Europe's Nightmare: How Trump's ‘peacemaking’ is bringing Russia closer to conflict with NATO countries and increasing the threat of nuclear escalation

Imperative, phantom or self-fulfilling prophecy?

When the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) published its report 'Preventing the Next War: Germany and NATO in a Race Against Time' in autumn 2023, claiming that Europe had five to nine years to prepare for war with Russia, it still sounded shocking and implausible. However, by that point, the very concept of 'plausibility' had already somewhat eroded, and the word 'implausible' no longer felt entirely synonymous with 'impossible'.

Throughout 2024, the prospect of a possible war between Russia and one or more NATO countries became a topic of widespread discussion. Sceptics argued, however, that such talk was primarily being driven by advocates of continued military aid to Ukraine, who used this scenario to scare Europe and to breathe new life into the continent’s waning pro-Ukrainian mobilisation (→ Re: Russia: Putin's Schrodinger's Cat). At the same time, they claimed, such a strategy could indeed raise the likelihood of conflict by turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The mechanism of a self-fulfilling prophecy lies in the fact that, once the threat is named, it becomes at least a factor in subsequent decision-making and triggers preparations on both sides for conflict and escalation.

Opponents of this view countered that it is precisely full preparedness for a conflict with Russia that could prevent such a scenario, whereas unpreparedness increases its likelihood. In early June 2024, Vladimir Putin dismissed speculation about a possible Russian attack on NATO countries as nonsense. Yet immediately beforehand, two seemingly minor incidents occurred: a draft proposal by the Russian Ministry of Defence for a unilateral revision of maritime borders in the Baltic Sea briefly appeared on the Russian government’s information portal before being taken down, and Russian border guards removed around 20 demarcation buoys on the Narva River, which had been placed by Estonian border guards to mark the border. As we noted in relation to this, the disputed waters and islands within them have repeatedly served as triggers for escalation, brinkmanship, and even entry into military conflict (→ Re: Russia: A Hatchet in Murky Waters).

Second stage: from theory to practice

In 2025, the topic of a potential direct conflict entered a new phase of development. At the end of April, The Wall Street Journal, citing senior military officials, reported that Russia was building a new army headquarters and infrastructure to accommodate tens of thousands of troops just 160 km from the Finnish border. This includes barracks, training grounds, and equipment depots, as well as the modernisation of the railway running along the Finnish border and further into Estonia. Officially, this construction follows the decision taken in March 2024 to re-establish the Leningrad Military District. In May, Russia and Belarus also announced large-scale joint exercises, 'West-2025', to be held in September. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) suggested that the drills would be used to establish permanent Russian military infrastructure on Belarusian territory, and military commentators compared them to the exercises Russia conducted on the eve of its invasion of Ukraine – exercises that were ultimately used to prepare for that very invasion.

In any case, these developments have shifted the discussion to a fundamentally new level – the practical creation of military infrastructure in anticipation of conflict. This does not mean that war is inevitable, but it does mark a new stage bringing the scenario closer to realisation, in contrast to the largely hypothetical debates of 2023.

Meanwhile, within the European military community, the central question in 2025 moved from whether a direct NATO-Russia clash is possible, to how much time Russia would need to prepare for such a conflict. The report 'Defending Europe Without the United States: Costs and Consequences' by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) summarises this debate. In 2024, the UK’s Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Tony Radakin, estimated that it would take five years for Russia to rebuild its military capabilities to their 2022 level, and a further five years to address the weaknesses revealed by the invasion of Ukraine. Estonian intelligence believes that Russia is aiming to build a Soviet-style army, i.e. poorly equipped but nevertheless a serious threat due to its sheer size. Under this scenario, Europe would face the same problem currently confronting Ukraine: a shortage of personnel that cannot be fully offset, even with the mass deployment of drones.

However, other, more pessimistic assessments are based on the assumption that Russia does not need a large or well-equipped army to pose a military threat or initiate a limited military conflict. For example, Norway’s Chief of Defence, General Eirik Kristoffersen, believes NATO has a 'two- to three-year window to prepare before Russia regains the ability to launch conventional attacks.' Finally, in early 2025, Danish military intelligence published its analysis suggesting that Russia would need approximately five years to prepare for a large-scale war in Europe, just two years to prepare for a regional conflict in the Baltics, and no more than six months after the end of active fighting in Ukraine to conduct a localised war in a neighbouring state.

The IISS assessments largely align with the Danish estimates. Assuming the conflict in Ukraine is frozen by mid-year, Russia could be ready for a confrontation in the Baltic region as early as 2027 if it maintains its current military spending at the same level. This is especially true given that its air and naval forces, which will play an important role in this war, have not been depleted during the war in Ukraine.

New scenario: a clash of wills and a nightmare for the West

All of these alarmist assessments would appear to face one major counterargument: Russia has thus far failed to overcome the Ukrainian army, which suffers from shortages of both weaponry and manpower, and has achieved no significant battlefield successes.

