What can European security architecture look like in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine?

ABSTRACT

The paper outlines the most likely scenarios of the future European security architecture based on an analysis of several drivers, such as Russia’s leadership’s perception of Ukraine, the mindset of the Putinist elite, Russia’s state geopolitics, the domestic situation and prospects of a regime change in Russia, economic sanctions against Russia, energy and the export of Russia’s energy resources, and the positions of key Euratlantic actors. The current “unstable balance model” will remain the most likely scenario in case of a conservation of the situation on the Ukrainian battlefields. Since the concert model of security architecture entails a lack of a revisionist agenda among all the actors, the only reasonably probable security management upgrade is a “positive stable balance”. This scenario is conditioned on degrading Russia’s military capacity, Ukraine’s military advancements on the battlefields, a weakening of the Russian economy and maintaining the support for Ukraine in the EU and NATO.

KEYWORDS:

• Russia
• Ukraine
• security architecture
• Europe
• War

How may Russia’s war in Ukraine shape the prospective European security architecture? Russia’s re-invasion of Ukraine in 2022 propelled a wealth and diversity of scholarly and expert commentary, including battlefield foresight and thought about the post-war order (Gould-Davies 2022, Jonsson and Norberg 2022, Jung 2023). This paper pushes further the latter line of thought. It outlines several scenarios of the future continental security architecture in Europe in the wake of Russia’s re-invasion and assesses their scope conditions based on an analysis of drivers and critical uncertainties. In doing so, it seeks to inform the debate about policies paving the path to future security management in Europe that would stabilise a political status quo based on NATO’s values and interests by means of strategic foresight.

Security architecture is here conceived as a part of a regional order that concerns the security management of the complex of states whose national security interests cannot realistically be conceived separately. In the first section, the concept of “architecture” is discussed. Ideal types of future European security architecture are also outlined. In the second section, key drivers and critical uncertainties that impact on the future security architecture are explored, In the third section, selected scenarios are developed, and their scope conditions are assessed.

Security architecture: a conceptual introduction

The notion of “security architecture” is a staple of both academic and policy discourses. With the exception of studies that link it to the progressive development of the EU's security institutions (cf. Hofmann 2010, Faleg 2012), it surfaces more saliently at times of rupture when the existing order is “dismantled”, “overturned”, etc. – such as after 1989, with the annexation of Crimea redrawing by force post-WWII borders in 2014, or Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Despite its prolific use, the notion is rarely defined with precision (for exception, see e.g. Hyde-Price 2014) or distinguished from other concepts such as “security regime” as a structure regulating the exercise of power (Ditrych et al. 2018), state behaviour in general (Jervis 1982) or simply as a no-war community in which principles, rules and norms act to restrain actors on the basis of the belief that others will reciprocate (Acharya 2014, p. 18); or “security order” as one, contested part of the international order (Raik 2019).

Security architecture is sometimes associated with NATO and the EU as institutional embodiments of the liberal political order (Hyde-Price 2014, or, critically, Mearsheimer 2014). It is often featured as a combination of elements such as organisations, alliances, and arms control mechanisms (Schmitt 2018); or relative balance of capacities, regional institutions and securitisation practices (Buzan and Waever 2009). At times, it has a distinct dimension of spatial ordering – and is related in particular to the “in-between space” between Russia and NATO (Measheimer 2016, Sharap et al. 2018), at times to be stabilised through binding treaty obligations (O’Hanlon 2017). Both these understandings are mirrored in the in Medvedev's (2008) and Putin’s (2021) political “proposals” for a new European security treaty (Zagorski 2010, Pifer 2021). The former, building on Russia’s efforts in the 1990s that resulted in the Charter for European Security (1999), conceives of “architecture” as a combination of security institutions, alliances (“blocs”), principles (such as “equal security”) and also, as a case of practised constructivism of sorts, “approaches” to security. The latter is related to legally binding guarantees on NATO expansion and on the stationing of troops in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) member states, forcing their effective demilitarisation – and so enacting a particular spatial ordering favourable to the exercise of Moscow’s interests.

Security architecture as a signifier thus points to partly competing, partly overlapping and often synthetic notions. To have a more analytical purchase, we argue, it warrants conceptual development. Our point of departure is to conceive of security architecture a part of a regional order that concerns the security management of the complex of states whose national security interests cannot realistically be conceived separately (cf. Buzan and Waever 2009).

By default, “architecture” is something that is designed. It is both a blueprint and the practice of designing and constructing – a structure, yet one which is neither autopoieic or a material distribution of resources and capacities. The balance of power is understood not as a simple law of mechanics (Morgenthau 1985 [1948]) or de facto power distribution (even or not) but one which is based on a shared norm of basic restraint by all the involved actors and thus meets the definition as a (rudimentary) architecture. Such balance of power is underlied by an international anarchic (rather than hierarchical, not to speak of hegemonic) condition and can feature more or less adversarial systemic interactions. But it is also, in this understanding, an institution based on a certain degree of collective interest in security management (or even responsibility) (Little 2007, Kaufman et al. 2009, cf. Nexon 2009).

In contemporary terms, security architecture defined along these lines is a set of measures that limit vulnerabilities of the security system (defined by structure and interactions) and increase its shock resilience. At the same time, it is coextensive with the system – i.e. it is not built against an actor (such as Russia) to balance outside threats this actor poses, in which case it is rather an institutionalisation of the alliance – and it does not entail the element of spatial distribution that characterises the common understanding of “security orders”. It is also by definition not just an exercise of immediate restraint but something more durable. In political terms, and this is a caveat of this conceptualisation, it is a rather conservative notion – one linked to the traditional concept of security (of the participating states in the arrangement) that occludes the rather complex landscape of values, interests and therefore securities and insecurities, multiple rather than singular, in a given social space. This traditionalism distinguishes it from the “security governance” concept that highlights decentralisation and roles of heterogeneous actors in particular policy outcomes (Krahmann 2003), and correlates with the conservative use of the term in the political discourse where security architecture tends to be invoked as something to be “restored”.

Developing scenarios of future security architecture in a time of crisis based on ideal types but featuring scope conditions and assessments of particular characteristics for actors involved in concrete geopolitical constellations is a useful tool for reflecting on the strategy of achieving favourable outcomes. Taking inspiration from existing scholarship on security arrangements (Lake and Morgan 1997, Buzan and Waever 2009, Stewart-Ingersoll and Frazier 2011), six ideal types of security architecture can be identified: a missing architecture characteristic of an unstructured system comprising non-existent or weak states; power balancing power as a rudimentary architectural design; a concert based on acceptance of rules limiting the exercise of one’s interest, a basic trust in conflict resolution mechanisms and an absence of a revisionist agenda among the members who demonstrate a capacity for enacting informal security arrangements; collective security architecture adding a common resolve to collectively check the aggression of one member against another built into the resilience structure; a security community based on durable expectations that conflicts would be resolved peacefully and shaping actors’ strategies and capabilities’ structure to that end; and a hegemony defined by the presence of a single dominant actor that acts as a pacifier and effectively negates the operational sovereignty of others.

In the short- to medium-term, hegemony or a collective security premised on a high degree of internalisation of basic norms and the collective resolve to enforce them are not realistic scenarios for the European security architecture. The security community will likely characterise only the western part of the European security complex in these two ideal types of security architecture. The unstructured model could only be contemplated in the catastrophic, low probability / high impact scenario of a nuclear escalation - or, for a part of the security complex including Russia and possibly even some nearby territories to the West including of NATO member states, a collapsed Russia's state, less improbable but still a scenario that we consider marginal. For the sake of parsimony, we, therefore, limit the exploration below to four scenarios, three of which form variants of the ideal type power balancing power – unstable balance, positive stable balance and negative stable balance, which are complemented by a concert model.

Driving change

In this section, seven drivers that we consider as crucial for the shape of the future security architecture in the European regional security complex are overviewed. These drivers are located at both domestic and international scales of global politics. By no means is the list intended to be comprehensive. Rather, it is an outcome of a reflection of a broader set of drivers leading to their narrowing down to those which we believe have the highest sensitivity in terms of the likelihood of shaping future outcomes. The drivers are not a simple set of threats to European security, such as terrorism, organised crime, cyber-attacks, hybrid threats, elite capture, corruption etc. We identified drivers as various types of partly overlapping factors that are relevant for the future trajectory of Russia’s war in Ukraine as a key formative process for the future European security architecture with Russia as a main threat and potential game-changer.

Drivers are inferred from the literature and analytical papers focused on how Russia’s re-invasion of Ukraine have changed and affected European security (Bond and Scazzieri 2022, Jones 2022, Scazzieri 2022, Alessandri 2023, Polyakova et al. 2023, Raik 2023, Simon 2023). Other processes may also have an impact on the European security architecture, such as the breakout of other armed conflicts in Europe, activities of terrorist groups, internal instability and fragmentation of European states or confrontation with China (Puglierin and Zerka 2023, Stares 2024). These processes, however, are only hypothetical as critical uncertainties, while the war in Ukraine is ongoing since 2014 and, more intensively since February 2022, as arguably the most acute security crisis in Europe since 1945 with a strong impact on the European security architecture.

Russia’s policy to Ukraine and Russian leadership’s perception of Ukraine

Ukraine plays an extraordinarily important role in Russian state ideas about geopolitics and identity (Plokhy 2016, Popova and Shevel 2024). Russia’s great power ambitions have always been based on the idea that Ukraine is a specific but integral part of Russia. Ukraine is therefore and will remain a key element in Russian political elites’ reflection about their own identity and messianic mission, especially in the case of Putin, who seems to be genuinely obsessed with Ukraine (Shevtsova 2020). For that reason, Russia’s policy towards Ukraine is a crucial driver for the security and stability of Europe, notably considering that Ukraine is the largest country in Europe. Russia’s political leadership refuses to regard Ukrainians as a distinct nation with the right to an independent and sovereign state – and, therefore, an independent foreign policy. The geopolitical loss of Ukraine would be the most tangible blow to Russia’s understanding of geopolitics as a never-ending great power struggle that Russia would lose as Moscow considers Ukraine a non-sovereign state that must be either controlled by Russia or lost to the West and used as an anti-Russian tool for the Western domination in the post-Soviet region. Within the Russian imperial and colonial discourse, Ukrainians have been portrayed positively only insofar as they supported the Tsarist, Soviet, and now Russian hierarchy of nationalities with Russians as the “elder brother” (Riabchuk 2016). In this worldview, Ukraine and Ukrainians are seen as both victims and accomplices of Western anti-Russian plots and conspiracies. In Putin’s understanding, the West is trying to turn Ukraine into a kind of anti-Russia – an object and tool of the geopolitical games of the hostile West. This view is conditioned on the colonial character of the Russian state, which expects its former colonies – the countries of the post-Soviet space – to be loyal to its political leadership (Kassymbekova and Marat 2022). What is to be resisted in the current war is elemental: the threat of national extinction represented by Russian colonialism, and a war of destruction expressly designed to resolve “the Ukrainian question” (Snyder 2022). With such a perception, the Russian establishment will be hostile against Ukrainian independence and sovereignty and only deterrence to the violent actions against Ukraine could save Kyiv from other military aggresions and hybrid warfare. The OSCE guiding principles and common values articulated in the Helsinki Final Act (and reasserted in a number of following joint documents) such as the respect for the sovereign rights of all parties (including smaller states) and their territorial integrity, are fundamentally alien to this line of thought, which is founded on a notion that international politics is, at its core, a great power politics with no place for multilateralism and actual plurality – as the so-called plurality is only a simulation intended to have a stabilising (“tranquilising”) effect.

Geopolitics: Russia in the world and elites’ operational codes

Russia’s state geopolitics as a more general set of ideas, while drawing from established repertoires, has undergone a certain evolution over the last two decades. Both partake in forming Russia’s foreign policy in parallel and in a partial tension. At the outset of Putin’s tenure, the state geopolitics could be defined as an insular, postliberal nationalism. It was not yet an openly expansive strategy even if it included a vision of a protected zone in the form of either a frontier or marches;² and the peripheries of the Russian world were brutalised by Moscow, whether it concerned internal (North Caucasus) or outside borderlands (Georgia, Ukraine). Since the late 2000s, however, a turn toward neo-imperial, revisionist and revanchist geopolitics has taken place – manifest both in statements (such as Putin’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007), the intensification of cyber- and hybrid operations, and military deployments to “pacify” the near neighbourhood – first in Georgia (2008) and later in Ukraine (2014-). While consistently presented by Moscow as something fundamentally reactive and responsive – the alleged “inevitability” of such responses functions as a useful legitimising device – this current version of geopolitics features alien rule over the occupied territories; extolling the virtues of an empire that has a civilising and pacifying role, but mainly is a means to carry out great historical tasks (see Nowak 2010); a more severe negation of the independent (national) identity of the erstwhile imperial okrainas (Ukraine, Belarus); a pressure to “collect Russian lands”; and, last but not least, a revival of Eurasianism as an extension of the ultra-conservative and authoritarian Russian state-building project (Clover 2016, Bassin and Pozo 2017). This revival draws on historical and symbolic patterns and can be to some extent instrumental, as it produces legitimacy for the regime and its foreign policy enacted in line with the operational codes of Putin’s elites – with which it becomes ever more closely aligned (Suslov 2018, Kuzio 2022).

The mindset of the Russian political leadership consists of a mixture of the Cold War’s logic of an endless struggle for spheres of influence in international politics, which view the world through a black-and-white lens of the struggle for resources, cynicism, and conspiracies. The regime’s elite reduces the complex reality of global politics to an incessant Hobbesian competition among great powers, where no one can be trusted or relied upon (Milov 2022b). While not a priori culturally antiwestern (Taylor 2018), the elite operational codes under Putinism developed to encompass the notion of Russia as exceptional, autocratic (the state “controlling” the society lest someone else will), self-sustaining “state-civilisation” with a unique historical mission protecting the “traditional values” and promoting alleged Russia’s superiority (Genis 2022). Because of their deep roots in the system, the current operational codes, geopolitical thinking and ambitions of the current Russian establishment can be expected to continue to influence Russian foreign policy even in the (unlikely) case of a regime change. The strategic failure in Ukraine may restrain Russia’s dreams of the Russian empire’s restoration. On the other hand, the success of the Russian military campaign in Ukraine would lead to more aggressive posturing against “rump” Ukraine, other post-Soviet countries or even NATO Member States.

The domestic situation in Russia: internal development and prospects of a regime change

With the lack of a military resolution on the Ukrainian battlefield, discontent may be expected to grow in Russia – not only among opponents of the war but also among Russian ultra-nationalist hardliners who consider the senior army officers incompetent and demand much tougher action against Ukraine and the West. These “turbopatriots” (Galeotti 2023) want Putin to escalate the war, use the most devastating weapons (possibly including nuclear weapons), and attack civilian targets even more ruthlessly to undermine Ukraine’s moral (The Bell 2022). Russian society in general, however, does not pay much attention to the pro-war or anti-war controversy. A significant part of the population remains more or less indifferent to the war (Meduza 2022). However, the indifferent attitudes of Russian society may change with the intensity of the next foreseen waves of mobilisation, the growing number of war casualties, and the economic consequences of the war in a longer-term perspective. Putin’s image of a good tzar, which the Russian propaganda has been cultivating for the last twenty years, will not disappear instantaneously. Rather, it will lead to him placing the responsibility for these future failures on his officials. Yet, even in the event of a widespread public opposition to the mobilisation, large-scale social protests remain unlikely (Smirnov 2022, Kolesnikov 2023). The repressive machine is one of the few things that do actually work in Russia – and it tightens the screws. While the combination of continuing losses in Ukraine’s frontlines and the worsening economic situation as a result of the Western sanctions and mobilisation can increase social discontent, for the moment the internal drivers of the regime’s stability remain fully operational, and a regime change, which indeed could have a transformative effect on the European security architecture, remains a potential black swan – it seems unlikely, but it is still conceivable – e.g. following the loss of Crimea, as outlined in one of the scenarios below. The internal political situation in Russia emerges as a pivotal factor influencing the state’s operations abroad, with significant ramifications for European security affairs. Depending on the outcome of Russia’s strategic endeavors in Ukraine, we could anticipate the preservation of the status quo, political destabilisation in the event of a failure, or the bolstering of ultra-nationalist hardliners within Putin’s regime if Russia succeeds in Ukraine.

Economic resources for war: sanctions and energy exports

Despite their deferred and limited effect due to regime leakage, the sanctions will have a significant impact on the Russian state and society, which, in turn, shapes the European security architecture. There are no drivers in the near future that would reduce the decline of the Russian economy or even kick-start its growth (Interview with Inozemcev; Grozovski 2022). The current GDP data does not fully reflect the medium- and long-term underperformance of the Russian economy. The GDP as an indicator does not cover all the economic problems, and it includes production for war purposes – where production in some sectors is growing but does not create any new value while civilian production is degrading and the size of the civilian economy decreases (Milov 2022a).

In the energy sector, Russia has enjoyed a unique position in the EU gas and oil market over several decades – 34% of the EU’s energy consumption, 42% of the EU’s gas imports and 23% of its gas consumption, and 29% of its oil imports in 2020 were covered by Russia (Eurostat 2023). Russia did make a windfall profit from oil and gas exports in 2022 but this was only a short-term advantage. In 2023 the revenues had started to decline. This, together with spending on the war in Ukraine, is bound to produce an immense state budget deficit, which has widened to an estimated $29 billion for January-July 2023, or 1.8% of GDP (Reuters 2023). As a result of its aggressive actions, Russia lost its favourable position in the lucrative European markets and is increasingly dependent on China as a single customer with multiple gas suppliers to which it sells gas at large discounts (Vakulenko 2023). Moscow does not fare much better with the oil trade. With the embargo against Russian oil in place, China and India will not be able to make up the shortfall, not to mention that Russia sells at a discount and receive nonconvertible currency. In a short time span, Moscow has destroyed the foundations of Russia’s rentier economy – and, by extension, undermined some of the foundations of the governing regime (Milov 2022a). According to some estimates, the EU oil import ban and G7 price cap have cut the country’s export earnings from oil by 14%, costing Russia EUR 34 billion in export revenue during the first year of sanctions (Myllyvirta et al. 2023). Other data shows that revenues of Russia’s top oil and gas producers fell 41% in the first 9 months of 2023 (Fabrichnaya and Soldatkin 2023).

The sanctions hit the defence industry since they restrict access to advanced technologies critical for producing modern military hardware, which Russia does not produce and cannot purchase from other countries. Russia tries to circumvent these sanctions and, to some extent, will continue to do so (Luzin 2022). On the other hand, Russia has been able to speed up military-industrial manufacturing since the end of 2022. Russia is reportedly producing more ammunition than the United States and Europe (Barnes et al. 2023). Meanwhile, Russia’s military expenditure has tripled compared to pre-war times. By 2023, the government intends to spend $160 billion on military needs, or 40% of its budget (Grozovski 2023). Despite the decline in revenues from gas and oil exports, Russia is still able to cover its war needs. The Russian economy has faced severe headwinds from Western sanctions but has dealt with the pressure better than the West first expected. Stronger enforcement of the sanctions and lower price-cap levels could multiply the impact of the sanctions jointly with closing “refining loopholes”, when oil products refined from Russian crude are legally exported to price cap imposing countries (Fabrichnaya and Soldatkin 2023, Myllyvirta et al. 2023). The Russian military capacity in the war economics is the key to possible implementation of Russia’s geopolitical ambitions against Ukraine or other neighbouring countries.

Positions of key atlantic actors

While failing to deter it, the response to Russia’s re-invasion of Ukraine by the EU, NATO and their member states confirmed their cohesion and capacity to act beyond the expectations of many observers. The EU adopted 11 sanctions packages forming an unprecedented regime against Russia (and Iran), including both individual and sectoral sanctions and encompassing imports of hydrocarbons, coal, gold, steel, iron ore, wood and some fertilisers; technology exports, movement of persons and capital, asset freezing and curtailing Russia’s state propaganda in the European media market. The member states support Ukraine by means of substantial humanitarian, macrofinancial and military assistance (partly refunded from the EU’s new instrument, the European Peace Facility), together operate the new training mission (EUMAM) and advance the Strategic Compass’s implementation. At the Lisbon Summit (2022), NATO passed a new Strategic Concept that names Russia as the “most significant and direct threat” and has taken a series of initiatives to reinforce its deterrence and defence posture (NATO 2022 Strategic Concept). In addition to the (limited) direct reinforcement – with a view to expanding the battle groups in the Eastern flank states to brigade size in the new force structure – the focus has been also on prepositioning and pre-assignment of units located further to the west, mobility and the upgrade to a new generation of defence plans. The war has provided an important impetus for NATO and the EU member states to increase their investment in defence and cooperate more in supporting Ukraine – e.g. with ammunition through joint purchases, investment in research and development, defragmenting the industrial base, and acquiring modern and expensive weapon systems under the conditions of public finance pressures.

With the passing of time and more acutely perceived effects of the current “polycrisis”, including war fatigue, which is amplified by hybrid operations aimed at deepening social polarisation, the political resolve regarding the current course may be challenged. The single most important critical uncertainty here (see below) is the outcome of the U.S. presidential election in 2024, and the continuing support by the administration and congress for military assistance to Ukraine in view of the current political movements, the declining public support (Lange and Zengerle 2023), and divided strategic attention due to the conflict in the Middle East. Deepening political controversies, including those related to the unequal distribution of costs and benefits of the green and digital transition, and the rule of law issues, may decrease trust and the ability of the EU to reach a meaningful compromise. The tangible effects of the Zeitenwende, the prospectively revolutionary change in Germany’s strategic culture, are yet to be seen. History shows that to overcome obstacles to deepening defence cooperation is an arduous task even in mature security communities – all recent initiatives to deepen the cooperation notwithstanding, in 2022, only 18% of EU Member States’ military expenditures covered cooperative projects, and the need to respond fast to Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine increased the tendency to off-the-shelf purchases while protectionism interfered with and slowed down the EU’s joint procurement of ammunitions (European Defence Agency 2022).

Yet not only is NATO’s military superiority over Russia now beyond any doubt, but the EU and NATO member states proved resilient to influence campaigns seeking to drive a wedge between them, and have maintained and continuously extended – sometimes indeed laboriously – the common approach to facing Russia’s threat. The most serious dimension of Russia’s attempt to deter them from an (indirect) involvement in the conflict, namely nuclear messaging, has not prevented their progressive pushing of the boundaries of the support to Ukraine that Moscow tolerates, while suffering from a reducing “rate of return”, in particular after NATO was not deterred from holding the annual “Steadfast Noon” nuclear exercise in October 2022. Indeed, NATO managed to turn against Russia the methods of “tolerance warfare” to which the allies had been subjected in the past through Moscow’s hybrid, under-the-threshold war machine (Chipman 2018). The stance adopted by key Atlantic actors, encompassing potential factors like the spread of “Ukraine fatigue” and American isolationism, to a more robust commitment to Ukraine and the imposition of heightened sanctions against Russia, will wield substantial influence on the ultimate outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine. This, in turn, will play a crucial role in shaping the future European security architecture.

The future European security architecture: scenarios

The scope conditions for the possible future models of the European security architecture are generated by combinations of the drivers surveyed in the previous section together with critical uncertainties (see Table 1). The latter are, above all, the military dynamic of the conflict, regime stability in Russia, Russia’s economic outlook in the short-term period (microlevel), and the positions of the U.S. and China as external great powers in the near future (macrolevel).

Table 1. Drivers and architecture scenarios.

Drivers and War Outcome/Architecture	Unstable Balance Model	Stable Balance Model (Positive)	Stable Balance Model (Negative)	Concert
Russia’s policy against Ukraine	Status quo, negative perception of Ukraine’s sovereignty; harsh anti-Ukrainian policy in the occupied territories. No binding of the rest of Ukraine to the “Russian World”	Anti-Ukrainian policy limited by the lack of resources and other restraints. Less territories under occupation (or complete liberation); no binding of Ukraine to the “Russian World”	Anti-Ukrainian policy was boosted by Russia’s military success and the West's resignation. More opportunities for implementation of anti-Ukrainian policy. Binding large parts of Ukraine to the “Russian world”	Negative but constrained by strategic failure in Ukraine. Less opportunities for implementation of the anti-Ukrainian policy. No binding of Ukraine to the “Russian World”
Russia State’s Geopolitics (Russia in the world)	Status quo – anti-Western, neo-imperial, revisionist and revanchist geopolitical ambitions of the current regime	Political defeat of the vision of the restoration of the Russian empire. Restraints on Russian geopolitical ambitions	Continuation of the advance against Ukraine ‘rump,’ and other states or NATO members. More aggressive geopolitical ambitions boosted by Ukraine’s defeat	Radical shift caused by China’s hostile actions and strategic failure in Ukraine. Dramatic change in strategic culture, restraints on revanchist ambitions
Domestic Situation and Regime Change in Russia	Status quo – no profound political changes, no serious opposition to the regime and unlikely perspective of regime change. Elite fragmentation or a palace coup highly unlikely	(Partial) political destabilisation, weakening of Putin's regime. Regime change more likely; Variation – from more revanchist and paranoid regime to state implosion	Reinforcement of the nationalist and imperialist hardliners within the Russian establishment. Regime change highly unlikely.	Dissatisfaction with Russia's failure and general situation. Regime change more likely. Variation – from more revanchist and paranoid regime to state implosion
Economic Sanctions and Energy Exports (Russia’s resources for war)	Russian economy is weakened but still able to produce large quantities of weapons and sell energy resources for reasonable price to China and India, despite the decline of revenues for energy exports	Russian economy is seriously weakened; shortage of weapons and ammunition to continue with large-scale war; degrading Russia’s military capacity. Pressure for discounts on energy exports in the Asian markets	Russian economy is weakened but still able to produce large quantities of weapons; selling energy resources for reasonable price to China and India, despite the decline of revenues for energy exports	Russian economy is weakened by shortages, struggles to continue to source large-scale war; degrading Russia’s military capacity. Pressure for discounts on energy exports in the Asian markets
Positions of Key Atlantic Actors	Status quo – commitment to Ukraine; consensus on decisive support for Ukraine but vulnerability to election cycles and public opinions	Strong commitment to Ukraine, more sanctions against Russia and high internal cohesion among the main security actors; coherent support by the EU and NATO	“Ukraine fatigue,” American isolationism and European appeasement forcing Ukraine to unfavourable peace treaty. Decrease of Western assistance to Ukraine	Strong commitment to Ukraine; key role of the EU, consultative mechanisms with inclusion of in-between states; cohesion among the main security actors
Alternative Outcomes of War
Outcome of the war in Ukraine	Stalemate and position warfare with artillery barrages, UAV strikes and occasional small offensives	Russia’s strategic failure – loss of currently occupied territories, possibly even Donbas and Crimea	Russia’s strategic success – military conquest of new Ukrainian territories and cities, such as Zaporizhzhiya, Odesa, Dnipro, and Mykolaiv	Russia’s strategic failure – loss of currently occupied territories, possibly even Donbas and Crimea

Regarding the military dynamic, three basic types can be identified in the short-term perspective: a war of attrition, escalation, or conservation. (A fourth possible outcome, resolution, will likely remain unavailable in this time frame.) Putin seems to wager on attrition, a tactic Russia has deployed since the Eastern Ukraine front was stabilised in 2015. However, at that point in time, the support of Ukraine by the West was incomparable to what it is today, and Russia did not face the present sanctions regime. That the wager continues, on the premise that Ukraine and the West would not prevail in the battle of wills over a long time period, is in effect a result of the unavailability of other strategic options – resolution in particular – even if the Kremlin leadership may continue to believe that over time attrition will prove successful due to the decline of outside support to Ukraine. The escalation dominance now seems to be Ukraine and the West’s – Russia, on the other hand, may effectively only escalate the conflict (to deescalate it) by upgrading its nuclear threats or resorting to nuclear use. This seems a more conceivable scenario should Russian armed forces face the risk of military defeat and the loss of Crimea. Conservation would be an outcome of the inability of either party to change the status quo. A line of control would be established in this scenario, and along it, a low-intensity confrontation would take place, featuring artillery duelling, storm trooper operations, and continuing destruction of the civil infrastructure of Ukrainian cities by Russia (Singh 2022).

At the systemic level, the great power competition between the U.S. and China in the conditions of deconcentration of power and the former’s loss of its patronage monopoly translates into more instability at the regional level (Cooley and Nexon 2020). The uncertainty related to the U.S. and China concerns the possibility and timing of Washington’s prospective disentanglement from the European security system, and the likelihood of Beijing’s reneging on its Eurasian Entente with Moscow and initiating an unrestrained predatory strategy vis-a-vis Russia. The importance of Europe in the U.S. grand strategy has consistently decreased over the last decade – with the limits of Washington’s support to Ukraine following the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas clearly showing the asymmetry of the U.S. and Russia’s interests in Eastern Europe. Washington’s pivoting toward Europe is conditioned on structural trends in global politics, but it may be hastened and amplified by polarised domestic politics, the pressure to refocus on the Middle East, or the (so far) low probability / high impact scenario of a major crisis in the Taiwan Strait.

Beijing’s position continues to be “pro-Russian neutrality” characterised by a limited predator strategy that can manifest itself in imposing high costs on Russia for providing a lifeline to the country’s economy. At the same time, China acts as a restrainer by clearly communicating its adverse position toward Russia’s potential use of nuclear weapons. While for the moment, it is likely to continue to calculate that it needs Moscow to help it meet its global ambitions (and absorb some of the heat that otherwise would be directed toward it), should the war be protracted and impose more negative externalities, including in the Global South, Beijing’s current strategy – to prevent Russia’s strategic failure at a low external cost and some predatory profit – could change.

An unstable balance model

An unstable balance model is the current baseline situation of the European security architecture. The regional conflict does not escalate into a regional war. Rather, it evolves into stalemate, while the regime in Russia remains mostly the same as well as operational codes of the Russian elites, their position towards Ukraine and Russia state’s geopolitics. Russian economic potential will be constrained by the sanctions but the state will be able to work in the conditions of the war economy and produce mass quantities of arms and ammunition. The function of deterrence and the balance of power in the security management architecture remains precarious, however, and is not bolstered by the presence of an even elementarily operating security organisation (the OSCE) which would generate a framework for CBMs or risk reduction practices, not to speak of compliance with the “decalogue” of European security norms that was in established in the 1970s.

