Analytical Note: «Options for 2026»
Defence
The USA-led mobilisation of transatlantic support for Ukraine now belongs to the past, Europe is thrust into the key role. The best option for Europe is to provide Ukraine with the means to ensure its sovereignty, independence, security and internationally recognised territorial integrity. It is morally, financially, militarily and strategically infinitely preferable to a broadening of the war on the back of a dirty deal or as a result of a Russian theatre-level victory.
This conclusion was reached in his analytical note for the Ukraine Facility Platform titled «Options for 2026» by François Heisbourg, a leading French security and defence analyst serving as a Special Adviser at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique.
The defence of Ukraine and the defence of Europe are mutually complementary and reinforcing – and very much vice versa. Failure in supporting Ukraine will further Russian ambitions at Europe’s expense. And visibly insufficient preparations for European defence as a whole will go hand in hand with Europe’s failure to safeguard Ukraine, Heisbourg is convinced.
The situation is worsened by the fact that USA-led mobilisation of transatlantic support for Ukraine now belongs to the past. The USA no longer provides materiel, although it still delivers C4ISR support (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance), and it no longer leads what used to be called the Ramstein group.
In these circumstances Europe needs to prepare itself concurrently for each of the possible scenarios in the development of the Russian-Ukrainian war:
- Russia continues doing what it has been doing in the hope that it will somehow succeed in the fourth year of the war.
To replace American support for Ukraine, European members of the Ramstein group (plus Canada) would have to double their contribution to an annual total of some €60 billion, including the purchase of US weapons such as Patriot. Simply doing more of the same may not be enough to hold the fort: moving close to €100 billion annually may be prudent.
Money should not be an obstacle, above and beyond existing national commitments and EU schemes (notably SAFE): Euroclear in Brussels is the custodian of some €250 billion worth of frozen Russian Central Bank assets.
Overall European defence requirements will be met by the NATO commitment to raise defence spending to 3.5% of GDP. Identified priorities should be layered air defence, conventional deep-strike, space assets, C4ISR enablers and more rapid, scaled-up defence acquisition and development cycles.
- Russia redefines victory along apparently more limited lines in the framework of the Trumpian mediation.
The security and defence consequences of a deal brokered under US auspices will have to be sustained by the Europeans with the post-war authorities in Kyiv. Europe therefore has all the more reason to speed up and increase its arms and intelligence transfers to Ukraine.
Even the unlikely track of deploying EU forces to Ukraine to deter Russia would not be as financially and militarily onerous an outcome as one in which Europe would have to cope with a subjugated Ukraine with Russian forces arrayed along the borders of Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland.
An unsatisfactory and mismanaged «deal scenario», unlike the continuation of «more of the same», has the potential of opening the door, in more or less short order, to a «Flucht nach Vorn» by Russia.
- Russian escalation or «Flucht nach Vorn», characterised by all-of-society mobilisation, increased arms procurement and more aggressive grey-zone operations against Europe.
The spectacular weakness displayed by NATO air defences in the face of Russian drones is a harbinger of Russian attempts to create such a «new normal» in NATO European space.
A horizontal and vertical escalation scenario puts the future of European security as a whole at stake, along with the future of the transatlantic relationship. This scenario may unfold before the end of the decade. This should imply a planning horizon within the decade. A particular European problem is that priority programmes remain all too often wedded to 2040-plus timetables, despite their lack of relevance to the threat at hand.
Given Ukraine’s unparalleled record of ultra-rapid development cycles and its valuable experience in war-fighting, Europe and Ukraine have cause to increasingly integrate their defence industries.
In conclusion, for the European members of NATO (plus Canada) and the EU, Russia’s war against Ukraine and its European-scale ambitions (the 2021 draft treaties) is the centre of strategic and military gravity – the Russian threat now dimensions the military effort and leads the strategic priorities.
The challenge, both in NATO and within the EU, will be to generate apposite and timely strategic and military decisions in a collective bereft of a clear pacesetter in the form of traditional US leadership.
It is worth considering the risk that, in an escalatory Russian scenario, the US could choose to go AWOL. In that case it is possible that Europeans will have to deal with the prospect of a US ready to cut back or cut off C4ISR cooperation with Ukraine or within NATO, and the US refusal to approve the transfer to Ukraine of US weapons purchased by Europe.
The addition of a European dimension to the French and British nuclear deterrents will become helpful, alongside NATO nuclear sharing of US nuclear weapons based in Europe and lofted by the national air forces of Belgium, Britain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. Given political and strategic will, this can in fact happen quite rapidly, as demonstrated by the return of the UK to NATO nuclear sharing this year.
The full paper is available in both English and Ukrainian:
