Europe’s security establishment is now delivering a message that would have sounded implausible a decade ago: the continent should prepare for the risk of war with Russia.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has warned Russia could attack a NATO country within five years and said Europe must be ready for a conflict on the scale “our grandparents or great-grandparents endured,” while arguing Russia is already escalating a covert campaign against Western societies, in a report on his Berlin speech.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has cast the Ukraine war as a prelude to something larger, saying “just as the Sudetenland was not enough in 1938, Putin will not stop,” and warning that if Ukraine falls, Russia will not stop there, in an account of his party-conference remarks.
Britain’s new MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli has described Europe as operating in “a space between peace and war,” depicting Russia as “aggressive, expansionist and revisionist” and pointing to cyberattacks, drones near airports and bases, sabotage and influence operations as part of a grey-zone campaign, in the full transcript of her first public speech.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton has argued deterrence now requires a “whole of nation response,” saying the situation is “more dangerous than I have known during my career,” calling for “more people being ready to fight for their country,” and warning that “more families will know what sacrifice for our nation means,” in his Royal United Services Institute lecture.
Those warnings are being matched with new spending plans. NATO leaders agreed allies will aim to invest 5% of GDP annually by 2035, including at least 3.5% for core defense requirements and up to 1.5% for measures such as protecting critical infrastructure, defending networks and improving civil resilience, in the Hague Summit Declaration.
