeans now learn the lesson that the US have just learnt in the Gulf – European militaries have very little protection against conventional ballistic attacks, and none against hypersonic missiles.[5]

The point is cruelly reinforced by simultaneous Russian strikes that systematically dismantle the Europe’s energy infrastructure - gas terminals, power stations, grid interconnectors, storage facilities - with the same clinical precision applied to Ukraine’s grid from 2022 onwards. Acutely vulnerable as the world’s largest regional hydrocarbon importer, at 12.8 million barrels per day,[6] Europe’s energy system is already under severe strain - the consequence of self-defeating sanctions on Russian oil and gas, recently compounded by the Strait of Hormuz energy shock.[7]

At sea, Russian submarines have deployed into the North Sea and Atlantic, and a wartime blockade has been announced. The mere threat of losing commercial vessels is enough for maritime insurers to withdraw cover and for shipping companies to stand down. Europe’s hydrocarbon imports grind to a halt and energy systems start to fail. The lights begin to go out. More importantly, without diesel, Europe’s farming, fishing and food logistics systems fail. Although only 2-3 months into the conflict, Europe’s economic situation is now perilous.

4. The Ceasefire, Costs and Consequences

Faced with the binary choice of escalating with nuclear weapons or accepting defeat, British and French leaders pause. Both nations’ nuclear deterrents exist to deter nuclear attack on their own territories, not to take nationally suicidal action to rescue a failing conventional campaign. Meanwhile, the US – having made its position on the sidelines clear and now acutely worried about the risk of nuclear war with Russia – is urgently working with both sides to bring the war to a close. Which can only be done on Russia’s terms. Under intense pressure from the US and the smaller European nations, E3, NATO and EU leaders sue for peace.

Only 3 months into the conflict, the human costs are already severe. Military casualties are orders of magnitude higher than Western and NATO losses in 25 years of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But military surrender is not the end, just the beginning.

With its energy system shattered, European industrial production is collapsing, unemployment is surging. Europe’s largest countries, other than Germany, are already shouldering debt-to-GDP ratios over 100%[8]. European public finances buckle then crack under the rapidly increasing burden of emergency energy subsidies, future reconstruction costs, collapsing stock markets, bond market runs leading to higher government interest costs, and lost tax revenues.

The failed state that is Ukraine provides indisputable evidence of what comes next. An economic contraction of 10% is the conventional criterion for a depression[9]: Ukraine’s is over 30%. The US is fiscally unable – and the Rest of the World politically unwilling – to offer a Marshall Plan. Thus, Europe faces alone an economic contraction greater than the Great Depression.

The political consequences are no less profound. The coalitions that launched the war collapse, and the leaders who led the charge are rapidly and ruthlessly deposed. NATO and the European Union, both judged complicit in the war’s commission, are irreparably fractured. Populist and nationalist movements surge. Social contracts between elites and the peoples, built over generations and in societies that had not experienced war on their own soil since 1945, strain to breaking point. Europe, once a coherent political and economic region, now faces a dystopian reckoning.

5. Conclusion – The Choice Europeans Face

If this scenario is plausible – even remotely so – are the risks the E3 leaders are inviting us to accept worth it? Without any public discussion?

There is an alternative: it’s called diplomacy. Not the diplomacy of ultimatums, nor meaningless peace conferences from which one belligerent is triumphantly excluded. But rather the diplomacy of honest conversation, in which each side listens to the other. Russia’s security needs are not difficult to understand. Because they have been repeating them for 20 years, almost ad nauseam for those of us who were prepared to listen and hear. A neutral Ukraine. No NATO membership. Real security guarantees. All of which Russia was willing to offer and Ukraine willing to accept in March 2022 – before Zelensky was persuaded otherwise by Boris Johnson and Joe Biden.

As General André Beaufre wrote: ‘In war the loser deserves to lose because his defeat must result from errors of thinking, made either before or during the conflict’. Over the first quarter of this 21^st Century, Western leaders in general and Europe leaders in particular have a consistent track record of ‘errors in thinking’ – as our failed operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now Ukraine unequivocally prove. This time though the stakes for Europeans could not be higher.

To conclude, before they march us onwards towards war, our leaders owe us two things. First, an honest, public, strategic assessment of the risks to which this course of action could expose us. Second, an opportunity for our views to be sought and our voices to be heard. After all, it is we, not they, who will be the ones expected to fight the war and bear its costs and consequences.

The choice we Europeans face is simple. Should we change course toward peace, and begin a difficult but honest diplomatic conversation with Russia? Or should we let our leaders – guided by a political narrative that they have constructed and ignoring the existential risks set out here – continue to lead us onwards towards war? As did their illustrious predecessors, a century or so ago, in the Summer of 1914?

