Preparing for the next European war
European leaders are learning from the success of Ronald Reagan
Three years ago, over one hundred Russian missiles blitzed Ukraine’s cities and military bases. Sukhoi jets crushed air defenses. Paratroopers seized Hostomel Airport; amphibious forces stormed Mariupol.
Poland or Estonia could be next within a few short years.
Russia has waged a grey war against Europe for years—disinformation, cyberattacks, sabotage. Its intensity will grow. Undersea cables will snap, industrial accidents will multiply, railways will fail, GPS jamming will spread. Perhaps a deliberate atrocity—a long-range missile downing a Swedish or Finnish passenger plane—will test Europe’s resolve. Putin will goad:
И что ты теперь сделаешь? (“What are you going to do about it?”)
This isn’t new. Russia downed MH17 with BUK missiles in 2014 and an Azerbaijan Airlines plane with missiles and electronic warfare last year. Diplomacy, energy blackmail, election meddling—all prelude to a staged provocation. Then the attack may come. European nations are reeling from America’s disengagement in their collective security. If Putin judges that NATO’s mutual defense is truly defunct, the temptation to “finish the job” in Europe will be irresistible.
Lessons from the 2022 invasion of Ukraine—where hubris met resilience—will sharpen Russia’s blade. A torrent of cyberattacks will paralyze communications, not just in the Baltics’ fragile grids but across the Nordics’ tech hubs and Western Europe’s financial cores. Saboteur drones, buzzing like locusts, will target power stations and airports, grounding flights from Helsinki to Heathrow. Then the ground war will erupt—tanks, planes, missiles, and troops surging across the Baltics’ mere 140-mile span, or slicing through the Suwałki Gap, a 60-mile chokehold between Belarus and Kaliningrad, severing them from Poland’s reach. Or both. Russia would “quickly overrun [the Baltic] nations before assistance arrived.”
И что ты теперь сделаешь?
At the 72nd hour, with the Baltics crushed, a multi-axis assault on Poland follows—north via Lithuania, south through Belarus. Zapad exercises once failed Moscow in Ukraine; this time, they won’t. Missile strikes on Polish command centers will sow chaos. Poland’s anti-missile defenses—once reliant on US Patriots, now a patchwork of Soviet relics and borrowed French and British systems—stand weak. Too vast to conquer fully, Russia will aim for the Vistula River, splitting Poland with hypersonic strikes on bridges, isolating defenders. Even if they stall, a deep front line far from Russia’s borders could hold.
A weak Europe invites this.
Ronald Reagan knew weakness tempts tyrants. Putin, a patient one, can’t strike today—he must rebuild after Ukraine. But he will see weakness as an invitation.
And a peace deal—or US commitment to Ukraine—much needed for the exhausted defenders, gives Putin time. His economy, on a war footing, creaks as US sanctions ease, producing 2 million artillery shells yearly—quadruple its pre-2022 rate.
Don’t fixate on Russia’s corruption, which botched Ukraine’s invasion logistics, or moralize over 900,000 dead and wounded—the простой человек1 as cannon fodder. Don’t assume donkey-drawn supply lines mean Moscow can’t recover faster than Brussels can consult. Russia’s military learns at Silicon Valley speed in drone and electronic warfare, blunting Leopard and Abrams tanks. Outdone by Ukraine’s drone ingenuity, it’ll still enter the late 2020s with the world’s second-best drone warriors, far ahead of Europe’s peers.
With North Korea’s aid, Russia will be ready—perhaps soon. Trump’s torching of the Atlantic Alliance could leave US troops, logistics, and intelligence gone. Five Eyes, abroad intelligence alliance comprising the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, might linger on, signalling American over bluster on disengagement over intent. But could US assets help Russian’s mission? Starlink and X likely won’t bolster Europe—X may even amplify Moscow’s destabilization. It’s a grim scenario, more plausible now than a year ago.
Time is short
As a teenager, like many in Western Europe in the 80s, I felt Moscow’s threat, both nuclear and conventional, hung over us. Nuclear hellfire from SS-18 missiles and the unbridled assault of 50,000 Soviet tanks across West Germany. General Sir John Hackett’s The Third World War saw the Warsaw Pact overwhelm NATO, sacrificing Birmingham and Minsk to nuclear fire before the Soviet empire dissolved. We don’t want that to remotely be a reality.
