US General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s top commander, shared the bloc’s long-awaited “Theory of Victory” during his speech at the Warsaw Security Forum. In his words, “should war come, we will block, blunt any attack, and then, if it does not cease, we will break the forces conducting aggression against us.” He then elaborated that conventional forces would block an initial attack, unmanned ones would blunt any continued invasion, and precision strikes would break the adversary’s warfighting system.
This isn’t anything new since it’s been considered the non-nuclear way of waging war between nuclear powers since the dawn of the drone age ushered in by the Ukrainian Conflict nearly half a decade ago. A nuclear power will likely only resort to such arms if they’re completely overwhelmed in the first phase or their warfighting system is ultimately broken. Recently, “Russia Made It Clear That Nuclear War Would Follow Any Serious Aggression Against Kaliningrad”, which is difficult to conventionally defend.
The same doesn’t hold true for any part of NATO, not even the Baltic States, which are all connected to one another unlike Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave. Even in the political fantasy of Russia invading the “Suwałki Corridor/Gap”, counteroffensives could still be carried out from the Baltic States, Kaliningrad remains exposed, and Norway and Finland could open up a northern front. Reflecting on this, “The EU Poses A Much More Credible Threat To Russia Than The Inverse”, which has always been the reality.
Although Grynkewich claimed that NATO’s “Theory of Victory” is purely defensive and being publicly revealed for deterrence purposes, that’s unlikely to assuage Russia, which reasonably considers the bloc’s continued eastward expansion – especially its de facto expansion into Ukraine – to constitute a threat. Accordingly, its medium-term defense strategy will likely seek to thwart the scenario of NATO’s “Theory of Victory” being exploited for offensive purposes, thus entailing a three-part counterplan.
Just like the Baltic States and Poland are building what’s known as the “European Defense Line” along their borders with Russia and Belarus, so too could they build symmetrical infrastructure to impede any conventional offensive. As for the second phase’s drone dimension, they could replicate the EU’s planned “drone wall”, which will include both offensive and defensive (interceptor) drones. And finally, more air defenses can thwart strikes against their warfighting systems, but they must be scaled nationwide.
As the saying goes, “the more things change, the more they stay in the same.” In this case, the fundamental logic of a non-nuclear war between NATO and Russia remains the same, namely that each would rely on a combination of conventional forces, unmanned ones, and long-range precision strikes. Nukes would likely only be resorted to in the event that they overwhelm the other or ultimately break their warfighting systems, but that could happen quite quickly, perhaps as soon as the first hour.
What’s urgently needed to prevent the worst-case scenario of World War III by miscalculation is mutual de-escalation between European NATO and Russia, especially along the “European Defense Line” that constitutes the bulk of NATO’s Eastern Flank, which Trump could help mediate. As proposed here, the first step could be a crisis-control channel between the US, Poland, and Russia followed by mutual military pullbacks, which could set the basis for stabilizing the post-war European security architecture.
