Europe’s Russia Problem: When Security Becomes a Permanent Industry

In 1991, the Warsaw Pact dissolved, ending the military alliance that had organised the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies against the West. The Soviet Union itself disappeared later that year. For a moment, Europe had a chance to build a security system in which former adversaries could coexist without treating every development as a potential military threat. Instead, NATO continued to expand, eventually admitting countries that had once belonged to the Warsaw Pact and, later, former Soviet republics.

The official explanation was that these countries were exercising their sovereign right to choose their alliances. That right is real, but so is the strategic question that successive Western governments have too often treated as secondary: what happens when one side's pursuit of security is perceived by another as a threat to its own survival?

Russia's objections to NATO enlargement did not emerge in a vacuum. Moscow repeatedly argued that the expansion of a military alliance originally established to counter Soviet power undermined the promise of a post-Cold War European order. In December 2021, Russia presented draft agreements to the United States and NATO demanding, among other things, restrictions on further enlargement and military deployments near Russian territory.

Washington and its allies rejected Moscow's central demands, while offering negotiations on arms control, transparency and other security issues. Russia subsequently launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The sequence matters, but it must be interpreted honestly: the rejection of Russia's proposals did not make the invasion inevitable, nor did it give Moscow a legal right to invade its neighbour. It does, however, expose the failure of diplomacy to reconcile competing security interests before the crisis became a war.

The fundamental problem is that Europe has increasingly approached security through the logic of deterrence without giving equal political weight to the architecture of coexistence. NATO insists that it is a defensive alliance and that membership remains open to qualifying European states. Eastern European countries, many of which experienced Soviet domination, have understandable reasons for seeking protection.

Poland, the Baltic states and others did not need to be forced into seeking Western security guarantees. Their historical experiences and fears of Russian power are genuine. Yet acknowledging their right to choose an alliance does not require pretending that military alliances have no consequences for neighbouring states. A serious security policy must recognise both realities, rather than treating one side's concerns as legitimate and the other's as inherently illegitimate.

This is where the argument advanced by American conservative Pat Buchanan deserves renewed examination. Buchanan warned that the post-Cold War West risked confusing victory with permanent strategic entitlement. His criticism of NATO expansion reflected a broader concern that Washington was extending its military influence into regions where a different approach might have produced a more stable relationship with Russia.

His warnings should not be accepted uncritically, and they do not absolve the Russian government of responsibility for its decisions. But a political argument does not become worthless simply because it was unpopular when first advanced. The proper question is whether subsequent events have exposed weaknesses in the assumptions on which Western policy was built.

Europe's economic position makes that question more urgent. The continent faces competing demands involving energy, industrial competitiveness, public services, technological investment and defence spending. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has imposed enormous human and economic costs, while sanctions, energy-market disruption and military expenditure have added pressure to European economies in different ways.

Europe's economic challenges cannot be attributed solely to its confrontation with Russia, and claims that the continent is inevitably approaching bankruptcy are exaggerated. Nevertheless, governments cannot indefinitely treat defence spending as though it carries no opportunity cost. Every additional commitment must be weighed against the resources available for productive investment, social stability and the long-term prosperity on which national security ultimately depends.

There is also a danger in allowing the perception of an external threat to become a permanent feature of domestic politics. When citizens are repeatedly told that a confrontation is unavoidable, extraordinary spending becomes easier to justify, diplomatic alternatives become politically suspect, and criticism can be dismissed as evidence of disloyalty. Yet a government that genuinely believes its country faces danger should be more willing, not less, to explain the evidence, define its objectives and demonstrate how its strategy reduces the likelihood of war. Military preparedness is necessary in uncertain times, but preparedness without a credible diplomatic strategy can become an expensive form of strategic drift.

Nor should Europe assume that the United States will always bear the ultimate costs of its security commitments. American priorities change with administrations, domestic politics and competition with other major powers. European governments have already experienced uncertainty over the durability of Washington's commitments to Ukraine and the wider NATO alliance. That uncertainty makes European strategic autonomy more important, but autonomy should not simply mean producing more weapons or building a larger military bureaucracy. It should also mean possessing the diplomatic capacity to negotiate, the economic resilience to withstand shocks and the political independence to disagree with Washington when European interests require it.

The alternative is not to surrender Eastern Europe to Russian influence or to accept Moscow's demands without question. Such a false choice prevents serious discussion. Europe can maintain credible defences while pursuing arms-control agreements, military transparency, crisis communication and negotiations over the risks created by the proximity of opposing forces. It can defend Ukraine's sovereignty while acknowledging that a durable European settlement must address the security concerns of multiple states. It can condemn aggression without abandoning diplomacy, and it can prepare for conflict without treating conflict as inevitable.

Ultimately, the purpose of security policy is to make war less likely, not to transform an entire continent into a permanent military frontier. Russia is responsible for choosing to invade Ukraine, but Western policymakers are responsible for examining whether their own strategies have reduced or aggravated the wider dangers facing Europe. Those are separate questions, and recognising the distinction is essential to any credible assessment of the crisis.

The end of the Cold War offered Europe an opportunity to move beyond the rigid divisions that had threatened the continent for generations. That opportunity was never guaranteed to succeed, and the decisions of Moscow, Washington and European capitals all helped shape what followed. Today, the challenge is to recover the principle that military strength and diplomacy must serve the same objective: a stable order in which countries can defend their sovereignty without being trapped in an endless cycle of insecurity.

Europe does not need to choose between naivety and permanent confrontation. It needs a strategy that recognises history, respects the sovereignty of its neighbours, protects its own citizens and leaves room for a negotiated peace. If its leaders cannot explain how their current course will achieve those objectives, then the time has come to question not only the threats Europe faces, but also the assumptions guiding its response.