From January to May 2024, NATO conducts its largest exercise since the Cold War, Steadfast Defender 2024. Approximately 90,000 troops from 32 member-states participates in a scenario where Russia is contained, deterred, and eventually defeated. Not only in Central-Europe, in Hungary, Slovakia and Romania but along a 2700-kilometer-long front. From the Kola Peninsula in the Arctic to Kaliningrad in the Baltic Sea, Russia’s newly restored Leningrad and Moscow Military Districts are put to the test.
The world’s most powerful alliance should have a fair chance of success. The NATO-members account for more than 50 percent of the world’s total expenditure on military hardware. They are thus accountable for more than half of the world’s total Gross Domestic Production (GDP). Together, the 966 million citizens from many of the world’s most prosperous countries can mobilize over 3,6 million troops, 20,000 aircrafts and 1200 navy vessels. And almost as many nuclear weapons as Russia’s 5889. Russia’s 143 million citizens, with a GDP at the size of Texas, can mobilize 1,4 million soldiers, 4000 aircrafts and just below 600 navy vessels. Russia’s ground forces are for years to come bogged down in Europe’s second largest state, Ukraine. As Europe enters 2025, Russia’s ground force will likely have suffered over half a million casualties; all 170 tactical battalion groups decimated.
The numbers are uncertain. But they indicate one thing: Russia is militarily dwarfed compared to NATO. Since the 2022-invasion, the Alliance has become more cohesive, more agile, and more credible in deterring Russian aggression. The contrast to NATO’s indecisiveness after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea is stark. Ten years ago, the Alliance spent over six months discussing whether to deploy reinforcements into Baltic and Polish territories. It was only in 2017 that the first four multinational battlegroups were deployed to Poland and the Baltics. As Russia launched its 2022-invasion, NATO had more than 40,000 troops under its command in May.
Is Steadfast Defender 2024 therefore the appropriate answer? Is it likely that Russia, despite its’ political, military, and economic inferiority, will pose a credible military threat to Northern-European NATO-members anytime sone? A full-scale war with Russia is definitively a worst-case scenario, but is it likely?
On the one hand, a diverse and fragmented NATO must always improve interoperability. As “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, joint exercises inside a multinational chain-of-command are key to overcome incompatible and competing procedures, techniques, and tactics. On the other hand, is it likely that Russia will wage war on Western premises, in accordance with NATO’s conventional plans, doctrines, and procedures? Russia is more likely to follow the perennial logic of China’s general and philosopher Sun Tzu. Codifying common sense 2500 years ago, his Art of War-doctrine argues that inferior forces will always avoid the opponent’s stronger side. Focus should be on adversary vulnerabilities.
It is therefore unlikely that Russia will launch a conventional campaign against NATO’s strength. Russia’s lines of operation unfold below the threshold of war. Russian troops will only have a supporting role, confined to snap exercises, aggressive signaling, and coercive diplomacy. The supported element, Russia’s key players, are the secret services: the FSB-disinformation agents, the GRU-assassination teams, and the SVR-affiliated Cozy Bear hacker groups. Being inferior to NATO’s unprecedented force, Russia’s most likely course of action will unfold within the NATO-member’ local communities and municipalities: liberal, transparent, and vulnerable cities that – as seen from the Kremlin – are perceived as favorable grey zones. For instance, in operations that blur the ambiguous interface between war and peace, between state security and public safety, or within the fragmented sector-oriented, state-driven Western bureaucracy. This is a frontline where delegation of governmental roles and responsibilities make NATO-member states tardy, fragmented, and inefficient. Particularly against more flexible and neatly coordinated Russian competitors.
As NATO prepare for a worst-case scenario: Could it be that the world’s mightiest alliance prepares for the wrong war? Should Steadfast Defender 2024 instead have trained the myriad of prime ministers, presidents, mayors, police chiefs, voluntary NGOs, and home guard commanders? For the next decade, these civilian and semi-civilian actors will be NATO’s first line of defence. Maybe it is time to think more rationally about Russian threat perceptions: neatly orchestrated operations with malign intents; not against NATO’s strong points, but against liberal democracies’ critical vulnerability: the social fabric that rests upon public confidence, national cohesion, and trust. Russia’s target-list is not NATO but the feeble web of social interaction that binds citizens and their governments together as one coherent and resilient actor.
Tormod Heier
Professor
Norwegian Defence University College
Norway
