{"id":8238,"date":"2026-07-17T07:56:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T07:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/8238\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T07:56:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T07:56:17","slug":"is-nato-preparing-for-a-long-war-with-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/8238\/","title":{"rendered":"Is NATO Preparing for a Long War With Russia?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the shadows cast by the protracted conflict in the Middle East, the 32 member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) gathered in <\/a>Ankara<\/a>, T\u00fcrkiye, for its annual summit during the second week of July. The turbulence of the current geopolitical landscape reverberated throughout the summit, establishing new strategic arrangements, troop mobilization, and the alliance\u2019s <\/a>biggest rearmament in decades,<\/a> accelerating the trends of NATO rearmament that began with the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n

The biggest threat since the Cold War<\/p>\n

The alliance declared the Russian aggressions in Ukraine and the Eastern European border, coupled with hybrid warfare<\/a> like cyberattacks, information warfare and sabotage against critical infrastructure across the continent, to be the \u2018gravest threat to Euro-Atlantic security in decades<\/a>.\u2019 This followed a <\/a>declaration<\/a> by Russia a few weeks prior that Europe is embroiling itself into a \u2018war\u2019 with Russia through its military assistance to Ukraine. Thus, several European security analysts predict that a full-scale war between NATO and Russia in Europe may break out by <\/a>2029<\/a>, based on Russian plans of mass mobilization along its European border, including the deployment of <\/a>115,000 troops<\/a> in the Baltic.<\/p>\n

Unprecedented military spending<\/p>\n

\n Stay ahead of the geopolitical week.\n <\/p>\n

\n MD Briefing delivers expert analysis across five global fronts \u2014 the Indo-Pacific, energy, geoeconomics, European security, and the Middle East \u2014 every Monday morning. Free.\n <\/p>\n

In line with this geopolitical assessment, the members gathered in Ankara pledged a <\/a>\u20ac50 billion<\/a> investment in joint military procurement and 40 billion dollars<\/a> over the next five years in aerial and drone technology\u2014technologies that have <\/a>proven key<\/a> in the battlefields of Ukraine and the Middle East. In addition, member states reiterated their commitment to the 2025 objective of increasing their military spending to <\/a>5% of GDP by 2035<\/a>. However, while military spending is increasing, it remains lagging, with only 5 of the alliance\u2019s 32 member states projected to reach the milestone of increasing core military spending to <\/a>3.5% of GDP in 2026.<\/a> In comparison, Russia currently spends <\/a>7.5-10%<\/a> of its GDP on defense, and vastly outpaces Europe in crucial <\/a>drone production.<\/a><\/p>\n

Scaling up engagements on the Eastern flank<\/p>\n

In addition, NATO launched a new, <\/a>\u20ac70-billion aid package<\/a> to Ukraine while scaling up its <\/a>troop deployments<\/a> in countries close to the Russian border, including Hungary, Poland, Finland and the Baltic countries, to secure NATO\u2019s eastern flank. Besides expanding existing deployments, the Ankara summit led to an expansion in the number of NATO battle groups in Eastern Europe from <\/a>4 to 9<\/a>, and established the <\/a>Eastern and Arctic Sentries<\/a> to safeguard NATO presence in these geopolitically cultural regions. Furthermore, two entirely new forces, the <\/a>Allied Reaction Force and the NATO force model<\/a>, were launched to enhance the alliance\u2019s ability to respond rapidly and deploy a wider variety of defense and deterrence missions, while developing what has been described as the alliance\u2019s most detailed defense plans <\/a>since the Cold War.<\/a><\/p>\n

The changing role of the US<\/p>\n

However, these impressive declarations mask ongoing tensions and divisions within the alliance. Most prominently, US President Donald Trump\u2019s announcement of disengaging from NATO commitments in 2025, by cutting down its troop deployments in Europe by <\/a>1\/3<\/a> and withdrawing up to <\/a>50%<\/a> of its strategic bombing technology, on occasion even threatening to withdraw from the alliance<\/a> altogether, accusing its allies of parasitizing on US military spending. These tensions were brought to the fore earlier this year<\/a> when NATO members like Spain refused US requests of aid in its war against Iran, with US President Trump renewing its threats of withdrawing from the alliance and denouncing NATO as a \u2018paper tiger.\u2019 Even so, President Trump relaxed his previously hostile tone<\/a> toward continued\u00a0 assistance to Ukraine and appeasing attitude<\/a> toward Russian territorial demands during the Ankara Summit, promising Ukraine access to the top-range US air-defence system Patriot<\/a>, while declaring his \u2018tremendous love\u2019<\/a> and praising<\/a> the alliance for being more united than ever. Nonetheless, harm may already have been done; arguably, the very fluctuations and unilateralism of US foreign policy toward NATO and Ukraine creates uncertainty that undermines the credibility of NATO\u2019s deterrence capacity, which may egg on Russian territorial ambitions in Europe and exace<\/p>\n

Internal tensions<\/p>\n

In a similar vein, the relationship between European NATO members and T\u00fcrkiye has been strained<\/a> in recent years over migration<\/a>, the authoritarian tendencies of the Turkish government and T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s ongoing trade links with Russia<\/a>, in effect undermining the economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the EU following the invasion of Ukraine. Moreover, amidst skyrocketing energy costs<\/a> caused by the ongoing instability and conflict in the Middle East, threatening the world economy with recession and inflation, other NATO member states may find it difficult to domestically justify increasing military spending in alignment with NATO objectives.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thus, while NATO has made an impressive and for the alliance well-needed display of unity and powerful action toward enhanced military presence, deterrence and defence capabilities, only time will tell if this yields a sustainable, long-term war strategy, and if such a strategy will brought to implementation in warred conflict,\u00a0 as these ambitions and objectives encounter the hurdles, tensions and unpredictability of contemporary geopolitical reality.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the shadows cast by the protracted conflict in the Middle East, the 32 member states of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[60,151,640,7,20,281,282],"class_list":["post-8238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-defense","tag-european-union","tag-front","tag-nato","tag-russia","tag-security","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}