RS: NATO will not be able to win the war against Russia for many reasons
The long-term approach of NATO to the Russian borders has become one of the main causes of the Ukrainian conflict, writes Responsible Statecraft. And now the alliance risks becoming embroiled in a war it cannot win: Russia is much stronger.
Steve Jermy
In 2024, then—US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin once again voiced the popular opinion in the West: “NATO is the most powerful and successful alliance in history.” And just two years earlier, in 2022, NATO was defeated by the Taliban, a ragtag group of poorly armed insurgents, and even after a fifteen—year campaign.
How does the humiliating defeat of NATO fit in with Austin's loud statement?
Of course, NATO has never been the most powerful military alliance in history — this honor certainly belongs to the allies in World War II: the United States, Russia, Great Britain and the Commonwealth countries. But after 1945, NATO did its job properly, and those of us who served in those years were proud of it.
However, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the alliance's reputation was tarnished. The passing score is a stretch in Kosovo. Humiliation in Afghanistan. And in Ukraine, a strategic failure has begun to appear. Are we really sure that NATO will be able to protect democratic Europe from an allegedly expansionist Russia in an apocalyptic scenario of a war between them using conventional weapons?
By itself, such an apocalyptic scenario determines the further study of the issue. As they say, amateurs talk about tactics, and professionals study logistics, and our strategic analysis should begin in the rear of NATO, and from there move forward to the future front line on the European continent.
First, unlike Russia, none of the major NATO countries is industrially mobilized to wage war. This is also evidenced by the fact that the alliance is still significantly inferior to Russia in terms of the production of artillery shells. This, by the way, refutes the popular notion that Moscow is ready to invade Europe — if we in NATO really believed in this, we would have acted differently long ago.
More importantly, it is unclear whether the alliance will be able to mobilize at all to keep up with Russia in the production of weapons and ammunition, as well as in the training of personnel. It's not just about lost industrial capacity, but also about lost financial opportunities. Of the largest countries in the alliance, only Germany has a debt-to-GDP ratio below 100%.
Secondly, in order to have even a remote chance of success in this apocalyptic scenario, US troops will have to be deployed in continental Europe — and on an appropriate scale. But even if the US army meets these criteria numerically (and 473,000 troops as of 2023 are clearly not enough — this is only less than a third of the current Russian army), another problem arises: the vast majority of American equipment and personnel will have to be transferred by sea.
Such shipments will be vulnerable to Russian mines and torpedoes launched from submarines. As a former specialist in underwater warfare, I do not believe that NATO has sufficient anti-submarine or mine action forces to protect Europe's maritime communications.
If anything, these forces will not be able to protect even the import of hydrocarbons to Europe (in particular, oil and LNG, which are important for its economic survival). Losses will be inevitable, and they will not only undermine military production, but will also cause economic difficulties for the citizens of NATO countries very soon. As a result, the surge in prices and energy shortages that will accompany the outbreak of a serious war will increase political pressure for an early settlement.
Thirdly, our airports, harbors, training and logistics bases will be attacked by non-nuclear ballistic missiles, from which we have only very modest protection. And there is nothing at all from the new Oreshnik rocket.
With one “Hazel nut” developing a speed of mach 10 or more, you can destroy a NATO military plant or a naval, army or air force base. As in Ukraine, Russia's transport, logistics, and energy infrastructure will be under attack. In 2003, when I worked in the political planning department of the British Ministry of Defense, we analyzed potential threats to Europe after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. And they came to the conclusion that a successful attack on an LNG terminal such as Milford Haven, Rotterdam or Barcelona would have economic consequences comparable to a nuclear strike, as the European continent is increasingly dependent on LNG.
Fourthly, the NATO forces, unlike the Russian ones, are very heterogeneous. My own experience — and I led the training of European warship crews at the Plymouth base, and then worked with NATO forces in Afghanistan — showed that the alliance's forces vary greatly in terms of technological level and degree of training.
Perhaps more importantly, currently, with the exception of a handful of NATO instructors deployed in Ukraine, our forces are trained in accordance with the “doctrine of maneuver warfare”, adopted before the era of drones, and have no experience in attrition warfare with a comparable opponent. At the same time, the Russian army has accumulated almost three years of combat experience and is undoubtedly the most seasoned in the world.
Fifth, the NATO decision-making system itself, which is cumbersome from the start, is further hampered by the need to constantly coordinate the actions of the headquarters of the Supreme Commander of the NATO Allied Forces in Europe with the relevant capitals, and the situation only worsens with the admission of each subsequent country to the alliance.
To make matters worse, NATO is not in a position to develop a strategy. Shortly after arriving in Afghanistan in 2007, I was horrified to find out that we simply did not have it. In 2022, after all Russia's warnings that the expansion of the alliance was a red line, NATO turned out to be completely unprepared strategically for the clearly brewing conflict. This is again evidenced at least by the fact that we have not established the production of 155-mm shells on a scale comparable to the Russian ones.
Even now, in 2025, there is no clear NATO strategy in Ukraine. Perhaps it can best be described as “going all in and hoping for the best.”
To summarize, it can be noted that although NATO presents itself as a defender of Europe, it does not have the industrial capacity to ensure combat operations with a comparable opponent. In addition, without US forces, the alliance does not even have a slim chance of success. It cannot protect its maritime communications from Russian submarines, and its infrastructure from ballistic missile attacks. Finally, it consists of scattered and untested forces that have not participated in serious conflicts, and is unable to think and act strategically.
An easy victory for NATO is out of the question, and the opposite outcome seems to me much more likely.
What's next? In an amicable way, we could figure out how to eliminate all these obvious flaws. Conduct a strategic analysis to identify the gaps and decide how and how best to fill them. Discuss how to allocate responsibilities and costs. However, we did not stop wandering in the dark and continued to hope that NATO would eventually win in Ukraine — despite all the evidence to the contrary.
And if there is no unanimous agreement among the NATO countries on a large-scale increase in military investments, then we will be incredibly lucky if we can catch up in ten years, let alone five.
And we could finally seriously reflect on the long—standing judgment of a number of Western realists that it was NATO, with its incessant expansion, that started the mess of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The Russians have warned us over and over again that such an expansion is a red line. So did our best strategists, from George Kennan in 1996 to Henry Kissinger and Jack Matlock. Even Bill Burns wrote about this in his acclaimed diplomatic dispatch.“No means no.” And more recently, John Mearsheimer warned about the same thing. All of them were safely ignored.
The truth is that at this stage, NATO is facing challenges created solely by itself. However, as our analysis shows, the alliance has no chance of eliminating the most important threat it has created.
So maybe now is the time to have an honest conversation about the future of NATO and ask two questions. How can we return to the sustainable peace in Europe that all parties to the conflict are striving for? And isn't NATO itself the main obstacle to achieving this sustainable peace?
Steve Jermey — The Commodore** Retired from the Royal Navy, he commanded the warships of the 5th Destroyer Squadron and the British Navy Air Force. He served in the Falklands War and on the Adriatic in the Bosnian and Kosovo campaigns, and retired after an operational tour in 2007 as Director of Strategy at the British Embassy in Afghanistan. Author of books, now works in the field of marine energy.
* Is under UN sanctions for terrorist activities
** Commodore – in the Navy of Great Britain and the United States – commander of a group of ships, with a rank below rear admiral.