This will remain the most likely scenario of future development in the case of conservation of attrition at the microlevel that would result in a stalemate at the front (Hall 2022, Ponomarenko 2022, Cook 2023). In this scenario, the Kremlin targets Ukraine’s morale, rely on the war fatigue in the West, and hope that the Russian forces will maintain their positions until a game changer such as Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election occurs. The conflict will feature mainly position warfare, with artillery barrages being predominant and compounded by occasional small offensives and couteroffensives. A stalemate can result in a return to the status quo ante February 2022. In such a case, the Ukrainians may liberate other cities captured by Russia since then, but will be unable to reconquer Donetsk, Luhansk, and the Crimea. For the Ukrainian leadership and society, it would constitute the lowest acceptance threshold – yet given the substantial human and material losses, this could not be considered a victory in any meaningful sense (Tertrais 2022).

Little changes inside Russia in this scenario. The Kremlin may sell even a stalemate as a victory to the domestic audience, provided that Russia does not lose the territories that had been occupied by means of proxy actors in Donetsk and Luhansk before February 2022 – the state propaganda would disseminate the narrative that NATO’s attempt to destroy Russia has been thwarted. The democratic opposition would remain in prison or exile and repression would increase while the regime might allow some war dissenters to leave the country to maintain an acceptable level of internal pressure on the society. Elite fragmentation or a palace coup are highly unlikely in this scenario because Putin is creating of a class of wealthy bureaucrats who profit from the war and are the war’s biggest supporters (The Economist 2023). Except for that, mutual animosity, distrust among ruling elites, compromising materials against them by the secret services, and their profiting from the current situation speak against the likeliness of a palace coup. For Putin’s côterie, the risks associated with a regime change are much higher than those associated with maintenance of the status quo as they would risk being purged and the loss of their economic assets. The status quo produces an overtly stable, yet increasingly gerontocratic and decaying regime similar to that of the late Brezhnev era, which would also be more and more dependent on China’s threatening embrace (Interview Galeotti 2022).

A stable balance model

A stabilisation of the balance model is, however, conceivable even without strong normative foundations – and Russia’s giving up on the current revisionist agenda. Indeed, following Moscow’s aggression a simple return to the status quo ante among the key actors in the European regional security complex is not possible, save for a radical regime change in Russia or its collapse. There is, however, a conceivable scenario in which a rudimentary security management architecture is restored and is successful in preventing open conflict. The shape such stabilisation would take depends on particular combinations of drivers and uncertainties – here developed in two scenarios of positive and negative stable balance models.

A positive stable balance model

In this model, Russia is pushed back and its strategic ambitions vis-à-vis Ukraine are checked. At the same time, the fabric of ordering and stabilising practices building on OSCE mechanisms and practices (including the Vienna Document) is restored but strictly limited to arms control preventing escalation, verification and monitoring of the prospective ceasefire, and broader conflict management. Such a fabric can be remade without illusions regarding the Kremlin’s ongoing revisionist geopolitics and operational codes, and with the memory of Russia’s past disingenuous and unacceptable proposals of continental security treaties (see above) and joint security projects, including missile defence,³ as well as the series of Russian breaches of the founding principles of the European security architecture (sovereign equality, non-intervention, absence of threat or use of force, and respect for human rights), which were shattered by Russia’s war on Ukraine. The process of reviving the ordering and stabilising practices in this scenario resting on a gradual building of (limited) trust would be hard to build without a fundamental revision of Russia’s foreign policy outlook. In its absence, the acceptance of more constraints would be an outcome of the exercise of one’s own interests by means of limited reciprocity and iterated practice to limit the risk of the conflict’s undesirable escalation into a regional war. It also implicitly builds on the idea that the cost of a new war after a peace or at least longer cease fire would be to be too high by Russia for political, economic or other reasons.

This scenario is conditioned on degrading Russia’s military capacity, and/or Ukraine’s actual victory, a (partial) domestic political destabilisation in Russia, weakening of its economy, and maintaining a coherent support to Ukraine in the EU. Stronger enforcement of the sanctions against Russia and bigger military support to Ukraine may have an influence on this outcome. In this scenario, the Ukrainian armed forces would liberate other cities in the Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions, establish a presence near Crimea, and cut the landline between the peninsula and the occupied parts of Eastern Ukraine. At the same time, pressing toward the peninsula would increase the risk of nuclear use by Russia. The use, either demonstrative or (more likely) targeting Ukraine’s military infrastructure, would mean a dramatic change in the conflict and a subversion of deterrence modalities with manifest effects on the future continental security architecture which would immediately revert to a highly unstable and unreliable version of the model described in the first scenario. The escalation would impose high costs on Russia due to the expected negative responses of the U.S. but also third countries such as China and India. Due to the revanchist character of the ruling regime and its operational codes, it remains an unlikely, yet not inconceivable low probability / high impact scenario.

Based on the available data, we conclude that the loss of Donbas and Crimea would likely produce a partial destabilisation inside Putin’s regime. While the chances of a regime change in Russia should not be overestimated, the strategic failure of the Kremlin’s aggressive campaign against Ukraine would not only be a military defeat marginalising the state’s capacities to engage in revisionist geopolitics, but would also constitute a political defeat of the vision of the restoration of the empire and binding Ukraine back to the “Russian world” characterised by traditional values (as defined by the regime), and show the weakness of the leadership in the eyes of the rest of the (opportunistic) elite. Mark Galeotti suggests that siloviki such as Nikolai Patrushev are ideologues faithful to Putin’s rhetoric, but other members of the elite are more pragmatic. This is the case, in particular, of the middle managers in the security establishment – opportunists and kleptocrats who are not inclined to drown together with the regime. In these conditions, it is therefore conceivable that these middle managers might support a change that would depose Putin and the establishment of a more pragmatic, collective leadership (Interview Galeotti 2022). According to Taras Kuzio, this is only one possible trajectory of the future evolution of the regime – which could remain nominally Putinist but seek to prevent the most adverse effects of the catastrophe caused by Russia’s re-invasion of Ukraine and lay the blame for it on Putin’s own decisions (Interview Kuzio 2022). It can be made more likely, we suggest, in the case when there is a more defragmented social protest movement – not strong enough to cause a people’s revolution, but sufficiently present to lower the costs of a defection of the pragmatists inside the regime. Yet there are more worrying alternatives of Russia’s future responses to a strategic failure in Ukraine too – ranging from a more revanchist and paranoid (neo-)insularist regime to a state implosion, neither of which would be conducive to a stable balance model.

A negative stable balance model

The positive stable balance model would not be a solution to Russia’s revanchist geopolitics. It would however contain it, and prevent an escalation to regional war. Such escalation would be prevented also in the second version of the stable balance model. Here, however, the regional security order would be stabilised according to Russia’s geopolitical visions. In particular, this would entail Moscow’s significant increase of influence in the in-between space. The catalyst of such a scenario would be Ukraine’s defeat as an alternative outcome of the war. Russia’s victory in Ukraine would need to stem from a combination of negative drivers. The evolving position of the key Atlantic actors would result in a dramatic decrease of, or even stopping their assistance – e.g. in case of major electoral turns, including in the U.S. Moscow would consolidate its positions while Ukraine’s allies, dominated by appeasement forces, would force it to agree to a(n) (unfavourable) peace treaty that would lead to further disintegration of the country along the “peace for territory” lines. The peace, however, will be only a fleeting illusion. After a time, when Russia with empowered ultra-nationalist hardliners in Putin’s close circle would restore its military supplies, and recover from its losses, it would likely continue in its advance against the Ukraine “rump” – and possibly other post-Soviet targets from Kazakhstan to Moldova and, in the extreme case, also the Baltic states (Tertrais 2022). This would be irrespective of any “security guarantees” that Ukraine currently receives, or would receive, from its Western partners.

Internally, Russia’s authoritarian and imperialist regime would be reinforced, the legitimising role of the state ideology reasserted, and internal inconsistencies and contradictions externalised. The relative change in the balance of power in Russia’s favour would translate into a rewriting of the continental security architecture, which would be characterised, even in the near future, by a more prominent Russian influence in the in-between space, and a demilitarisation of NATO’s Eastern flank in line with Moscow’s proposals from December 2021. While the former Soviet states that are not members of NATO would fear for their independence, the course of events would cause a deep political crisis in NATO, which would be compounded by the U.S.’s disentanglement from the continental security system, spurred by domestic polarisation and legitimated also by other allies’ limited and incoherent response to the war. Putin’s success in Ukraine would raise the stakes for other revisionist authoritarians around the world. This is currently a slightly less likely scenario than the positive stable balance model, notwithstanding the lack of Ukraine’s military progress that conditions the latter. Russia’s military leadership is learning from past mistakes, and the country has moved toward a war economy. Yet there remain structural issues concerning training, quality of military equipment and logistical effectivity that are hard to resolve in the short term – and that certainly cannot be resolved by simple leadership personnel changes.

Concert

The concert is a model of the security architecture that entails maintaining competitive postures among important regional actors, but also a more significant cooperation on the principles of informality and confidentiality for the sake of stability (Lascurettes 2017, Müller and Rauch 2020). Another condition is the absence of a revisionist agenda among all the actors. Under certain circumstances, a concert would be a conceivable and, in terms of security management, useful superstructure (rather than a substitution) for the security arrangement present in the conditions of a positive stable model described above. The superstructure would consist above all in a durable high-level interaction forum for discussing and resolving emerging issues and conflicts in a confidential setting. To have international legitimacy, the superstructure institution would have to depart both from the traditional, nineteenth-century antecedent and Russia’s more contemporary proposals to re-enact it (Zysk 2022). The first principle of the traditional concert in nineteenth-century Europe operated based on exclusion – overtly in the interest of all since even the non-represented smaller states benefited from the arrangement. A similar vision motivated – again, overtly, Moscow’s recent proposals. Their sole objective, however, was to ensure the recognition of the Russian Federation as a great power – while the shared norm of restraint and consensus (inscribed e.g. in the principle of “equal sovereignty”) has been reflected in Moscow’s discourse but certainly not its actions.

The modern concert could in principle feature a certain hierarchy (of “custodians”) but would need to combine it with elements that would guarantee a representation of all the members of the European security system. A key role would need to be played by the EU. The in-between states would also need to be included, and their sovereign right to choose their own security strategies would be maintained – and not interpreted as “geopolitical poaching” (Sharap et al. 2018). The emphasis would shift from hiearchy and the conservation of the status quo to a commitment to management of security and change – and to procedural rules for the congresses rather than substantial (“security order”) norms (cf. Lascurettes 2017).

Without a regime change in Russia – which, as such, would be no guarantee of a positive change in its foreign policy unless it would consist in a currently unlikely democratic revolution – this model can only be envisioned in case of a radical shift in Moscow’s geopolitics that would be motivated by China’s cutting its lifeline or activating an extensive predatory strategy vis-à-vis Russia, and a simultaneous strategic failure in Ukraine. In other words, the condition of the possibility of a concert is Russia’s effective Zeitenwende – a dramatic change in the country’s strategic culture – that would need to be enforced by a strong pressure from both the East and the West effecting a threat to survival which, at the same time, could materialise in more geopolitically adverse outcomes.

Conclusion

In our assessment, the only reasonably probable security management upgrade from the present state (an unstable balance model) is a movement toward a positive stable model consisting in restoring some of the conflict management fabric – but without Moscow reneging on its revisionist policy on one hand, and with the rest of the regional system harbouring no illusions about it and the operational codes of the Russian state apparatus, and suffering no memory loss concerning the past disingenuity of the Kremlin’s proposals on the other. Even under these conditions, these practices can be revived, in due time, on the OSCE’s institutional grounds (something in which the EU is showing informal interest while Russia for the time being obstructs) – and possibly complemented by dusting off bilateral instruments – through a limited reciprocity and restored security management routines (including data exchanges through Vienna Document). This is premised on the understanding that deterrence and arms control – or security management in a broader sense – are not mutually exclusive strategic options, but ones that were successfully combined as a multitrack strategy in the past, producing synergic outcomes; and the expectation of a continuing shared interest of an undesirable escalation due to deterrence failure (Chernenko 2023, cf. Gottemoeller 2023).

From the strategic perspective, in both the positive and negative stability models – the other probable but adverse change from the present state –, Russia remains a security threat to NATO as it remains a revolutionary, revisionist actor that does not accept the geopolitical fact of the Soviet empire’s fall, blames the corresponding processes on a Western conspiracy, and seeks a restoration of the erstwhile empire organised around the core Russian national identity (Melvin 2022). Moscow continues to reject multilateralism as an ordering principle of international politics. Due to pragmatic considerations, it may become willing to invest in the continental security architecture to buy time for consolidation (and a possible return of imperial politics). Yet in the meantime, the Kremlin’s hybrid war on Ukraine and the “collective West” would be waged, creating obstacles to Kyiv’s gravitating toward the EU and seeking to undermine the political resolve of the latter’s key constituencies.

These conclusions lead to several key takeaways regarding the West’s desirable strategy to drive home future security management arrangements. First, any architecture reconstruction effort outlined above should be matched with strong deterrence and continuous support for Ukraine defending against Russia’s invasion – a conditio sine qua non for any stable systemic outcome favourable to the EU, NATO, and their member states. A strategic victory for Moscow in Ukraine would boost the Kremlin’s revisionist state geopolitics and produce either more long-term instability in the regional security system, or even – if combined with other adverse conditions – a negative stable model where the centre of this system would be ordered on Moscow’s terms.

Second, scope conditions for more favourable future outcomes include not just Moscow’s strategic defeat in Ukraine but also degrading Russia’s capacity to engage in militant revisionism and destabilise the European security system in the foreseeable future. In addition to forcing Moscow into a strategic defeat in Ukraine, a strategy to achieve such a degradation should therefore entail a global dimension consisting of efficient strategic communication with other actors (for instance from the Global South) in the current “battle of offers” but also a practical marginalisation of Russia – in lieu of its isolation, which is unrealistic in the present conditions.

The marginalisation efforts should be focused in particular on energy and arms exports. Russia lost its dominant positions in the European gas and oil markets, which may disrupt the foundations of Russia’s rentier economy – and, by extension, undermine some of the foundations of the incumbent regime. While the EU finds new ways to replace the dependence on Russian energy resources, Russia becomes increasingly dependent on China as a monopsonist buyer without any political leverage over Beijing. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Western sanctions may also affect Russia’s status as one of the top suppliers in the global arms trade, which may provide a window of opportunity for other suppliers, including the relatively new actors on the higher-end arms markets, such as South Korea. In the latter domain, the EU should consider a two-pronged approach of secondary sanctions on Russia’s arms customers, and stimulating the substitution of Russia’s position by the EU’s exports in pivotal markets. Finally, the global effort to marginalise Russia should consist also in further developing global value-based coalitions, both internationally and intersectionally, and with both state and nonstate actors.

These conclusions seemingly align with the points made by a number of EU and NATO’s decision-makers. It needs to be underscored, however, that current policies are insufficient to reach the positive stable model – the best we can reasonably hope for in the foreseeable future. The commitment from the West falls short of what is necessary as a war of attrition favours Russia, whose economy is likely to remain resilient to Western sanctions in the near future. As The Economist noted, many Western countries are “either too small to matter, too broke to help or too hesitant to use their power – if not all three. Statesmanship has been woefully lacking” (The Economist 2024). The rhetoric emphasising Western unwavering support does not correspond with necessary decisiveness and political will, despite the abundant resources that far exceed Russia’s. The West is reluctant to supply Ukraine with weaponry capable of targeting Russian infrastructure and defense industries on Russian territory, but even protective means like air defence in necessary quantities. More than two years into the war, the support to Ukraine highlights a notable lack of consensus and strategic vision regarding the definition of Russia’s strategic defeat and the means of how to attain it – a predicament we seek to contribute to rectifying by outlining Europe’s security futures. For those decision-makers who believe that Ukraine and those who support it would be best served by reaching some fast and effective (“silver bullet”) deal with Russia that would lead not only to ceasing the hostilities but also stabilising the security system, the analysis of the key dynamics above provides plenty reasons for caution. There are no shortcuts – and while security management can be restored, and peace can be attained in the more distant future through diplomatic negotiations, it can only be in a constellation of a favourable balance of power. Misguided pushes for negotiations now are based on naïve assumptions about the nature of the Putin regime, its war objectives and the way it frames the current regional conflict. They would only reward its belligerence while undercutting European security since it appeasement would likely lead to more aggressive moves down the road.

It is conceivable in principle yet unlikely that a concert superstructure could complement the positive stable balance model. It could only be imagined under an even more favourable set of circumstances including Russia’s strategic defeat in Ukraine and a simultaneous predatory pressure vis-à-vis Russia from China, which together would force either a regime change – that alone would not be a guarantee of a revision of the current state geopolitics, and could produce new security problems (particularly in the implosion scenario) – or a major restructuring of Russia’s government. In this case, the role of the EU would be indispensable, since it would serve as a medium ensuring a proper representation of all members of the European regional security order. But Western policy makers should be advised not to harbour nostalgic dreams of a concert until these favourable circumstances materialise – however appealing the prospect may be under duress brought about by Trump’s prospective return to the White House or other externalities. Ill-timed and ill-conceived efforts to institutionalise the concert would likely result in a “rabbit hole” leading to the negative stable balance model.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 When thinking about the future, it is nonetheless prudent to conceive of the security community, in line with Karl Deutsch’s original concept, as dynamic rather than static and prone to undergoing processes of both consolidation and decay caused by social unlearning, breaches of habits and norms, and alternative norm entrepreneurship (see e.g. Koschut 2016).

2 A frontier in this sense represents a zone where interaction and partial assimilation with one or more centres take place. Marches are buffer zones, proverbial no man’s lands (Cf. Browning and Pertti 2008).

3 For instance, Medvedev's plan for a joint sector-based missile defence presented in Lisbon (2010).