Eurasia Press & News
The next NATO Summit will focus on Ukraine support and Allies defense spending, but military strategy always equals to ‘ends, ways, means’, meaning before the means you need to have clear ends and efficient ways.
NATO has quite clear ends and improving means, but still lack efficient ways, to reach its goals of peace and security for the Alliance. The ways will have to be shaped on the attacks that the Alliance received since at least one decade, and more since the invasion of Ukraine: the Russian ‘long confrontation’ through ‘hybrid warfare’ and the ‘weaponization of everything’, in a covert war aimed to weaken the West unity and resilience.
Putin’s new alliance with North Korea, after the one with China in 2022 and the one with Iran also this year, shows that Russia and its allies are stepping up on their path of confrontation with the West, with a broader strategy aimed actually not just at the West, but at democracies worldwide, in an attempt to establish a ‘new world order’. Putin created a wartime economy for a long war and is leading a ‘Grand Strategy’ that liberal democracies must grasp, to effectively win the current struggle between freedom and oppression for the fate of our future planet.
The Russian and its allies Grand Strategy involves not only the threat and practice of invasion of neighboring sovereign nations, to exert control on the peripheries reminiscent of the last colonial conflicts, but also encompasses a sophisticated approach to a ‘permanent hybrid warfare’, with so called grey zones or subthreshold operations. Recognizing the threat posed by this strategy, the West and its democratic partners must mobilize to confront this permanent conflict.
Even with the recent European Union (EU) elections with a slight shift towards the right nationalist side of the political spectrum, and the risk connected to the upcoming US elections in November, NATO is expected to maintain its strength. With 32 member countries and 35 global partners, the Alliance is already a global coalition, and as a ‘political-military’ alliance the political unity among democracies precede military defense.
This principle is underscored also by the recent selection of the new NATO Secretary General, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, known for his staunch defense of democracy, from a country that host the International Criminal Court, that recently issued arrest warrants for Russia’s former defence minister and its military chief of staff, besides Putin previously. But to defend democracies NATO and EU needs to engage more in the hybrid warfare spectrum and this will require a better cooperation between the two, in a whole of government approach.
The hybrid warfare that Russia and its allies are using, is based on all national instruments of power, the so defined DIME: Diplomacy, Information, Military and Economy tools. The West with its allies therefore needs to use all these national ways of exert power to win the new hybrid war: diplomacy (as said first with a renewed political cooperation between EU, NATO and also their global democratic partners) information (with tools to fight propaganda machine and infowar done also with cyber attacks) military (with defence not only of the borders but of the critical infrastructures, especially in energy and in new domains like the underwater) and economy (using all elements of economy, from sanctions to frozen capitals). Furthermore, NATO and the EU needs to step up the scientific and technological cooperation, the crucial area for the future competition that will shape 21st century global order and even our species.
One important sector of this hybrid warfare that has been overlooked until now is the energy sector, especially for the current and future energy transition. By 2050 the EU wants to become climate neutral and boost the economy through green technology. Russia also approved its ‘Strategy of socio-economic development of the Russian Federation with low greenhouse gas emissions by 2050’ and China also by 2050 wants o the realize the ‘Chinese dream’ for the centenary of the People’s Republic of China, to become a developed zero-carbon economy as well as a “modern socialist country”. The competition for the energy transitions therefore, and with it the hybrid warfare in the energy sector, has become the new theatre of conflict and hybridization of war. The European dependency on Chinese batteries and critical materials for example is clearly opening new challenges instead of opportunities, already since some time.
Russia weaponization of energy against the EU increased since 2022, with the recent attacks on Ukraine energy infrastructure, aiming to weaken Europe energy supply during the decoupling from Russia. In reality attacks on energy infrastructures started much before: since 2014, Russia has strategically targeted Ukraine’s energy security through cyber-attacks on the grid and tried to sow discord among NATO allies on critical issues, like the climate change disinformation campaigns, to make the energy transition less supported and continue with dependency on Russia. But now that the International Criminal Court consider attacks on the electric infrastructures war crimes and the EU started finally the sanctions on Russian LNG, besides the new tariffs on electric vehicles from China, it seems that the EU is finally awakening to the new energy warfare. Nevertheless, this is just the beginning.
The fact of the matter is that the green transition pushed by climate change can be exploited with new hybrid warfare, fighting energy resilience and competition of the West, making the transition vulnerable to hybrid attacks, in particular in the new critical energy systems that have to be built, from infrastructures to supply chain of critical minerals. This may make the West more exposed to external attacks, not only in their infrastructures and systems but in the markets, the supply of resources, as well as in the political decisions and social support.
It becomes imperative therefore, a renewed NATO-EU cooperation related to energy security and also, which is connected, technological security. The EU and NATO today cooperate on hybrid threats with a specific emphasis on cyber defence, enhanced resilience, strategic communication and situational awareness. In the last NATO EU Joint Declaration in 2023 the two organizations aimed to deepening this cooperation, in particular on strategic competition, resilience issues, the protection of infrastructures (NATO and EU set up recently a taskforce on resilience and critical infrastructures) emerging and disruptive technologies and climate change. But declarations are not enough, what they need is urgent actions, setting up systems that are able to make early warning and quick reaction to possible attacks in all areas of DIME.
NATO, the EU and their allies need to step up the cooperation, with new complex strategies to be implemented in the short, medium and long term, in the energy security and technological transition. Besides a strong decision making and political will to decide the ‘ways’, what is needed are the ‘means’, a strong financial support to realize this deeper cooperation. The NATO Summit should focus on this too, as the battle will be long and will not be enough to support Ukraine with weapons to win against Putin. The new Russian-Chinese-NorthKorean-Iranian alignment will increase his ability to attack the West with a constant hybrid war, especially in the energy and technological sectors, trying to win in this way the crucial competition between democracies and dictatorships in favour of the second during the first half of this century.
