When America's top soldier in Europe chooses a venue to explain how NATO would win a war with Russia, the choice is itself a message. In mid-October General Alexus Grynkewich, the alliance's Supreme Allied Commander and head of American forces on the continent, told the Warsaw Security Forum that he was glad to be speaking in a city "where deterrence is taken seriously". The forum, now in its 13th year, had swapped last year's gloomy slogan, #DividedWeFall, for a sunnier #UnitedWeStand. The weeks since have shown how fragile that status might be.
The region should be an architect of European security, not its frontline
General Grynkewich's message came in three words: Block, Blunt, Break. NATO would block a land attack at the point of contact, blunt the attacker by hitting the forces that sustain it, and, if necessary, break its "operational system of warfare" – its logistics and command. He insisted that conflict was "neither imminent nor inevitable" and that NATO "doesn't seek war". Jacek Siewiera, a former head of Poland's National Security Bureau (BBN), the president's security staff, noted the hidden pun: three Bs, a nod to the three Baltic states. And commanders have recently been given pre-authorisation to activate forces without waiting for a phone call from the White House.
Others heard something less reassuring. The general said NATO was not seeking "strategic victory", which listeners took to mean no nuclear escalation even if Russia rattles its sabre. One Polish officer read it as Washington reserving nuclear signalling to itself and discouraging allies from doing their own.
Matthew Whitaker, America's ambassador to NATO, was more effusive. Poland, he said, is "a leader" among allies, spending “nearly 5% of GDP" on defence this year, after the alliance's pledge in The Hague in 2025. On a forum panel he called it the region's "workhorse" that "shows how it should be done". But he was candid about where Europe ranks in American priorities: fourth, after the homeland, the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific. "The US is not stepping back," he said; "we ask you to step forward." Two brigades are already leaving the continent.
The forum's annual report, drafted by the Casimir Pulaski Foundation with 27 European contributors, tried to turn this pressure into ambition. Titled "Securing Europe from the Eastern Flank to the High North", it proposes a strategy for a Nordic-Baltic-Polish group of nine countries: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland and Sweden. Together they hold NATO's longest stretch of border with Russia and Belarus, spend an average of 4.07% of GDP on defence and another 2.07% on aid to Ukraine. The region, the report argues, should be "one of the principal architects" of European security, not merely its frontline.
Its six goals range from a new European strategy towards Russia and anchoring Ukraine in the EU and NATO to protecting energy infrastructure and supplies of critical minerals. The more concrete ideas are striking: common red lines before any talks with Moscow, and a permanent seat for frontline states wherever Ukraine's fate is negotiated; control of the airspace over the Suwalki Gap, the narrow land corridor between Belarus and Russia's Kaliningrad exclave that links Poland to the Baltics; making Poland's membership of the British-led Joint Expeditionary Force operational; a "North-Eastern Seaguard" to protect undersea cables and police Russia's shadow fleet of sanctions-dodging tankers; and long-range conventional strike. Most daring is goal four, "Fill the Nuclear Gap": a fairer regional share in NATO's nuclear arrangements, plus demands that Russia withdraw its nuclear weapons from Belarus and demilitarise Kaliningrad.
Not everyone left Warsaw comforted. General Mieczyslaw Gocul, a former chief of Poland's general staff, agrees that a full-scale war is unlikely but complains about what General Grynkewich left unsaid. There were no red lines on hybrid warfare, he notes, though "in cyberspace we are at war", facing millions of attacks a year alongside sabotage, disinformation and migrants pushed across the border from Belarus. Dozens of drones have strayed into Polish airspace. Less than three months ago an armed Kh-101 cruise missile came down at Tarnawa-Kolonia, near Lublin and more than 100km from the eastern border; it was followed by arson at an arms plant in Skarzysko-Kamienna and, days ago, the arrest of a soldier suspected of spying. General Ireneusz Nowak, the operational commander, has said publicly that the incursions are "with high probability" intentional. "Next time," General Gocul predicts, "there will probably be a shoot-down, maybe of an aircraft."
"Hybrid war" is no longer the right word to describe Kremlin’s actions in the EU
The tally supports his worry. Krytyka Polityczna, a left-wing outlet, cites a count of 156 proven "kinetic incidents" across Europe since Russia's full invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – with Poland the most targeted country, ahead of France, Lithuania and Germany. The Polish list includes fires at two defence firms, WB Electronics and JFG Composites, a drone with a warhead washed up on a Baltic beach and stray drones hitting a train and a petrol station near the Ukrainian border. General Grynkewich himself told Der Spiegel that the attempted attack near Leipzig airport "crossed a line", and that Vladimir Putin resorts to sabotage "because he has no other options". Stanislaw Zaryn, a former deputy minister, has dusted off the "Gerasimov doctrine", which prescribes achieving political aims "with minimal military impact" through information pressure, "active support of the internal opposition" and sabotage. Some in Warsaw argue "hybrid war" is no longer the right word for this; "pre-war" is. The fear among analysts is not a Russian tank column but a slow erosion of political will – a population asked whether it would "die for Narva", an Estonian border town, and answering no.
