NATO Allies: Conflict with Russia Imminent

NATO faces a “pre-war era” in which “literally any scenario is possible” given the potential for aggression from Russia, according to Poland’s prime minister, the latest evidence that allies see a growing likelihood of major conflict.

“Literally any scenario is possible,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a group of journalists in a newly-published interview. “I know it sounds devastating, especially to people of the younger generation, but we have to mentally get used to a new era. We are in a pre-war era. I don’t exaggerate. This is becoming more and more apparent every day.”

Tusk is the second senior politician from a NATO member-state to suggest that the alliance faces “a pre-war world,” as British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps likewise put it in a January speech. His urgent appeal adds a center-left voice to a chorus of Russia hawks typically populated by more conservative perspectives or the Baltic state leaders who feel acutely their vulnerability to Russia.

“But I would dare to say that it is only now, in the midst of this great war, that it has dawned on all NATO leaders and senior military leaders that all this may actually be needed very soon, that there is a real threat, a real military task, and that we must behave and act in such a way that this machinery, when it is needed, is ready,” Estonian Ambassador Jüri Luik, the Baltic ally’s envoy to NATO, told an Estonian outlet in an interview published Friday. “It seems to me that this final realization has come only after the aggression began.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin denies any intention to “fight NATO” in the event that the war in Ukraine ends with a Russian victory.

“The United States’s defense spending amounts to about 40% of the global figure, or more precisely, 39%, while Russia accounts for 3.5%,” Putin said Wednesday during a visit to a Russian air base. “Considering this difference, are we planning to fight NATO? This is nonsense. We are only defending our people on our historical territories. It is therefore complete nonsense when people say that we intend to attack Europe after Ukraine.”

Those statements are no consolation for Central and Eastern European leaders given that Putin and other Russian officials lied about their intent to attack Ukraine even in the weeks just prior to the full-scale invasion. And Baltic officials, especially, are conscious that Putin regards their countries as part of the historical Russian empire. The justification for the war in Ukraine, as Putin emphasized in June 2022, also “applies to Narva,” a city in Estonia where Tsar Peter the Great won a major battle in 1704.

“Then the question is, could NATO be challenged? … we’re more technologically advanced, we’re better prepared, we’re better trained, and all the other things,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said Monday at the Hudson Institute. “But Russia is fighting an actual war right now, building up this army and expecting us to be, politically, not prepared — not militarily [unprepared], but politically.”

Tusk, likewise, emphasized that European leaders need to adopt a more hard-headed attitude.

“At the last European Council, I had an interesting discussion with the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez,” Tusk said. “He asked us to stop using the word ‘war’ in statements. He argued that people do not want to be threatened in this way, that in Spain it sounds abstract. I replied that in my part of Europe, war is no longer an abstraction — and that our duty is not to discuss, but to act and prepare to defend ourselves.”

The Polish leader aired his warning while arguing that European allies must recognize the urgent need for major defense spending increases, on their own behalf and in direct support of Ukraine.

“There is no reason for Europeans not to respect the fundamental principle [of NATO] and spend a minimum of 2% of GDP on defense,” Tusk said, according to a transcript from El Pais. “We have to spend as much as we can to buy equipment and ammunition for Ukraine because we are living in the most critical moment since the end of the Second World War. The next two years will decide everything.”

The remarks make Tusk an outspoken participant in a trans-Atlantic debate about how to manage risk with respect to Russia. NATO leaders have been divided, for years, about whether to adopt a more conciliatory or confrontational policy vis a vis Moscow, in part because they have contradictory assessments of what kind of Western policy will be interpreted as escalatory in the Kremlin.

“If you are the side that says all the time you do not want to escalate and irritate the other side — ‘I did not give one weapon or the other to Ukraine’ — then, in a sense, you are setting yourself up to react and you often lose the initiative,” said Luik, the Estonian ambassador. “So in that sense, I think we need to escalate, but in a way that would be appropriate, of course.”

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Tusk offered a similar assessment of the ramifications of failure.

“If we cannot support Ukraine with enough equipment and ammunition, if Ukraine loses, no one in Europe will be able to feel safe,” he said.