Preparing for the world we already live in

Europe needs more than a defence strategy. It needs an operating model for an era of persistent strategic pressure. Preparing for war is essential. Learning how to function under persistent strategic pressure may prove even harder.

The recent NATO Summit in Ankara settled one important debate. Europe has finally accepted that it must prepare seriously for major war, relying predominantly on its own capabilities. As Washington reshapes its role in Europe’s security as an enabler rather than a guarantor, the balance of burden and responsibilities within the Alliance shifts inevitably to the Europeans. What is missing, however, is a coordinated roadmap outlining how this transition should be managed and what a more ‘Europeanised’ NATO would look like in practice.

The shift towards Europe assuming greater responsibility for its own security is both necessary and overdue. Yet in answering one question, Europe has exposed another – one that has barely entered the public debate.

Europe’s evolving security reality

What exactly is Europe preparing for?

If the answer is simply “war”, Europe risks preparing for only part of the challenge. Because Europe is already under sustained attack.

Not through massed armoured formations crossing its borders, but through cyberattacks, sabotage, election interference, economic coercion, attacks on critical infrastructure, disinformation campaigns and persistent attempts to undermine public confidence and democratic cohesion.

This is neither peace nor war in the traditional sense. Taken in isolation, each action is designed to remain below the threshold of war. Taken together, they create a ‘grey zone’ and represent persistent strategic pressure.

This is likely to remain Europe’s defining strategic environment for years to come, punctuated by crises and always carrying the risk of escalation into kinetic action and even open military confrontation.

The first paradox confronting Europe is this: just as Europe has finally accepted that it must prepare seriously for the possibility of a full-blown war, it risks overlooking the one that it is already experiencing every day. The danger is not that Europe is preparing for the wrong contingency, but that it is preparing for only one. The nightmare scenario remains major war. Europe must continue preparing for it with urgency and determination. Here, no mistakes can be forgiven. But at the same time, Europe must learn how to operate in the strategic environment it already inhabits.

These are not competing priorities. They are two dimensions of the same security challenge.

For decades, Europe approached security through a binary lens: peace or war, normality or emergency, civilian or military. That was understandable. The European Union itself was conceived as a peace project. Defence was not part of its DNA and wars were regarded as exceptions rather than permanent features of Europe’s political landscape. Today that distinction is becoming increasingly blurred.

From defence strategy to endurance strategy

The challenge is no longer only how to deter aggression or prevail in a high-intensity conflict. It is also how democratic societies continue to govern, mobilise and function under conditions of sustained hostile pressure. This is precisely where Europe’s thinking remains underdeveloped.

Europe is gradually developing a defence strategy. It has yet to develop an endurance strategy, an operating model for the security environment it already inhabits. The distinction is fundamental. Preparing for war is primarily about capabilities. Preparing for persistent strategic pressure is about how society functions. It raises different questions.

When do normal peacetime procedures cease to be sufficient? How should governments operate when hostile pressure becomes continuous rather than exceptional? How should democratic societies mobilise resources while preserving legitimacy and public trust? How should industries sustain production during prolonged disruption? How can Europe balance efficiency with redundancy? How should political leaders prepare citizens for an environment in which pressure becomes permanent rather than episodic?

These are not theoretical questions – they are all questions of governance.

Ukraine has already demonstrated that endurance – not simply resilience – may prove the decisive strategic quality of modern democratic societies. Resilience suggests the ability to absorb shocks and recover. Endurance means something different. It means continuing to function while the pressure never truly stops, and no return to normality is in sight.

That is the strategic condition Europe increasingly faces. It also helps explain why capability shortfalls are only part of Europe’s problem.

Why capability alone is not enough

The current debate, understandably, focuses on increasing defence expenditure, rebuilding armed forces, strengthening military capabilities and reinforcing the European defence industrial base. But Europe’s capability deficit is also a systems problem.

Europe’s chronic fragmentation affects the entire chain: political decision-making, strategic planning, industrial production, procurement, preparedness, interoperability and operational employment. Europe’s challenge is therefore not merely to acquire capabilities. It is to generate, integrate, sustain and employ them as part of a coherent system.

This leads to a second paradox.

The answer to deteriorating security cannot simply be to spend more. First, because spending more is not, in itself, a strategy, and second, more importantly, because without structural reform, Europe risks scaling up existing inefficiencies rather than its security. Even more worrying is that increased defence spending may unintentionally reinforce fragmentation if governments primarily use it to strengthen national industries, create domestic jobs and maximise national political returns. Put differently, Europe could spend considerably more while collaborating considerably less. That would represent a profound strategic failure.

Europe’s challenge is therefore not simply to spend more on defence. It is to ensure that increased spending generates simultaneously greater security, greater integration and greater resilience.

Towards a European operating model

The same logic applies to governance. Most European and transatlantic institutions perform well within their own mandates. The military prepares for defence; civil authorities prepare for emergencies; the European Union regulates; NATO plans; national governments safeguard sovereignty. Each performs an indispensable function.

Europe’s greatest vulnerabilities increasingly lie not within institutions, but at the interfaces between them. Between civilian and military authorities; between NATO and the European Union; between national governments and European institutions; between public and private actors; between resilience and defence.

This phenomenon can be described as the ‘dichotomy alibi’: the tendency for institutions to optimise performance within their own responsibilities while leaving the spaces between them insufficiently governed. Those spaces are precisely the ones where fragmentation takes root. They are also where Europe’s future security will increasingly be decided. The answer is not institutional centralisation for its own sake. Nor is it another layer of bureaucracy. The objective should be operational coherence.

Europe must increasingly function as a single operational space – not as a single state or a single army, but as a strategic system capable of understanding threats together, planning together, mobilising together, sustaining effort together and responding coherently despite institutional diversity.

Ultimately, endurance is not a property of individual organisations. It is a property of the system.

Democratic societies endure because governments continue to govern, industries continue to produce, information continues to flow, institutions retain legitimacy and citizens retain confidence that the system continues to function despite sustained pressure. This may prove to be the most important strategic lesson Europe draws from Ukraine.

Europe has spent decades building institutions for peace and is now rebuilding capabilities for war. Its next strategic task is to develop the operating model that allows societies to function under conditions of persistent strategic pressure.

That debate has barely begun.

The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.