By Edward Lucas

July 7, 2024

Nato’s summit is about style, not substance.

Election campaigns are supposed to be where politicians encounter the real world. But the parliamentary elections in France and the United Kingdom, and the looming presidential contest in the United States, exude unreality. The big issues such as debt, decarbonization, deglobalization, demography, digital security, and defense, to name just a few, barely feature. Instead, the political debate largely revolves around personalities, slogans, and hot-button trivia. (I may be jaded: I have just finished an unsuccessful election campaign here in London)

The NATO summit in Washington DC, this week is also stuck in the world of words, not deeds. The finest minds in the West are trying to find the phrasing that bridges the gap between Ukraine’s ambitions to join the alliance and the Biden administration’s reluctance to admit it. New organizational structures—notably a US-led mission based in Germany—will coordinate NATO’s often shambolic military assistance to Ukraine. Debates will rage behind the scenes about the alliance’s command structure (who runs northern Europe?) and force posture (where are the promised soldiers needed to make our defense plans a reality?). At the end, expect a confident-sounding communiqué and beaming photos. 

But as usual, the West is doing too little, too late. Too little for Ukraine. Too little for ourselves. Too late for all of us. War is already raging, not just in Ukraine but across Europe. Russian sabotage, arson, assassination, kidnapping, weaponized migration, cyberattacks, and disinformation campaigns go unpunished. Russian GPS jamming disrupts aviation. Russia attacks undersea data cables and gas pipelines. Russian drones crashed into Romanian territory, and Moscow threatened to shoot down a French surveillance airplane. NATO’s Baltic Air Policing intercepted Russian military aircraft over 300 times in 2023 alone. Russian missiles have twice crossed through Polish airspace while heading for targets in Ukraine.

Some of this is covered by the media. Other incidents are kept quiet, perhaps in order not to scare the public. Rumors are rumbling about a dangerous stand-off between Russian and US nuclear submarines in the Arctic Sea in 2021, hushed up at the time.

The new twist to Russian hybrid warfare — in effect, terrorism — in Europe is that it involves using thugs and petty criminals, rather than trained intelligence officers. Examples from Lithuania include the beating of an exiled Russian opposition figure, Leonid Volkov, an aide to the late Russian anti-corruption campaigner Alexey Navalny. The culprits were Polish football hooligans, hired for a few thousand euros. 

Another example was an arson attack on the Ikea outlet in the capital Vilnius; nobody has been caught for that. Another blaze in Warsaw destroyed Poland’s largest shopping mall. Poland has arrested nine people in connection with (so far unspecified) acts of sabotage. An attack in east London burned down a warehouse used by a Ukrainian logistics company. The Czech authorities have recently arrested an unnamed “Spanish-speaking man” for an arson attack. In Estonia, ten vandals hired by Russia, according to the authorities, targeted cars belonging to the interior minister and a prominent journalist. 

In Britain, a cyberattack from a Russian crime gang crippled NHS blood banks in central London. Non-NATO Austria, an espionage hotspot, is a particular worry. Criminals paid by Russian spies in Vienna hunted down a fugitive Russian military helicopter pilot in Spain, shot him five times, and then ran him over with an SUV.

Our diplomacy and democratic decision-making are out of sync with the real world. Russia, China, Iran and other foes are salami-slicing our deterrent daily, while our leaders make speeches, haggle over wording and rewrite power point slides. Nothing we do makes the Kremlin’s decision-makers fear punishment. Will Nato’s summit change that? I doubt it.

Edward Lucas is a Non-resident Senior Fellow and Senior Adviser 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.