Resilience is where the Nordics shame their heaviest partner. "Deterrence depends not only on weaponry," says Carl-Oskar Bohlin, Sweden's civil-defence minister. "It starts with a society that can show the adversary it is ready to defend itself for as long as necessary." Finland has shelter places for 4.9m of its 5.6m people; Sweden for some 7m of 11m. A 2023 inspection in Poland found proper shelters for just 300,000, plus non-hermetic "hideouts" for 1.13m; the rest of the country is told to head for the cellar or the car park. A 7,5 billion euros civil-protection programme for 2025-26 is a start, not a system.
Some Poles want to push the line outward. Wojciech Warski, an academic, revives a proposal by Pekka Toveri, a Finnish general, for a NATO counter-drone no-fly zone 100-150km deep over western Ukraine, flown from allied bases. It would need every European ally and an America that was at least neutral – a tall order. Meanwhile the practical agenda grinds on. A new permanent American base, probably in western Poland, could be ready two or three years after a deal, says Maciej Matysiak, a former deputy head of military counter-intelligence. "America plays for influence," he observes, "Poland for survival." Poland also wants a maintenance centre for Patriot missiles on its soil rather than in Germany, whose spending surge tempts Berlin – encouraged by Washington – to become Europe's leading military power. General Grynkewich called Germany "really the motor of NATO". Warsaw noticed.
Workhorse or a horse that bolts in two directions?
That is the backdrop to the most discordant voice of the month: Poland's own president. In an interview with the daily Rzeczpospolita, published as the forum met, Karol Nawrocki said he "resents politicians who scare people with war" and that "the level of threat has not changed significantly over the past six months". He accused prime minister Donald Tusk – his political rival – of a "distribution of fear" to rally voters. Tusk's warnings, he claimed, prompted allies to ask whether Poland "knows something more than us". He claimed credit for the American base and called himself "pro-Atlantic", Tusk "pro-German". In fairness, he added that "Russia is a threat" and that Poland "must be prepared for armed conflict"; charitably, he meant conventional war rather than arson and stray missiles.
Pair those words with the government's own budget and a pattern emerges: both sides of the cohabitation are signalling that Poland has done enough (which is not true). Next year's defence budget will be nominally half billion euros smaller than the 2025 spending plan; after inflation the real cut is considerably larger. Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, the deputy prime minister and defence minister, has announced a "small strategic defence review" – a polite name, critics say, for a hunt for savings. Radoslaw Sikorski, the foreign minister, told the forum that Poland is already "past the bend" and that by 2030 the armies of the eastern flank alone will be strong enough that Putin "would be a madman" to attack. The logic on both sides of the cohabitation is thus the same: public finances are in a "catastrophe", borrowing at near-5% of GDP for defence cannot go on indefinitely, and enough has been done to deter. A cut can be dressed up as prudence, or as proof that the threat is stable. But Poland's clout in Washington rests largely on its spending. Ambassador Whitaker's praise was explicitly tied to that 5%. The Nordic-Baltic agenda assumes Poland as its heaviest hitter. Its new seat in the E4 was earned the same way. And populist parties polling above 40% between them already tell voters this is "not our war".
Worse, the money debate obscures a gap no budget line fills. Poland still has no prepared answer to the next drone or missile – something that would make Moscow feel an attack does not pay. NATO struggles to respond to threats below the threshold of war, since any response needs the consent of every member. Whether the riposte should be a cyber-attack, more weapons for Ukraine to use inside Russia or something else, a serious state would have one ready. As one Warsaw commentator puts it: what if the next projectile lands on a kindergarten at teatime?
So what does it mean? Not that Poland has changed its mind about Russia. No Polish politician doubts the threat in private, and the president himself calls the army the country's "most important guarantee". The real damage is to the signal Poland sends. Its standing in Washington and among its Nordic and Baltic partners rests on two things: that it spends more than anyone else, and that it speaks with one voice about the danger on its border. In October it began to undermine both. The budget cut weakens the first; the president's quarrel with the prime minister over whether the threat is real weakens the second. Each may be defensible on its own. Together they invite allies to wonder whether Poland's alarm was ever quite as urgent as it claimed – which is exactly the doubt Russia's sabotage campaign is designed to sow. For a country that has just been praised as NATO's workhorse, that is a strange moment to look unsure of the direction it is pulling in.
