What a Stronger Europe Means for America

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Celeste, thank you for joining me, and thank you for the provocative and powerful essay you wrote for our new issue. It’s called “Beware the Europe You Wish For: The Downsides and Dangers of Allied Independence.”

CELESTE WALLANDER

Thank you, Dan. I’m really excited to have the chance to talk with you, and I’m really grateful for the opportunity to bring that argument to a broader community.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

There’s a ton in that piece that I want to get to, but I actually want to start with the [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] summit that was held in The Hague last week, which, in some ways, picked up on many of the themes and arguments you made in that article—though you, of course, wrote it before the summit had happened. This was the first summit of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, and given his longstanding and well-known views on America’s allies in Europe, and the doubt he’s often encouraged about the U.S. commitment to the transatlantic alliance, and especially to NATO’s Article 5—which is roughly that an attack on one will be treated as an attack on all. And then, of course, the pretty open antipathy we’ve heard toward European allies from other members of the administration. I think both you and I were sitting in the audience in Munich, in February, when U.S. Vice President JD Vance gave, what has become, an infamous speech. There were comments in the Houthi small group on Signal about European allies; and lots of others.

And given all that, the summit went remarkably okay—as at least I observed it. That seemed to be thanks in part to the willingness of European leaders, and especially [NATO Secretary General] Mark Rutte, to opt for I guess what you would call kind of groveling obsequiousness toward Trump— and I mean that more admiringly than critically given their options—and also this slightly fuzzy five percent spending commitment by European governments over the next ten years or so. But I’m curious, as you watch the summit, what did you see as the significance of it?

CELESTE WALLANDER

Well, it was very much a “low expectations” summit and an “avoid disaster” summit. And I agree with you—I think Rutte, and also the European leaders, did an excellent job of achieving both. To be fair, we had done a lot of work in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Those were the summits where NATO really took decisions and moved forward on what was needed to deal with a Russia that is now clearly willing to use full scale invasion against a non-NATO, but still European country, in advance of Putin’s aspirations. So much of the hard work had already been done. Maybe it would’ve been a kind of a celebratory, “Let’s come together and tie some bows on things that had already been achieved anyway.” But clearly the understanding was that you had to avoid a breakup and bad headlines, and I think that was the goal—and it was achieved.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Was the Kremlin surprised by that outcome? I imagine it was hoping for something more spectacular, and a bigger blow up. But did they see that coming given the recent dynamics between the United States and Europe?

CELESTE WALLANDER

I think they’re savvy enough that they had picked up on all the signals about the low expectations and the work that the Europeans were doing to avoid any kind of really contentious issues to be decided at the summit itself. So the Kremlin did not declare victory, didn’t claim that it was happy about the summit, but I think they had already moved on from it. They didn’t expect much and there weren’t new decisions. But turning to the new defense pledge, it’s interesting to remind people that the Wales pledge [of 2014] was an aspiration; it wasn’t a requirement. And then, over time, in Madrid [in 2022] and Vilnius [in 2023], and then in Washington [in 2024], the allies changed the language to make it a floor, not a ceiling, and to make it a requirement, not just simply an aspiration. And so that language was mostly preserved, although there was a little bit of a fuzz on whether every ally commits to meeting the now new requirement.

But the other really interesting, very constructive modification on just having a simple number was to distinguish between the core defense budget requirement—which is now agreed at 3.5 percent—and then a 1.5 percent GDP commitment on investment in resilience in support of defense operations and defense requirements. And so countries that feel like they can’t get past 3.5, nonetheless, are eager to improve their roads, their railroads, their cyber resilience, logistics, and supply. NATO has been working in the last two years on getting much more serious about military mobility. Wars, as we see, don’t tend to take only a couple of weeks, and if they’re going to extend over months or years—and if you want to send a signal to the Kremlin that a quick win is not in the cards—you need to be able to show clearly that NATO could sustain operations over months and years.

And so that 1.5 is not, as some have pointed to, just kind of fake. It’s actually very real, and it’s very much something that European allies need to invest in. So I think that was a great step forward. And the last point I’ll make on this is that the 3.5 percent of core defense spending did not come out of nowhere. It’s not a fake number. For the last year and a half, the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe has had his staff working very serious military analyses to show what level of defense spending allies need to meet to fully resource the new regional plans and to have the capabilities to actually provide that defense and deterrence. And that is where that 3.5 percent number came from.

