The Defense Committee of UK has published its report “Towards the Next Defence and Security Review” in the part that deals with preparedness of NATO today. The report argues that NATO is not well prepared for a war with Russia today.

Russian Federation actions in Ukraine have now raised the prospect, however unlikely, of a Russian attack on a NATO Member State. The risk of a conventional attack by the Russian Federation on a NATO state is low, but NATO needs to take much more action to deter that risk. The risk of an unconventional attack using the “ambiguous warfare” tactics deployed in Ukraine and elsewhere, whilst still small, is more substantial and would be even more difficult to counter.

It feels like if the clock is running backwards. I caught myself looking for the news of the restoration of the Berlin wall. Are we back to the times of “Cold War”? Should we now expect to get a rerun of all those “Red Menace” movies again?

At the same time, it is a little strange to see the admittance that Russia is prepared to operate using all those modern tactics that we are used to seeing from USA these days: cyberwar, infowar, “ambiguous warfare”, etc. We are used to hearing that Russia is laid back and outdated and, quite suddenly, it turns out that NATO has to play the catch-up game. This is … a tad unexpected, isn’t it?… -->