Putin has lost not just men, but material, anything between between 3,000 and 8,000 tanks since 2022. He needs five to six years to rebuild, per the Atlantic Council—less with North Korea’s help or if he strikes before Europe wakes. The Baltics, Finland and Poland, closest to the Bear, peg it shorter. On the lower side of the estimate, it could rearm by 2028 with 500 units annually. Mass mobilization, 1,000 new tanks, missiles, drones and readiness: that’s the clock.
What Europe must do
Europe faces a Ronald Reagan moment: strength or surrender. Its GDP is ten times Russia’s, its manufacturing twelve times larger. Its AI outstrips Moscow’s anemic tech sector. Europe can win—but it must act.
Since 1992, NATO Europe’s “peace dividend” shorted defense by $1.6 trillion below the 2% target, $8.6 trillion under 1960-1992 averages (per McKinsey). Post-2022 boosts aren’t enough to make up for decades of underinvestment. Europe must triple spending to 4% of its $25 trillion GDP—$1 trillion yearly, adding $1.8 trillion by 2028. Debt-funded, this could jolt sluggish growth. Its moral, too—America’s spending propped up Europe’s welfare states.
As the new Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz said “the absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.”
To achieve this, Europe will need to spend on:
Forging a united force
Leading with tech
Shielding the East
Forge a coordinated force
Europe’s immediate imperative is to develop a robust, coordinated defense posture in the event of a partial or total US withdrawal.
Currently, NATO plans count on up to 300,000 US troops in the continent. An autonomous Europe will need to deploy at least that many on short order. This is roughly the equivalent of 50 brigades of troops with supporting materiel, an increase of roughly 60%.
Ukraine has a combat-tested military that has, despite overwhelming odds against it, bettered Putin’s force. The know-how and experience is invaluable. So too is the scale; Ukraine can field 110 combat brigades. This experience and these troops cannot be lost. Financially, Ukrainian support is costly, but manageable.2
Efficiency is the next frontier. Europe’s military sprawls across 179 different weapons systems—a chaotic patchwork of tanks, jets and ships. America, by contrast, streamlines at 33, reaping agility and scale. Standardizing could save $30-100 billion annually, per McKinsey, redirecting funds to munitions, maintenance and manpower. Imagine a unified arsenal—German Leopard tanks rolling alongside French Rafale jets, all serviced by a single supply chain. It’s not just about cost-cutting; it’s about combat readiness. Standardising equipment could yield $30-100 billion in annual savings across Europe’s collective defense. Europe’s general industrial and manufacturing sector is 12 times larger than Russia’s.
Nuclear deterrence casts a longer shadow. Poland signaled in 2023 its willingness to host US warheads under NATO’s aegis—a bold move amid Russia’s threats. Germany’s incoming Chancellor Friedrich Merz now muses about British or French nuclear umbrellas as a stopgap. This may be require a decade-long push for an indigenous capability. This is no small step: exiting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty could ignite a global arms race, with nations like Korea or Japan following suit. The risks are stark—Moscow would know every move, probing for weaknesses in that nerve-jangling decade. Yet the alternative could be more grave: a Europe undefended against Russia’s nuclear swagger invites aggression. The strength here isn’t reckless—it’s survival.
Lead with tech
The Ukraine conflict showcased how low-cost UAVs can outmaneuver and outsmart legacy tanks. As Helsing’s Kadi Silde told me in Munich earlier this year, you “won’t win by amassing more legacy systems. Russia will always outnumber them in that game.”
Europe could steel a march by doubling down on a domestic drone industry, supported by rich and deep AI-based systems and electronic warfare.
To do this would be to establish a more powerful defense tech sector. Europe’s startup ecosystem is responding. Investments in defence, security and resilience, a portmanteau which includes energy systems and cyber security, is up fivefold since 2019, according to data from Dealroom.
Of course, many technologies of the Exponential Age are dual-use. And Europe’s investment in AI, robotics, batteries and materials, may come in handy. Consider the deal between France’s Mistral, which makes open-source foundation models, and Helsing, Europe’s top defense startup, to develop new AI models for the battlefield. Europe’s increasingly deep AI sector could be a force multiplier.