So the headlines have tended to be, “Donald Trump gets what he wants, we’re all really happy.” I’m glad President Trump got what he wanted. But what I want to really make the case for, is that it was actually meaningful, and it was something the alliance was doing for good reasons—not merely because of the public rhetoric.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And then when you look at that 3.5 percent of core defense spending, if Europe does in fact follow through over the next ten years, what will that mean in terms of European capabilities? And I suppose I should ask you as well, do you think it will follow through? If we get to 2035, will we see those numbers met?

CELESTE WALLANDER

Based on the trends now, I do think that the very solid majority of European countries will meet the 3.5 percent. First of all, a number of them already do—mostly the Baltics and Poland. But the Nordic countries—including Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark—are already heading in that direction. Germany seems to be heading in that direction, although it’s interesting to watch some of the ebbs and flows in the new coalition. But if Germany doesn’t quite meet that top number, it’s going to be very close. And that matters—along with other really big economies like France—that matters a lot because 3.5 percent of German GDP buys a lot of military equipment. So I do think that we’ll get closer to that. And one of my questions actually is whether the United States will meet 3.5 percent.

The United States right now is at 3.4 percent. I know that the Trump administration has talked about increasing defense spending. We’re all kind of watching what’s going on in U.S. budget processes right now. I know that the Trump White House has said that the United States does not need to meet that standard because—not clear why. But if the United States does not meet that standard of 3.5 percent, plus 1.5 percent for resilience, it’s going to be harder for other NATO allies to twist the arms of European countries that are lagging behind. So there’ll be an interesting dynamic playing out between Europe and the United States, and, of course, our other North American NATO ally Canada, that I think will play out over the coming years. And Europe has the opportunity to show that it’s leading, and I think there are some European leaders who are eager to show that.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I’ve heard concerns from others who watch this closely that Europe is not spending this money in particularly smart ways. And some of the problem is that politicians, understandably, want to focus that spending on their own national defense industries rather than making that a kind of common European project. But there are other concerns about specific capabilities they’re investing in and a lack of certain kinds of investments, especially on the kind of most technologically sophisticated stuff. How do you read that kind of spending, and do you have concerns that it’s not being done in a particularly smart or effective way?

CELESTE WALLANDER

I think it is clear that it hasn’t been done in a particularly smart or effective way for decades, and that national priorities were often more important than meeting interoperability standards. I think the trends are in the right direction. First of all, the EU has now created ways to incentivize better joint production and joint procurement among European countries and, especially, the smaller European economies who don’t have their own independent defense industrial bases are very eager to make use of those EU mechanisms. And that I think will be of interest to even purely European defense industries. They want to increase their contracts, and they want to increase their production and their bottom line.

This is another example of “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” Are you going to get purely multilateral, EU-level, super brilliant, economic model defense production and procurement in Europe? No. But are you going to get better coordination, more longer term procurement? I think you will. Because again, the incentive for the Europeans is that they still don’t know what the future lies in terms of the U.S. commitment—and not just the verbal commitment, not just Article 5, and not just the nuclear umbrella. But what we’re going to see now, this summer, is a rollout of what U.S. global posture decisions are, which may affect U.S. presence in Europe this year, and probably will affect not just the levels but the shape of the U.S. presence in Europe in the coming decade. And that message has gotten through.

And again, it’s not just the Trump White House. It is the trend toward America looking at what kinds of military assets it needs in [the United States Indo-Pacific Command], in order to address very real security challenges in that region and globally. That’s going to pull assets away from Europe. Not in a political way, and not because of JD Vance’s speech or U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s views, but actually for really fundamental reasons. And Europeans understand that they have time to build, and to procure, and to produce. And there is, I think in Europe, a stronger appreciation that they need to use that time because they’re the ones who would be invaded by Russia. That is very much understood.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

In the piece you have in our current issue, there’s an extraordinary statistic that really brought home for me just how dramatic a change in this defense spending is. You noted that during the Cold War in the 1970s, a moment when Western European capitals had lots of reason to be concerned about Soviet power, they were still spending only an average of two to three percent of GDP on defense, while the United States was averaging something like seven percent.

If we see a shift to something closer to balance, or even, as you noted, a situation where European governments are spending five percent, and the United States is spending less, that really is a dramatic change in the balance. And the piece argues that it’s both more dramatic than people fully realize, but also not as uncomplicated as people think—that there are downsides and complications that we may not fully appreciate. If you project forward to that balance or to that situation where the Europeans are spending more, how does that shift the transatlantic dynamic as you’ve seen it over the last several decades of your career?

