NATO's top military commander sought to steady an anxious Europe on Monday, outlining the alliance's new military plan to thwart a potential Russian assault along its eastern flank with a mix of firepower, autonomous systems and sensors that borrows from the lessons of Ukraine.
The speech by Gen. Alexus Grynkewich on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's "theory of victory" outlined a series of steps to block an initial attack and, if aggression continues, break the adversary's ability to control and support its forces.
The goal would be to stop the invasion in its tracks while minimizing the risk of conventional or nuclear escalation by stopping short of the complete destruction of the enemy.
Speaking onstage after his address at the Warsaw Security Forum, Grynkewich said he presented the strategy both to reassure Europeans made nervous by Russian aggression and to send a message "should someone be foolish enough to try to attack our territory."
His message to both: "We've got this."
Grynkewich, a U.S. Air Force general who serves as both the head of American forces in Europe and the alliance's top commander, delivered the speech in Poland, a close U.S. ally that has been increasingly worried about Russian President Vladimir Putin's intentions toward Europe as the conflict in Ukraine enters its fifth year.
While Grynkewich outlined his veiled warnings to Moscow -- which he didn't identify by name in his speech -- President Trump's abrupt weekend pronouncements left European allies and U.S. lawmakers reeling. After Trump announced a deal to import Russian diesel fuel, he lashed out at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for continuing to strike Russian energy infrastructure, before announcing an energy ceasefire between the two countries. The shock waves from Trump's diplomacy with Moscow threatened to overshadow Grynkewich's address.
"Outlining military plans is important, but it can't be divorced from addressing what everyone is worried about: Trump's outbursts, Russia's war on Ukraine and threats to Europe, and questions on whether we're pulling significant U.S. forces out of Europe," said Kurt Volker, a former U.S. envoy to NATO and later to Ukraine under the first Trump administration.
Some Republican lawmakers have criticized Trump over the diesel deal, warning that it hands Moscow much-needed financial assistance without making a significant dent in U.S. energy prices. Shortly after Trump announced the energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, Russian forces attacked a power plant in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
That Grynkewich's reassurance was needed at all marks a turnabout for an alliance that once believed it had won the Cold War and harvested a peace dividend. Instead, NATO faces a resurgent Russia that has invaded Ukraine, penetrated Western airspace with drones and is suspected of carrying out sabotage attacks on infrastructure, military equipment and defense companies in Europe.
The "shadow warfare," as it was dubbed recently by a senior German intelligence official, has unnerved Western officials, who have struggled to develop an effective strategy to deter Russia's hybrid warfare and who are now preparing to defend against the possibility of more substantial attacks against NATO's Baltic members and its eastern frontier.
Western officials had assumed that the alliance would have a couple of years following the end of the Ukraine conflict before Russia could mobilize sufficient forces and arms to carry out a substantial invasion of the alliance's territory.
But the alliance is now in a race to put a stronger defense in place as Putin tries to pressure European nations to curtail their military support for Kyiv, including by sending an explosive-laden drone to the Leipzig airport in Germany, according to German officials.
Grynkewich said that a classified version of his plan had been finalized three months ago and that it called for investing in "affordable mass," a reference to the relatively cheap drones that Ukraine has used effectively, to complement the alliance's arsenal of more sophisticated weapons.
If Russia attacked, the alliance's first goal would be to block the initial assault and prevent any advances if it continues.
"If required, we will break the enemy's forces and the operational warfighting system that is arrayed against us," he added. "Enemy formations will be starved of replenishment. Enemy commanders will be unable to control their forces. Enemy forces and support capabilities will be reduced and destroyed. "
In carrying out such a strategy, the NATO commander indicated the alliance would not be seeking to vanquish Russia or undermine its government.
"We are not seeking to impose a strategic defeat on our adversary," he said. "Rather, we are only seeking to stop any attack in its tracks."
But Grynkewich did not provide a timetable for stiffening the alliance's defenses, which are taking place against the background of munitions shortages caused by the war in Iran.
The alliance's efforts are taking place against the background of munitions shortages in Europe of American PAC-3 Patriot air defense interceptors and Atacms surface-to-surface missiles, as U.S. munitions have been funneled to the Middle East to contend with Iran.
The Pentagon is also completing a sweeping review of U.S. military posture in Europe that could see reductions in U.S. forces there.
NATO's "theory of victory" draws on the efforts of retired Gen. Chris Donahue, the former U.S. Army commander in Europe and head of the alliance's Land Command, who was forced out of his post in July when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth downgraded his post.
The approach was devised to block a Russian adversary whose geographic advantages and outsize defense industry could enable it to mass forces against Baltic states, Poland and other NATO allies before the alliance could marshal a robust response.
Under its strategy, an extensive "autonomous zone" would be established so that drones and ground robots could blunt a Russian attack without extensive allied casualties.
At the same time, long-range missiles would strike Russian command posts and air defenses in the exclave of Kaliningrad, near St. Petersburg and in Belarus. That would puncture Russia's efforts to control the skies and enable the U.S. Army's V Corps and other NATO ground forces to counterattack.
NATO air forces would move swiftly to strike Russian reinforcements as they streamed toward the battlefield and to attack other targets in the rear.
The NATO attacks would be enabled by a "data backbone," a system for instantaneously sharing targeting classified data through the cloud among allied forces. Elements of that network have been tested in the Middle East during the U.S. fight with Iran.
The approach has been dubbed the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative and its overall objective, U.S. military officials said, is to force Putin to look at NATO's defenses and conclude "not today" if he considers attacking. To reinforce that, alliance forces constantly drill to both test and demonstrate their readiness.
As Grynkewich spoke in Warsaw, more than 20,000 military personnel from across NATO were deep in a 10-day wargame, "Steadfast Duel," simulating a scenario in which roughly one million allied troops must defend against an invasion from the east by a similarly sized force, which in deference to political sensitivities isn't identified as Russia.
The exercise "ties in 100%" to Grynkewich's "theory of victory," German Brig. Gen. Thomas Lowin told The Wall Street Journal, which observed a portion of the exercise at U.S. Army European headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany.
Key to the scenario is the use of digital systems for a "data-centric approach, making decisions faster and defending the alliance more effectively," Lowin said.
Another participant noted that other exercises also simulated disabling strikes against enemy command posts using land-based surface-to-surface missiles.
"One of the main objectives is to break the West's will to continue flowing support to Ukraine," Grynkewich said, referring to Moscow. "So one of the best responses is to prove that false to them...by increasing your contributions to the PURL program."
PURL stands for the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, a NATO-backed system for pooling financial contributions to buy weapons for Kyiv.
Some veteran officials hailed NATO's efforts to update its strategy, but said the test for the alliance would be committing the resources to put it fully in place.
"It is great that NATO is through this adaptation, but they have to hurry. And nations have to come through with the money and the political will to do this," said Jim Townsend, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO during the Obama administration. "NATO as an institution can do the planning, but it is the members who are going to have to go home, spend the money and train the troops."