Sandor Fabian
As a result of the increasing fear of a potential Russian aggression against Europe and mounting US pressure on European countries to take more responsibility for their own defense, NATO members recently agreed to more than double their defense spending target from 2 percent of GDP to 5 percent by 2035. In addition NATO regional defense plans have been revised and many European countries have invested large sums of money to boost the production capabilities of their defense industries. Unfortunately, instead of delivering relevant, realistic, and meaningful defense capabilities these developments only feed into the potentially lethal illusion of many smaller European countries that they can have a realistic chance of defending themselves against a numerically and technologically superior enemy fighting on its own terms. In reality, in their current form small European countries’ militaries are dysfunctional and, in case of a war with Russia, likely irrelevant. It is time to completely rethink European countries’ approach to defense and, in turn, pursue profound changes for NATO.
The Enduring Paradigm of Combined Arms Maneuver Warfare
While many will argue that warfare has undergone several phases of evolution since the end of World War II, the truth is we still live in the fundamental paradigm of combined arms maneuver warfare created during that war. In the postwar decades, both the US and Soviet defense establishments were organized, trained, and equipped to fight large-scale combat operations. This remains true today for both the United States and Russia, as heir to Soviet strategic thinking, and the defense industries in both countries are designed to support such a way of warfighting. During the Cold War, this paradigm did not stay isolated within the borders of the two superpowers; rather, it was exported to allies and partners on both sides and shining buzzwords such as standardization, interoperability, and integration have been spearheading alliance dynamics ever since. US and Soviet allies were directed to follow the warfighting doctrine of their sponsors, to send their personnel to military schools in the United States or the Soviet Union to get indoctrinated, and to buy the military hardware produced by the sponsors’ defense industrial base. However, regardless of such mimicking efforts, it was an open secret that frontline countries’ militaries were never expected to survive the first couple days of a confrontation and any war would ultimately be fought between US and Russian forces. It sounds cynical to acknowledge, but this calculus is still true for small Eastern European countries today in case of a war with Russia.
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