CELESTE WALLANDER

So, underappreciated is how often European allies support the United States on American priorities. We have so much leverage, diplomatic leverage, because of the leadership built up over the past eight decades since the end of World War II. So when you, for example, get G-7 statements condemning China for actions against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, or when you get the G-7 and the EU separately to condemn threats against Taiwan or manipulations of currencies or questionable investments, that is usually the result of weeks of diplomacy, where not all the European countries are wanting to get out there criticizing, say, China, because they have economic and investment relations with Chinese companies, and they’re worried about the bottom line. They’re worried about the pulling out of Chinese investments that could hurt their economies and therefore possibly upend their domestic politics. So, there’s a lot of work that goes on before those big public announcements that you don’t see where European countries one by one get nudged to support American priorities.

And my point in the article is not that Europe will never support the United States, because often our interests are aligned—often they want to support the United States, and it’s just a matter of negotiating a compromise in the language. But it’s going to get harder. And it’s going to not be so obvious that there will be agreement in the end. And I think we’re going to start to see that especially as some of the tariffs and restrictions from the White House start hitting the European economy. They’re going to need to find an outlet elsewhere. And some European countries believe they can manage the risk of Chinese investments. And I think that is the one I would point to that might not be so obvious just from headlines.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

There’s also the fascinating example of an almost reversal of roles on Ukraine that, for a long time, the United States might’ve been pressing European governments to do more in countering Russia or challenging Russia, but what you see now is European governments who are less likely to play along in U.S. efforts to end the war and remove sanctions on Moscow, and other steps that you might see coming out of Washington. How do you see that dynamic now and going forward in Ukraine?

CELESTE WALLANDER

Well, we’ve seen it play out since January, and the first hint of that was in fact at the Munich Security Conference that you and I both attended. Again, a lot of the public commentary was about how disrespectful it was for the United States to not go to Europe and align on a negotiating strategy for a Russian-Ukrainian peace negotiation. And what I was thinking all along is, I think people are misunderstanding. It wasn’t respect that brought the United States to the Europeans when we would talk about Russia and Ukraine. It was hard-headed, smart diplomacy, because you’ve got to have the Europeans on board to have any kind of implementable agreement that would lift sanctions, given that the EU has also placed sanctions in coordination with the United States, and in some areas tougher sanctions than the United States, on Russia.

The terms of implementation—if they include things like peace enforcement, or observers, or recognizing Russian claims to territory—all that kind of stuff is going to require the Europeans to be on board. And those are core interests for Europeans.This comes back to my point. Yes, they normally would want to support an American priority. But you’ve got to get them on board, and they’re not going to go against their own domestic political interests and their own economic interests in implementing such an agreement. And again, a lot of the attention on the reasons the negotiations fell apart was because Russian President Vladimir Putin proves to be as difficult a negotiator as we all knew he was. The Ukrainians were being asked to do things that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky couldn’t enforce. He couldn’t get many of the terms that were being discussed through the [Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada], and I seriously believe that were he to try to impose some of those conditions on the Ukrainian public, there would be major protests in Ukraine against him making concessions to Putin that Putin demanded.

But in addition to all that public playing out of the challenges of the negotiations was the quiet reality that the terms that were being discussed could only be implemented in coordination and with active support from Europe—and that was missing from the strategy. So I hope now that we’ve got more time to think it through, and that the White House has now seen how challenging Putin is in these kinds of situations, that there will be an appreciation, and that President Trump’s position will be a lot stronger if it is in coordination with the Europeans, because the Europeans hold a lot of the cards for a successful peace negotiation.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I want to get back to Ukraine in a moment, but first there was one other element of the essay that I found really fascinating that I wanted to focus on. There’s lots of concern that you reflect in the essay about not just the kind of big differences over global strategic priorities or how to respond to a foreign policy crisis, but also the kinds of logistical issues that you professionals focus on and the rest of us can often miss. That’s basing, and interoperability, and overflight—all these things that if you’re sitting in the Pentagon thinking about how to respond to a crisis or how to act on some American global priority, become very, very central. If you again look forward to a time when Europe is less reliant on the United States and that it's less likely to follow our priorities in the way we’ve become accustomed to, what kinds of challenges or risks do you think your successors in those positions would face?

