Preparing for Future Wars Requires Winning the One You're In Today
by: Glenn Nye
Photo from the London Defence Conference Washington Forum 2025.
Tomorrow, CSPC is proud to co-host the Washington Forum of the London Defense Conference, the premier allies-only defense conference. The theme of this year's convening is “Winning Future Wars.”
In the lead up to the conference, below are some of the framing thoughts for this year's important conversations.
The Immediate Imperative: Win the War We Are Already In
As we think about preparing for the wars of the future, we must grapple with the reality of the situation today. Despite robust western support for Ukraine’s defense, Putin has clearly assessed that time is on his side in his effort to dominate Ukraine. He believes he can terrorize the Ukrainian population into submission by attacking civilian life-support systems, and that the West will eventually tire of supporting Ukraine. He must be disabused of this notion, and quickly.
It is imperative to help Ukraine win this fight and solidify its independence sooner rather than later. The longer we wait, the more we risk not only the destruction of Ukrainian lives, but also the worsening of the security situation in Western Europe. We cannot continue with a strategy to simply keep Ukraine in the fight. There is danger in confronting a bully, but there is greater danger in ignoring his provocations. Additionally, the future defense strategy for Europe looks much more favorable with Ukraine on our side, putting the West in the best possible position for negotiations from strategic stability to energy economics.
All the preparations for deterring Russia in the future will be meaningless if Europe allows Ukraine to slip under Russian dominance, or if it does not win the hybrid war it already finds itself in with Russia today. And the lessons we are learning from Ukraine should inform how we prepare for the wars we hope to deter in the future.
Winning the Hybrid War
Among top European security tasks must be to collectively create a deterrence list—a list of responses which are assessed, and better yet proven, to actually cause Putin to change behavior.
The standard for the list should be straightforward: responses painful enough to make him think twice before putting a bomb at a German airport, crashing a drone into Poland or Romanian territory, or militarily overflying the Baltic countries, among others.
The list should include responses that will cause Putin to change his calculation about the resolve and determination of Europe to defend itself and push back in ways that put real costs on Putin in the immediate term. The action plan:
Create a collectively agreed deterrence list. Europe should identify in advance the responses it believes would actually change Russian behavior following specific hybrid attacks or provocations.
Make the responses consequential. The list cannot simply consist of public acknowledgments of hybrid attacks or half-hearted diplomatic responses. The responses need to impose real costs in the immediate term.
Demonstrate resolve. Invoke collective defense mechanisms, like Article 5 of NATO, for each incident. Leveraging NATO would be an ideal way to reinvent its purpose and should be the top priority for alliance investment now. Alternatively, this could be an area where the new European Security Council concept could quickly demonstrate its value.
The United States can and should be an important partner in this effort. Deterring Russia from attempting hybrid warfare on Europe is in America's national interests. Demonstrating that hybrid attacks against European allies will carry meaningful consequences is part of establishing that security.
Winning the Long-Range Strike Contest
The war in Ukraine has shown us something very clearly: the future of deterring Russian aggression must include winning the long-range strike contest. It is not about rebuilding the cold war land force.
Winning the missile war is a question of industrial production and speed.
The questions we must ask ourselves are:
What would it take, and how long would it take, to create a missile force that could overwhelm Russian air defenses?
How can we economically produce interceptors faster than Russia can produce long-range strike capabilities, including drones?
These are not simply questions of technology. They are questions of production, industrial capacity, speed, and the ability of the United States and Europe to work together at the scale required. The United States and Europe should work in a determined fashion to align their industries to cooperate on solving that exact problem. This is the best deterrence strategy.
We also have in Ukraine the best real-time battle laboratory currently in place to test new missile technologies against the actual adversary and demonstrate effectiveness. We can use this as an opportunity to both help Ukraine, which has shown incredible ingenuity, and prepare for future deterrence in Europe by sending a clear signal that war against our allies in unwinnable.
Glenn Nye, a former Member of Congress from Virginia, is President and CEO of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress.