If Britain were properly governed, Keir Giles would still be “institutionalized in the Ministry of Defence” as he tells me. But Britain is in a mess, and one sign of this is that he is out of public service and able to describe its plight.
In 2010, the UK government dissolved the Conflict Studies Research Centre, a defense analysis outfit with a decades-long record of analyzing Kremlin behavior and thinking. Giles, along with its other experts, was considered surplus to requirements. Insights on Russia were, to use George Orwell’s phrase from 1984, “oldthink”: no longer necessary. Worse, they were “wrongthink”. Russia was a big emerging market, not an enemy. The priority was promoting trade and investment, not reviving pointless, expensive security worries from long ago.
Giles (disclosure: a long-term friend and ally of mine) has sounded the alarm with exemplary prescience and clarity in articles and think tank pieces. His books include Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia to Confront the West (2019) and Russia’s War on Everybody (2022). His latest, published this week, is called Who will Defend Europe? An Awakened Russia and a Sleeping Continent.
He starts by explaining that Russia’s war plans go well beyond Ukraine; the Kremlin has the intent and increasingly the capability to challenge Europe’s security order. He then shows how fears of an escalation in Washington, DC, have eviscerated the transatlantic security guarantee. He highlights, in particular, a decision by the White House at the outbreak of full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022, when it stopped EUCOM, the US military HQ in Europe, from moving into the defensive posture that its uniformed commanders thought prudent. That intervention signaled to the Kremlin not calm but dangerous weakness. “The one aspect of US policy that has been utterly consistent is resisting decisive action against Russia as long as possible,” he writes. A stunning upset results from these missteps, he argues. European states “must look to their own defenses to deter Russia, and if necessary, repel it.”
But how? Giles outlines the weakness of the old European powers. Britain has systematically over-promised and under-delivered on its commitment to NATO. Germany’s military woes run so deep that it will be many years before the country is again able to defend itself, let alone others (even finding forces for the token German deployment in Lithuania has hugely stretched the emaciated Bundeswehr). President Macron’s volte-face on Russia wins France a brief but favorable mention: “one of the most useful European contributors to the security of the continent.” But for how long?
Most of the good news comes from further east. Giles praises Poland’s military spending splurge, Finland’s comprehensive defense, Czech initiatives in finding shells for Ukraine and Denmark’s generosity—sending its entire artillery there. It is mostly smaller countries taking the lead, he writes, based not on their economic heft but “their willingness to recognize the urgency of the moment and take steps to meet it.” He quotes a Polish official saying bleakly: “Can we afford it? We have no other choice.”
Deterrence will be expensive. But fighting a war will be far more costly. The frontline states of Europe understand that, as do Cassandras elsewhere, such as Giles. Most countries west of Warsaw do not.
He finishes his book with an intriguing conjecture: that the well-armed, resilient countries on Russia’s borders will not be the ones to suffer attack. The Kremlin will instead target the soft, complacent places farther west, with weak defenses and no credible deterrent. Giles leaves unexplored how this might happen in practice: through sub-threshold attacks, conventional warfare, or nuclear blackmail. A good subject for a future book, perhaps.
Edward Lucas is a Non-resident Senior Fellow and Senior Advisor at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
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