CELESTE WALLANDER

Well a key one we’ve seen play out in the last couple of weeks is going to be what is the future strategy for ensuring nuclear nonproliferation in the Middle East. Not just Iran, but more broadly in the Middle East. We’re waiting to find out. It comes out in dribs and drabs. There’s contradictory information about how extensive the physical damage to the Iranian nuclear enrichment sites actually is, and how long Iran may be delayed in being able, should it choose, to enrich its already highly enriched uranium to weapons-grade uranium. So as that plays out, and as the international community thinks about how to adjust a new nonproliferation strategy toward Iran—in particular, military options depend on U.S. basing in Europe. Again, the strike on Fordow was executed—the core of it was B-2 bombers. The ability to conduct that entire operation depended on air defense and air-to-air defense capabilities in the region in support of those bombers.

And the message to the Iranian leadership, when the Iranian leadership was thinking about retaliating, was as much about American forces on destroyers and cruisers, on aircraft carriers, and on American air assets, which are based in Europe for the most part—not all of them, some of them are allocated to [United States Central Command]. But the surge in capabilities that the United States has used to help with the defense of, and deterrence for, Israel in striking Houthi attacks on commercial and military shipping—almost all of those assets came from bases, whether those are naval bases or air bases, in Europe. And European countries did not have to grant permission, because the core reason why those bases are there is for the defense of NATO, and for the defense of Europe. But over decades, regularly, European countries grant permission. Again, sometimes, because it’s in their interest; certainly shipping is in Europeans’ interests. But as the United States and Europe might diverge on this question of exactly how do you, now, going forward, ensure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon—what mix of negotiation and threat and military strikes do you use—the United States is going to need to work hard to make sure that Europeans are on board with whatever mix of those options are the preferred strategy.

And the stakes are huge. Because if Iran does achieve a nuclear capability, the nuclear nonproliferation regime globally is really in shreds. And regionally, you’ve got some Middle East countries who have either publicly or quietly made clear that if Iran achieves a nuclear weapons capability, they’re going to pursue their own. So Europe holds the cards, and not in a, “We’re going to get in your way, America,” way. But they need to be part of the partnership. And my goal in the article was to make clear they want to partner with us, but we’re going to have to work at it. And we can work at it, but we need to be sophisticated, thoughtful, and really strategic about that.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Another more complicated consequence of European rearmament has to do with the dynamics within Europe itself. The classic line about NATO was something like, “it’s designed to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.” I think I have that roughly right—the point being that after two world wars that had started in Europe, there was some benefit to having European governments slightly less focused on arms and national defense and military strategy.

Do you see a change in the European dynamics, or European unity even, as a result of this long process of rearmament, which really is a reversal of a long-standing historical practice? For all the complaints you would hear from American policymakers over the last couple of decades about low European defense spending, was that in some ways by design? Was that a feature rather than a bug?

CELESTE WALLANDER

Yeah, this is not the Europe of the 1930s. Now, there are domestic political dynamics in many countries in Europe which are very concerning in terms of the rise of extremist right-wing parties and their success in elections. There is sort of a nationalist tinge to a lot of the leaders, well, several of the leaders, who have been elected in some countries, including but not limited to Slovakia and Hungary. But what we for the most part don’t see is the kind of revanchist and territorial revisionist elements of that nationalism. And I think what’s changed—what’s important, actually here—isn’t NATO. It’s the European Union. It is the degree of, ironically, dependence of some of those more obvious right-wing leaders on EU resources, and EU funding, and the growth that comes from EU integration, that is helping to moderate, at least, some of the key aspects of aggressive and even invasive policies in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The elephant in the room is whether Germany will turn in that direction, especially with the growing success of the alternative for Deutschland—the right-wing party in Germany. And Germany has probably the most to lose from a weakening of the EU of any other country in Europe. So ironically, although that old saying about one of NATO’s purposes being to keep Germany down, the EU is now playing the role of keeping Germany prosperous and powerful and influential, with a quiet and cooperative neighborhood. And so that mitigates the concern of many in Europe about Germany heading toward 3.5 percent of its GDP in defense and Germany being one of the leading defense industrial powers in Europe.

