Europe Grapples With ‘Hybrid Warfare’ While Rebuilding Its Defense Capabilities

Western intelligence services are reportedly worried about Russian assassination plots targeting European defense industry leaders. This comes just weeks after an explosion at a factory in Italy that produces munitions for Ukraine’s war against Russian invaders and arson attacks on plants in Bulgaria and Estonia. Before that was the failed drone attack on Ukrainian cargo aircraft at Germany’s Leipzig/Halle Airport, which officials blame on Russia. The European Union and NATO may not openly be at war with their eastern neighbor, but Putin’s regime is waging something destructive and deadly against the western allies that officials dub “hybrid warfare” and that leaves them struggling to respond.

Stalemate Breeds Assassination Attempts and Other Covert Attacks

“Western intelligence agencies have warned Europe’s defence bosses that Russia is stepping up efforts to assassinate them, prompting companies to increase personal security around their top executives,” according to a story in the Financial Times. “With progress on the battlefield deadlocked in Ukraine and Russia’s economy struggling, the Kremlin has ordered an expansion of sabotage and ‘hybrid’ operations in Europe as it seeks to fatally weaken support for Kyiv in the coming months.”

“Stalemate” is the word U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio used last week, in answer to a question about the Russia–Ukraine war.

“Stalemates only end one of two ways,” he warned. “Number one, you have a negotiated settlement, one in which each sides have to give up something in order to get peace….The other way that stalemates end is through escalation.” Rubio added that such escalation could be “very dangerous in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war, because that – that escalation could wind up being a sabotage campaign in neighboring countries that are members of NATO.”

Just the day before, Rubio had urged Europe to “awaken from its long slumber” and defend itself and its interests or else resign itself to “a future of atrophy and servitude and decline.”

Whether or not Europe is rousing itself is open to interpretation. But all members of NATO now rank as meeting the target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense—only three did so in 2014 (including the U.S.). With 52 percent of the alliance’s GDP but 60 percent of its defense expenditures, America still carries a disproportionate burden. But the U.S. has global interests that account for part of the expense, and the ratio is improving. And Europeans do recognize that they’re under threat.

The Daily Target of Hybrid Warfare

“We’re not at war, but we are the daily target of hybrid warfare,” Germany’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told reporters after the drone attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport. “Espionage, sabotage, cyberattacks, or covert operations by foreign powers aimed at destabilizing Germany or inflicting direct harm are a constant reality.”

“In the EU, we have seen an increasing number of hybrid activities including cyber-attacks, foreign information manipulation and interference campaigns, acts of sabotage, incendiary devices in aircraft, damage to undersea infrastructure, airspace violations, assassination attempts, and the weaponisation of migration,” agrees the European Union’s diplomatic service. “These activities belong to a broader pattern of Russia’s increasingly aggressive behaviour.”

Rebuilding Defense Capability, but Dithering Over a Covert Conflict

What to do about that aggressive behavior is the next question. When a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said that European factories producing arms for Ukraine are “potential military targets,” E.U. Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius responded that such a strike would invoke NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause.

But an aid to Kubilius told Politico that the warning applied “specifically to an aerial bombardment or missile attack on a factory.” If, instead, Russia continues to send covert operatives or hire local criminals to burn, bomb, kill, or otherwise sabotage military and industrial targets in Europe as an extension of its war against Ukraine, the western allies are in a quandary. Do they respond with military force that most are still rebuilding after years of atrophy? Do they answer with their own covert strikes inside Russia?

The NATO alliance and the growing military ties within the European Union didn’t really evolve with “hybrid” threats in mind that leave room for barely credible deniability. It’s one thing to revive previously moribund armies and navies; it’s another to decide how to respond to attacks that are deliberately kept just below the threshold that would trigger an open response. And while Europe dithers, the Russians are constantly adjusting their perception of where that threshold lies.

“Until recently, Russia’s hybrid attacks against targets in the West have mainly been aimed at creating fear and weakening public support for aid to Ukraine,” Denmark’s intelligence agency cautioned last month. “The Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS) assesses that Russia will intensify its hybrid war by carrying out more frequent attacks against the West and NATO, with greater consequences for the targeted countries than in the past.”

Europe Can Defend Itself. Will It?

In fact, Europeans are perfectly capable of defending themselves against a threat from Russia. Germany alone has an economy almost double the size of Russia’s in GDP terms. The nations of NATO and the E.U. have more advanced technology than Russia and access to American arms, even as the U.S. distances itself from the alliance. But are they ready for an is-it-really-war after decades of preparations for a 20th-century style conflict?

The Russia–Ukraine war has proven eye-opening to military and political officials for its revival of old-fashioned trench warfare and armored conflict, along with the effective deployment of high-tech and relatively low-cost innovations. Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported on NATO exercises in Latvia focused on “implementing the lessons of how the nature of warfare has been transformed by the drone revolution in the battlefields of Ukraine—with mixed results, so far.”

Just as important, though, is the transition to a world in which conflict can come without uniforms and with official denial of responsibility, even as everybody knows who did what. That’s not the kind of war that takes territory, but it does kill people, destroy property, damage economies, and potentially affect political decisions.

As the U.S. pulls away to attend to other affairs, Europe is restoring its militaries and reclaiming the capacity for self-defense. But the continent still looks unprepared for the kind of conflict that’s not just coming its way, but already here.