Natty demos are of no use unless the military buys them. When speaking about the bottlenecks to Europe’s defence innovation, Today, legacy procurement means that by the time something is delivered, it is outdated. Continental militaries need to start buying and buying fast, then faster.
One challenge will be the simple rate of innovation in the actual battlefield. Drone warfare in Ukraine has shown iteration cycles measuring weeks not years. So any systems procured today need to be future-proofed for those dynamics.
The vision is a vivid one… Skies thick with patrol drones guarding Baltic coasts, swarms of one-way attack drones that shred tank columns, and electronic warfare nets jamming Russia’s signals into silence. Outthinking brute force demands tech, but also a stronger culture of speed and innovation.
Shield the East
Europe is under attack from adversaries through both kinetic and cyber warfare. The Danish energy grid was hit by coordinated cyberattacks in 2023, GPS jammed across Finland the year before, unidentified drones monitoring offshore oil platforms, German and French fiber-optic cables damaged in several attacks.
While infrastructure attacks are limited in number, they are testing grounds for Putin’s operatives. They will come in large numbers ahead of any attack. In the case of Ukraine, Russia landed many blows to soften its opposition. Ransomware and cyber-psyops were launched a month before the invasion. The days and hours before followed with vast numbers of DDOS attacks, a successful assault on military satellite communications and a significant malware attack. Investments should be made to deepen the resilience.
Borders with Russia and Belarus, long though they are, must be considered critical infrastructure. The Baltic nations have already started building the Baltic Defense Line to deny ground invasion. Western European nations should support the financing and delivery of this system so it can be complete ahead of schedule and ahead of spec.
Neither is Poland sitting still, preparing the “Eastern Shield” a network roughly 500 miles long of bunkers and ditches. These fortification, together with the Baltic Defense Line, will form a “tripwire” in the event of any attack from the Moscow.
Intelligence is the unseen shield. Europe’s $25 billion budget, with 30% lost to duplicated efforts, pales against the $106 billion US juggernaut. Tripling it to $75 billion could birth a satellite constellation—surveillance to spot troop buildups, communication to coordinate, navigation to guide. Without US eyes, Europe must see for itself.
Peace through strength
Ronald Reagan taught a timeless truth: war stalks the weak, not the strong.
We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when they are weak. It is then that tyrants are tempted.3
Eastern Europe feels this viscerally—Poland fortifies, the Baltics brace. Western leaders awaken too. Macron’s stark warning this month: “Europe is mortal. It could die.”
In the course of researching this essay, I found many more examples. And each passing day, brings a new speech nudging the consensus towards the common sense of this essay.
Reagan broke the “Evil Empire” not with bullets, but by making rivalry unsustainable. Putin’s war economy mirrors that fragility—defense is consuming about 35% of the federal budget, nearly double the Soviet Union’s Cold War peak. Civilian industry faces a shortfall of nearly two million workers. Inflation may be as high as 22%, even while interest rates exceed 20%. Households are a fifth worse off than the start of the war. Potato prices have risen 81% in a year. He’s racing against time. Europe’s strength can replay the Politburo’s 1987 choice—yield or collapse.
A fortified Europe will renew transatlantic bonds. I wrote in November last year:
My best bet would be that a Europe that lifts its game and pays its way will have more constructive discussions with the new White House about maintaining the Atlantic alliance.
I stand by it.
Capitals stir—Paris, Warsaw, Tallinn, London, Berlin, Copenhagen. With resolve, peace endures. The message to Putin is clear:
Vladimir, what are you going to do about it?
Translation: A common man
Europe already provides the majority of support to Ukraine: $204bn compared to $183bn from the US. In addition, roughly two-thirds of American support is present in the US to fund the domestic industrial base. In other words, the US has spent about $54bn on outside suppliers in three years to support Kyiv. Europe could afford to fill that gap.
From Reagan’s speech to the RNC in July 1980.
Profound, timely and real
One of the things I understood becoming a German, was that if Russia ever decided to roll it's T55 fleet towards us, I'd have to get my family to safety and fight.