A lot of the co-production that American companies are looking at is in Germany because of the advanced capabilities of German armor production, armored vehicles, ammunition, and artillery. But also the technological skill in the German economy more generally is something that really can be a benefit to American companies looking to increase their ability to advance co-production and also to European countries that want to buy a lot more. So at least for decades, I would say, we’re in good shape. In that role, NATO is not really important anymore, especially because the “keeping Russia out” role of NATO is even more important in European eyes.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I want to pick up on some of the comments you made earlier in our conversation about the state of the war in Ukraine. You were, I should note, one of the key people involved in the early response to that war, and I suppose the first, almost three years of that war as the assistant secretary of defense who oversaw Europe and NATO and Russia, so you were really critical to that early response. In the first weeks, at least to the Trump administration, there was fear of a really precipitous collapse in U.S. support for Ukraine, and there were reasons to be worried about that, whether it was JD Vance’s Munich speech or Trump’s berating of President Zelensky in the Oval Office in February. As you look at the situation on the battlefield right now, do you see it as frozen? Do you worry about a shift in Russia’s favor? How should we understand the dynamics on the ground at this moment?

CELESTE WALLANDER

Well, what we’ve seen is Europe step up to provide Ukraine with a pretty steady flow of artillery ammunition, of strike capabilities, of air defense capabilities. The challenge is that a lot of that they’ve been able to do by buying from American industry. And the real constraint in the end is industrial—defense industrial production. The money is there. Europe has been willing to put the money there. I would prefer that Congress would be funding continuing a very substantial defense support to Ukraine through contracts, by looking at American stocks and providing immediate aid—the mix of production and urgently provided assistance that we provided from 2022 until January of 2025. But the Trump administration is continuing to deliver the defense goods that were put on contract in 2023 and 2024, and that is substantial and it should see the Ukrainians through at least the middle of next year. So I think Ukraine is in good shape.

What they’re not really able to resource are new offensives. They did successfully execute that extraordinary strike using drones and a mix of covert operations on deep Russian strategic bases. That was brilliant and extraordinary, and no doubt will be taught in military academies across the globe, and certainly in the United States and in Europe, for years to come. But the kind of steady stream of fighting on the front lines is hard to sustain without that defense production. And so my concern is more about are we, in the United States, and are Europeans expanding production lines? Are we offering large enough contracts to industry so that they see it in their interests to build new production lines? Because that’s going to be key to the ability of European countries to meet their own resource requirements now under the new NATO rules, but also to continue to supply Ukraine at a pace that it needs.

The other piece of the equation in the strategy was to try to restrict Russia’s ability to expand its defense production and its procurement from other countries. And unfortunately, the unwillingness to go further on sanctions, because of potential effects on the global economy, really limits options. I’ve talked to some friends and colleagues who’ve worked on sanctions. They think there’s more that could be done in energy and on banking, and on hitting insurance for shipping. But you really need a global coalition and—we’ll come back to the point—therefore, you really need a focused American leadership. And I don’t think we’re going to see the Trump White House interested in playing that kind of role. So it’s kind of a race to enhance production and procurement and keep that going to Ukraine—and Ukraine can defend with that—but it doesn’t appear to create much opportunity for offensives by Ukraine that could really change the game on the ground. So I guess in the end it does kind of add up to something of a war of attrition.

The one element I will point to, though, that really concerns me is the heightened Russian air attacks since that really bold strike by the Ukrainians. And we are seeing heightened levels of nighttime attacks on cities and on critical infrastructures. It’s heartbreaking to see schools and apartments hit, and just to hear the casualty figures in cities like Kiev and Odessa. But what really worries me is that the Russians may be seeking to explicitly and deliberately use these attacks to deplete Ukrainian air defenses. And if Ukrainian air defenses become depleted, they then have tough choices to make about what to protect. Do they protect their military forces fighting on the front lines, or do they protect their critical energy infrastructure or do they protect apartments and buildings and schools and hospitals? And what we did in the Biden administration is work with Europe; we provided enough air defenses so that they didn’t have to make that tough choice. But if that tough choice is coming, it could possibly change the dynamic on the battlefield because it would be difficult, I think, for the Ukrainian leadership to leave their cities vulnerable to that kind of Russian assault.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Is it still the case that air defenses, or at least the best air defenses, are something that only the United States can provide, and that that’s not something the Europeans can backfill? And is there anything else in that category, whether intel support or anything else, that really is dependent on the United States?

CELESTE WALLANDER

So successful air defenses don’t depend on one system. Successful air defenses are layered from very short range defenses—which are the best thing for taking down drones; Patriot missiles are kind of a waste to take down drones. So short-range and medium-range, which Europeans have provided to Ukraine in very substantial numbers and which they can continue to supply to them. And then there are the Patriots that tend to draw the attention. Europeans actually have donated more Patriot systems to Ukraine than the United States has. Other countries globally have Patriot systems, although a number of them are in the Middle East, and their threat environment is challenging as well. So it’s not only the United States that can provide systems.

The other part of it is repairing systems they have. There is expertise in Europe. The United States can continue to provide that expertise. But I think the real issue is production of interceptors. And again, that was a challenge even for us in 2023 and 2024 to find enough interceptors, but we found them. But now given the heightened threat environment in the Middle East, given the interest, we’re kind of a victim of our own success in the United States. Patriots have shown how valuable they are. Lots of countries have contracts for Patriot systems and Patriot interceptors, and so it becomes tough to find enough of those for Ukraine, given the very real demand signal coming globally. So the only answer to that is to expand production and to invest in expanded production, but that doesn’t happen overnight.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Can you say anything about the intelligence side of that, which I know others in government focus on quite a bit?

CELESTE WALLANDER

The United States has substantial intelligence capabilities, and the sharing of that intelligence with Ukraine is also part of a successful air defense system because knowing what’s coming, where it’s coming from, and when it’s coming is obviously an advantage as you think about where to deploy different systems and how to make choices. In military terms, it’s called “what’s your shot doctrine?”—what are you going to let just fall because you don’t think it’s actually going to strike its target, or what do you know you’ve got to put your resources toward?

European allies have great sources of intelligence; they have alternative sources of intelligence that can inform that picture. But Europe tends not to have the kind of high-end intelligence assets that provide a complete picture. So again, coming back to the perfect as the enemy of the good, if the United States were to not provide that intelligence, that would definitely be a disadvantage for Ukraine—but it wouldn’t completely leave them vulnerable, because they can put together information that can improve their ability to sustain and execute that layered air defense. But yes, it would be a disadvantage. And in some ways, producing Patriot interceptors is something that the United States needs to do so that we can get to a negotiation.

I mean, my argument to the Trump administration would be: if you want to get to that negotiation where Putin has to deal, brokered by Donald Trump, with Ukraine, you need to continue to provide that high-end air defense capability. And that includes not only those interceptors, but also that intelligence.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

As you look at the war over the next year and you’re allowing yourself to be optimistic, what’s a plausible good scenario for the Ukrainians?

CELESTE WALLANDER

A good scenario is they continue to build the largest and possibly the best equipped military in Europe—which we began to build for them as a result of Russia’s invasion in 2022—and they continue to enhance and deepen the resilience of their own defense and deterrence capability in order to move to something like a negotiation. During the Trump administration, they have put those negotiations front and center publicly. Recognizing there was going to have to be a negotiation was central to the Biden administration’s strategy as well. We just tended to not talk about it so publicly, because it unfortunately sends a signal to Putin that he has all the cards, and that if he just continues to fight, he can get better terms. That little secret is out there, and Putin already knows that the longer he fights, the more likely he may be to get better terms. But strategically, the Ukrainians need to find a way to turn that into an advantage for themselves. And the strategic advantage there is long-term building of a real European military, and the Europeans are actually committed to that, and they are now leading that effort.

So I think that’s the optimistic scenario—that it is something of a war of attrition. Ukraine is able to continue to manage the air defense mission in a way that sustains civilian life, but also military operations, and it creates time and space for Ukraine to build for that stronger European army that they’ve got.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

In your almost three years helping shape and drive and oversee U.S. support for Ukraine, after the war started in February 2022, you read lots of critiques of Biden administration policy, in Foreign Affairs and elsewhere. One of those was about not pushing hard enough for negotiations. Another was about supposed oversensitivity to escalation and Russian nuclear threats. As you read those critiques and reflect back, what do you think they get right, and what do you think they get totally wrong?

CELESTE WALLANDER

Well, I think the, “We didn’t push hard enough for negotiations,” didn’t understand exactly the dynamic I laid out. I think that what is not understood is that to use high-end capabilities, to learn how to use Patriots, to learn how to pilot F-16s—not just fly them, but actually fly them on combat missions, for example. Normally it takes a U.S. pilot three years from start to actually be trusted by the military to be sent out in missions. So the timelines in transforming a post-Soviet military, which is what the Ukrainians were in 2022—they’d moved somewhat away from their really problematic status that they were in 2014, but not that far along the line, they were mostly still equipped with Soviet equipment—to train them on American-provided or European-provided NATO standard equipment takes time.