Despite huge military spending, the Russian war machine appears weak and unable to replenish its arsenal, relying instead on imports from Iran and North Korea. How, then, can Russia pose an existential threat to NATO?

However, Norwegian military expert Fabian Hoffmann argues in a recent Foreign Affairs article that Putin does not need a strong army to start a war in Europe. According to Hoffmann, Russia’s main objective in a war against NATO would not be territorial conquest, but the destruction of the alliance as a political and military entity. To achieve this, Russia does not need to defeat NATO forces in open battle or march into Berlin. Its goal would be to undermine the unity and resolve of the European alliance.

Hoffmann paints a nightmarish scenario of a possible conflict in Europe that would be radically different from the one in Ukraine. In this scenario, Russia launches a short, high-intensity local attack aimed at seizing a limited piece of territory (which Moscow would declare disputed) in a vulnerable spot, such as one of the Baltic states. Once this territory is captured, Russia would declare it under its jurisdiction and announce its readiness to defend the new acquisition by all available means, implicitly threatening the use of nuclear weapons and referring to the updated version of its nuclear doctrine.

Military analysts refer to this strategy as ‘aggressive defence’. It is worth noting that Kremlin-adjacent political commentators Sergey Karaganov and Dmitry Trenin advocated last year for the use of nuclear weapons as a tool of intimidation. And in his half-hearted rebuttal, Putin offhandedly remarked that Europe lacks a missile attack warning system, rendering Europeans 'more or less defenceless' in that regard. He also stated that Russia possesses an incomparably larger arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, and expressed confidence that the United States would not engage in a nuclear exchange with Russia over Europe (→ Re: Russia: The Doctrine of Nuclear Non-Deterrence).

In the event of a counterattack, Russia will threaten or even strike European rear infrastructure, thereby demonstrating the potential costs of confrontation. The calculation here is that while some countries would advocate for the harshest possible response, others would lean toward de-escalation to avoid the risk of nuclear conflict.

Hoffmann’s nightmare scenario is rooted in a long-standing idea he has championed: that at the heart of this type of asymmetric conflict is not the balance of military power, but a ‘balance of resolve’, which, he argues, favours Russia. Indeed, in 2008 Putin attacked Georgia without facing any real consequences – the West accepted his version of events, not because it believed them, but because it was unwilling to contest them. In 2014, he annexed Crimea, showing that neither the West nor even the Ukrainian army had the resolve to confront Russia directly in defence of the post-war principle of inviolable borders. In 2022, he seemed to encounter unexpectedly strong resistance, finding himself on the brink of defeat for a time, but by combining battlefield persistence with nuclear threats, he managed to regain a clear upper hand in the 'balance of resolve' by around the second half of 2024.

The entire course of the war in Ukraine and the West's efforts to resolve it have only convinced Putin of his assumption that the West is risk-averse and has a low tolerance for pain, Hoffmann writes in another article. A strategy of risk minimisation by one side, he notes, encourages increasingly risky behaviour from the other, thereby raising both the likelihood and the scale of danger. As a result, one might say that the West’s wavering approach to the Russia–Ukraine conflict and its difficulty in formulating a coherent strategy has led to a progressive disintegration of Euro-Atlantic and European unity, driven by the ‘sovereignisation’ of risk-avoidance strategies. Although the war in Ukraine is costing Putin an estimated $150–170 billion per year and around 200 casualties a day, its real dividend is not the relatively minor Ukrainian territory being seized, but the progressive degradation of a Western alliance that just four years ago appeared nearly unbreakable.

Finally, Donald Trump’s rhetoric throughout his recent 'peace initiatives' has played a significant role in bringing Europe closer to Hoffmann’s scenario. If Trump refuses to label Putin an aggressor and has effectively accepted Russia’s claim over Crimea and Donbas, what would he have to say against the seizure of Narva? And if the core aim of his strategy is to avoid direct confrontation with Russia and leave Europeans to sort out this 'European story' on their own, what would fundamentally change if Putin were to take Daugavpils or the Suwałki Gap? After all, was it not the Estonians who provoked Putin by joining NATO in 2004? And what business is it of Spain’s to concern itself with this 'Baltic story', which, presumably, should remain solely a Baltic affair?

Trump’s rhetoric on the conflict in Ukraine is, in essence, a prototype of the reasoning chain that the Kremlin hopes some European leaders will adopt if it pursues the 'Hoffmann scenario'. Would it not be more reasonable, for instance, in the event of a Russian seizure of Narva, simply to offer parallel rare-earth metal deals to both Estonia and Russia, rather than pushing Europe to the brink of nuclear war? At the same time, Trump and his administration are not only promoting this doctrine in ‘peace talks’ with Putin and in discussions with European leaders, but also supporting those political forces in Europe that share this worldview.

A year and a half ago, the ‘Hoffmann scenario’ seemed almost completely implausible; six months ago, it could have been called unlikely; today, after Trump's peacekeeping charade, it feels alarmingly realistic.