________________________________________________

Commodore (Rtd) Steven Jermy RN is the founder of Mor Gallos and the author of Strategy for Action: Using Force Wisely in the 21st Century (2011). He offers strategic advisory services to organisations in the energy, defence, and geopolitical risk sectors. Enquiries: advisory@morgallos.co.uk

References

1. Steven Jermy, ‘Right Now NATO Could Not Win a War with Russia’, Responsible Statecraft, 29 January 2025. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/nato-war-with-russia/

2. Steven Jermy, ‘Russia Is in the Driving Seat’, Brave New Europe / NATO Watch, 15 May 2025. https://braveneweurope.com/steven-jermy-russia-is-in-the-driving-seat

3. George Kennan, ‘A Fateful Error’, New York Times, 5 February 1997; William J. Burns, ‘Nyet Means Nyet’, US Embassy Moscow cable, 1 February 2008 (WikiLeaks); John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault’, Foreign Affairs, Sep/Oct 2014.

4. ‘Oreshnik Missile Is Unstoppable, Undetectable’, The Week India, 21 December 2024. https://www.theweek.in/news/defence/2024/12/21/oreshnik-missile-is-unstoppable-undetectable-another-military-analyst-echoes-putins-claims.html

5. International Energy Agency (IEA), World Energy Outlook 2024.

6. ‘Lloyd’s Executive Likens LNG Attack to Nuclear Explosion’, Resilience.org, 20 September 2004. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2004-09-20/lloyds-executive-likens-lng-attack-nuclear-explosion/

7. Kyiv School of Economics / World Bank, Ukraine War Damage Assessment, various reports 2023–2025.

8. IMF Fiscal Monitor - General Government Gross Debt (% of GDP). https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GG_DEBT_GDP@GDD/

9. General André Beaufre, An Introduction to Strategy

[1] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, tr. Michael Howard & Peter Paret. (Princeton, 1976) p.88.

[2] George Kennan, ‘A Fateful Error’, New York Times, 5 February 1997; William J. Burns, ‘Nyet Means Nyet’, US Embassy Moscow cable, 1 February 2008; John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault’, Foreign Affairs, Sep/Oct 2014.

[3] https://fampo.no/estonias-pm-kaja-kallas-calls-for-the-breakup-of-russia/

[4] https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR3000/RR3063/RAND_RR3063.pdf

[6] International Energy Agency (IEA), World Energy Outlook 2024. Europe’s oil import dependency at approximately 12.8 million barrels per day.

[8] IMF Fiscal Monitor - General Government Gross Debt (% of GDP). https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GG_DEBT_GDP@GDD/

[9] Kyiv School of Economics / World Bank, Ukraine War Damage Assessment, various reports 2023–2025

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In 2024, reflecting a popular Western belief, former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said: “NATO is the most powerful and successful alliance in history.” Yet just two years earlier in 2022, after a 15-year campaign, NATO was defeated by the Taliban, a rag-tag group of poorly armed insurgents.

How can NATO’s humiliating defeat and Austin’s view be reconciled?

Of course NATO was never the most powerful military alliance in history — that accolade surely goes to the World War II Allies: the U.S., Russia, Britain, and the Commonwealth nations. Nevertheless, after 1945, NATO did its job, did it well, and those of us who served in it were proud to do so.

Since the Berlin Wall’s fall, though, its record has become tarnished. Satisfactory in Kosovo. Humiliated in Afghanistan. Strategic failure looming in Ukraine. Are we really sure NATO is up to the job of defending democratic Europe from a supposedly expansionist Russia in the doomsday scenario of a conventional NATO-Russia war?

The doomsday NATO-Russia war scenario is the defining way to explore this question. “Amateurs talk tactics, professionals study logistics,” and our strategic analysis needs to start all the way back in NATO’s logistics rear areas, then work forward to a future line of battle on the continent of Europe.

First, unlike Russia, no major NATO nation is industrially mobilized for war, as evidenced by the fact that Russia is still outproducing NATO on 155mm shells for Ukraine. Which, incidentally, gives the lie to the view that Russia is poised to take more of Europe — if we in NATO truly believed this, we would all be mobilizing at speed.

More importantly, it is not clear that NATO could mobilize at the speed or scale needed to produce the levels of equipment, ammunition, and people to match Russia. And certainly not without a long build up that would signal our intent. This is not just about lost industrial capacity, but also lost financial capacity. Of the largest NATO nations, only Germany has a debt to GDP ratio below 100%.

Second, to have the remotest chance of success in this doomsday scenario of a NATO-Russia war, U.S. forces would need to deploy at scale into continental Europe. Even if the U.S. Army was established at the necessary scale — with a 2023 establishment of 473,000, under one third of the current Russian Army, it is not — the overwhelming majority of American equipment and logistics would have to travel by sea.

There, they would be vulnerable to Russian submarine-launched torpedoes and mines. As a former underwater warfare specialist, I do not believe that NATO now has the scale of anti-submarine or mine-warfare forces needed to protect Europe’s sea lines of communication.

Nor, for that matter, would these forces be able to successfully protect Europe’s hydrocarbon imports, in particular oil and LNG so critical to Europe’s economic survival. Losses because of our sea supply vulnerability would not only degrade military production, but also bring accelerating economic hardship to NATO citizens, as soaring prices and energy shortages accompanying an outbreak of war rapidly escalated the political pressure to settle.

Third, our airports, sea ports, training, and logistics bases would be exposed to conventional ballistic missile attack, against which we have extremely limited defenses. Indeed, in the case of the Oreshnik missile, no defense.

An Oreshnik missile arriving at Mach 10+ would devastate a NATO arms factory, or naval, army and air force base. As in Ukraine, Russia’s ballistic campaign would also target our transport, logistics, and energy infrastructure. In 2003, while I was working for the British MOD’s Policy Planning staffs, our post 9/11 threat analysis suggested a successful attack against an LNG terminal, such as Milford Haven, Rotterdam, or Barcelona, would have sub-nuclear consequences. The follow-on economic shock-waves would rapidly ripple across a European continent, now increasingly dependent on LNG.

Fourth, unlike Russia, NATO nations’ forces are a heterogenous bunch. My own experience, while leading the offshore training of all European warships at Flag Officer Sea Training in Plymouth, and later working with NATO forces in Afghanistan, was that all NATO forces were exceptionally enthusiastic but had very different levels of technological advancement and trained effectiveness.

Perhaps more contemporarily important, other than a handful of NATO trainers forward deployed in Ukraine, our forces are trained according to a pre-drone “maneuver doctrine” and have no real-world experience of modern peer-to-peer attritional warfighting. Whereas the Russian Army has close to three years experience now, and is unarguably the world’s most battle-hardened.

Fifth, NATO’s decision-making system is cumbersome, hampered by the need to constantly communicate from Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe to national capitals — a complexity made worse each time another nation is admitted.

Worse still, NATO cannot do strategy. Shortly after arriving in Afghanistan in 2007, I was shocked to find that NATO had no campaign strategy. In 2022, notwithstanding numerous Russian warnings about NATO expansion constituting a red-line, NATO was wholly unprepared, strategically, for the obvious possibility of war breaking out — as evidenced again by our inability to match Russia’s 155mm shell production.

Even now, in 2025, NATO’s Ukraine strategy is opaque, perhaps best summarized as “double-down and hope.”

In summary, NATO is positioning itself as Europe’s defender, yet lacks the industrial capacity to sustain peer-to-peer warfighting, is wholly dependent on U.S. forces for the remotest chance of success, is unable satisfactorily to defend its sea lines of communication against Russian submarine, or its training and industrial infrastructure against strategic ballistic bombardment, is comprised of a diverse mix of un-bloodied conventional forces, and lacks the capacity to think and act strategically.

An easy NATO victory cannot be assumed, and I am afraid that the opposite looks far more likely to me.

So what? Conventionally, we could now work out how to redress the manifest weaknesses revealed. Strategic audits to confirm the capability gaps. Capability analyses to work out how to fill the gaps. Conferences to decide who does what and where costs should fall. Whilst all the time muddling on, hoping that NATO might eventually prevail in Ukraine, notwithstanding all the evidence to the contrary.

But without unanimous agreement of the NATO nations to increase military investment at scale, we would be lucky to solve these capability shortfalls within ten years, let alone five.

Or we could return to consider — at last — the judgement of many Western realists that NATO expansion was the touchpaper for the Russo-Ukraine War. The Russians warned us, time and again, that such expansion constituted a red line. So too did some of our very greatest strategic thinkers, starting with George Kennan in 1996, Henry Kissinger, Jack Matlock, even Bill Burns in his famous ‘Nyet means Nyet’ diplomatic telegram, and most recently John Mearsheimer with his 2014 forecasts. All ignored.

The truth is that NATO now exists to confront the threats created by its continuing existence. Yet as our scenario shows, NATO does not have the capacity to defeat the primary threat that its continuing existence has created.

So perhaps this is the time to have an honest conversation about the future of NATO, and to ask two questions. How do we return to the sustainable peace in Europe that all sides to the conflict seek? Is NATO the primary obstacle to this sustainable peace?