And so I was berated by anxious and fearful Ukrainians, which was fair—they were right to be afraid that we weren’t sending F-16’s in 2022. If we tried to send F-16’s in 2022, we would’ve had to pull Ukrainian pilots off the line. They would’ve had to not be conducting their Big 29 and Sukhoi 25 missions that actually stopped the Russian Air Force from being able to support Russian ground forces in 2022. And so the Russian Air Force would’ve been able to actually perform its role in supporting Russian ground forces in a way that would’ve not allowed the Ukrainians to be as successful as they were in 2022. Remember those happy days when the Ukrainians were driving the Russians back? The Ukrainian Air Force was playing a significant role in that, and you would’ve taken those pilots off the lines and it would’ve taken a year—even on the compressed timelines—a year to a year and a half to train them to fly F-16’s.

And I could go through all the different capabilities. That’s the most dramatic case. But it was also true of Patriots. It took several months to train Patriot batteries, and once we realized that the Ukrainians were running out of S-300s and S-300 missiles, and we needed to think ahead, the Biden administration and Europeans decided to provide those Patriots. But you didn’t see that in the headlines because it took several months to be able to train them to be able to then operate those Patriots.

So I think the criticisms were fair, the urgency and the intent was appropriate, but there was a bit of magical thinking about how quickly you build a modern military that could fight a Russian military that’s been fighting like that for decades. And I think that the Ukrainians did an extraordinary job, and we’re seeing that all the time. And I’ll just note that in the past week, unfortunately, we had another case of the Ukrainian F-16 pilot who was lost, and it’s heartbreaking. But for the most part, the F-16 cohort that we trained and the F-16’s that we delivered in 2024 are doing their mission and are contributing to that air defense mission.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

In those happy days when the Ukrainians were driving Russians back successfully, especially in the fall of 2022, the other development that’s been publicly reported is the fears of Russian nuclear use that were taken quite seriously by senior members of the Biden administration. You’ve studied Russian nuclear doctrine and strategy for a long time. As you watched the reaction from Moscow, how did you understand it and did it change the way you think about Russian nuclear strategy and the way they think about their nuclear weapons?

CELESTE WALLANDER

You’re kind; I’ve studied Soviet and Russian military doctrine for 40 years. So yes, it’s been a long and winding road. For the Russian general staff, the core challenge in thinking about NATO and the United States, and their core assessment, is that in a long conventional war, the United States wins in Europe. The United States has the strategic reach, the logistics, the mass, and the sophistication of combined arms of ground, air, navy. And NATO wins a long war.

So the challenge for the Russian general staff is if President Putin tells them to invade NATO and seize territory and hold territory, they’re going to lose a long war. So if they see something in the near term, how do they coerce the United States into standing down? And one of the answers that they came up with in Russian military doctrine is limited use of nuclear weapons. That is the role of tactical, sub-strategic nuclear weapons. It’s also the role in some variations of some of the strategic nuclear weapons.

When it emerged that there were reports of concerns about Russian leadership considering nuclear use in the fall of 2022, a lot of focus was on nuclear signaling. And what people also need to understand is that it may not have been nuclear signaling. It may have been more about that context of using nuclear weapons to coerce the other side, in this case Ukraine, to stand down. This is a perennial reality of Russian nuclear doctrine. And I think that understanding that it’s not just signaling, it’s actually a role that in theory is a sign to nuclear forces in the Russian military doctrine, that is very important for thinking about NATO defense and deterrence, and the importance and the seriousness of the credibility of the American commitment to NATO.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Meaning, given those 40 years of study that you’ve done, it wouldn’t totally surprise you if the Russians, as shocking as it would of course be, used nuclear weapons in a situation like the one they were facing in the fall of 2022?

CELESTE WALLANDER

No, it would not surprise me.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

That is bracing, and I know you can’t say everything that you were experiencing in that moment. Is there anything else, just given your long study of these issues, that the war in Ukraine has changed about the way you think of them?

CELESTE WALLANDER

I find it extraordinary that the Ukrainian military has become so European in so short a time. And what I mean by that is the hardware, but it’s also the problem-solving creativity and determination. The Soviet military, which is the legacy of Ukraine’s military and Russia’s military, was not a very good learning and problem-solving organization. There were moments when it did it, like during World War II, under certain leaders like General Georgy Zhukov. But mostly, the Soviet military, and the Russian military, is a massive machine that does what it does well. And it can change and adapt, and it has, but not as quickly, and not as flexibly, and not as creatively, and in a way, not as, this isn’t a word, but as modernly, as the Ukrainian military showed itself able to do.

And I think while, from my point of view, we were focused on training them—helping them understand the American way of war, great American leaders doing everything in their power to help the Ukrainians think creatively about maneuver warfare, about the requirements of layered air defense, about all the great new tactics and aspects of modern warfare that European and American military leaders were able to convey—in many instances the Ukrainians were teaching our military how to be creative and thoughtful.

U.S. military experience with drones had been shaped more by Iraq and Afghanistan, and now the tactical battlefield use of drones is something that they’re learning from the Ukrainians. But that wouldn’t have happened without a change in culture in the Ukrainian military from the, “Well, I’m not going to do anything that might get me fired, so I’m just going to stick with what I was taught back in the military academy,” which is how the Russian military still tends to lead and command, to much more creativity at lower levels in the Ukrainian military.

And frankly, it’s one of the reasons why, when this is all over, I believe Ukraine will be ready, militarily, to become a member of NATO. Ukraine still has a way to go in meeting the standards of political institutions, anti-corruption, and ensuring all those elements of NATO membership. But one of the things I would tell my Ukrainian counterparts when they were frustrated that they weren’t getting the invitation to NATO is, “You know what? Our job in the Defense Department and in the military is to not be part of those political discussions. It’s to make the case and the reality that on the day that the political leaders are ready for that moment, for Ukraine to be invited to NATO, the military is ready on day one." And that’s what we focused on. And I think they’ve really gotten very close to that. And I am so excited to be able to one day, hopefully, stand there when the military can affirm that they meet all those NATO standards, and in fact, in many ways, they lead the way.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Let me close with a question on a different geography, given events we’ve seen over the last few weeks. For the last decade at least, Russia was one of the most important military players in the Middle East, given its intervention in Syria and relationship with Iran. You were still in the Pentagon when Bashar al-Assad fell in Syria, and Russia lost one of its key allies in the region. It was not a presence in the recent war between Israel and Iran and with the U.S. strikes on Iran. How do you expect Russia will react? Do you imagine it will try to get back in the region? Is it driven out for good? Do you expect it to be a player going forward?

CELESTE WALLANDER

I don’t think the Kremlin is going to give up on having influence. They haven’t been very visible in supporting Iran at this point. I’m not sure they have a lot of options to support Iran. But I expect very much that Iran and Russia will continue their defense technology cooperation and that Russia will be very active in Iran’s work to rebuild its defense production, whatever may have been damaged in the attacks, including its air defenses and its missile production. Russia has always been very ambivalent about Iran’s nuclear program.

Russia, for the most part, has been a strong supporter of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. I don’t think that is so much because the Kremlin is altruistic but more so because it doesn’t want other nuclear weapons powers that might be able to be impervious to threat. But they have impressed the Iranian leadership because they’ve invested in the Iranian leadership. So they were part of the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] negotiation; they are members in good standing of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. So I don’t think they’re going to be a partner in bringing pressure to bear, but I don’t expect that they would welcome Iran marching toward a nuclear weapons capability. But they definitely are invested in Iran’s conventional capabilities, including the production of drones from which it has benefited so much. So I think we should expect they’ll be back for that.

On Syria, I think the Trump administration made a very smart strategic move to lift sanctions and to try to work with the new leadership, appalling, though, the behavior of many of the leaders was in the past, because it is an opportunity to keep Russia out of Syria. And that is of value for Syrians, since Russian involvement in Syria didn’t really help the citizens of Syria. In addition to serving in the Biden administration, when I was in the Obama administration at the White House, I watched the scenes of how Russia helped the Assad regime destroy Aleppo and saw many scenes, it was heartbreaking, of children killed because of Russian air attacks in Aleppo and then enabling all of the Syrian attacks. So I think it’s good for Syria if Russia is out of Syria, but it’s definitely good for the United States because that platform on the Mediterranean really was a problem, and it was an asset for Russia’s reach into Africa, as well as into the Middle East.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Celeste, thank you so much for joining me today and for the great piece in our current issue, “Beware the Europe You Wish For.”

CELESTE WALLANDER

Thanks very much, Dan.