When a group of defense insiders gathered in Whitehall, the home of the British government, last month to discuss how prepared the United Kingdom and its allies were for a war they believe could come in the next few years, their verdict was pretty grim: They are not.

The people gathered at the conference, hosted by the London-based think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), were not warmongers; they were people in the know. Current and former members of the armed forces, government and NATO officials, researchers and defense industry professionals whose thinking is based on the widely accepted intelligence assessment that Russia is preparing for the possibility of a direct conflict with Europe.

The only way to prevent that from happening, they say, is to make sure that if a war were to break out, Europe would win.

More investment into chronically underfunded European defense is key, but security experts are increasingly warning that a big shift in mindset is needed across the board too. It is time, they say, for European governments to get their citizens on board and make it clear that the time when Europe was able to ignore the threat of war is over.

“I think that there is an indication that societies are willing to have this conversation, but I think that we are also seeing governments that are still not quite confident enough to have that conversation with their publics,” said Sam Greene, a professor of Russian politics at King’s College London and an expert in democratic resilience.

There is a growing consensus among experts that Russia is already waging a hybrid war on the West by conducting sabotage operations and injecting chaos and disinformation into domestic political discussions. They point to the overwhelming evidence, including repeated incursions into NATO airspace by Russian planes and drones and GPS jamming in the Baltics, to disinformation campaigns, and sabotage attacks against critical infrastructure in multiple countries that have been traced back to Russian secret services. Russia has consistently denied involvement.

Greene said that these attacks have already shifted the views of many in Europe, even if some politicians remain unwilling to name them outright as hybrid warfare.

“I think that people are spooked, particularly as this becomes more visible,” he said. “We see drones outside airports, and I think that there is a growing sense that it is probably (only) a matter of time before one of these drones brings down an airliner.”

The house of Alicja and Tomasz Wesolowski in Poland’s Wyryki-Wola was destroyed after Russian drones violated Polish airspace during an attack on Ukraine. Kacper Pempel/Reuters

Baltic fears

While Moscow has not carried out any direct attacks against NATO allies in Europe – experts say this is partly because Russia knows it couldn’t defeat the alliance with its current capabilities – there are increasing signs that this could change in the future.

NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte warned earlier this year that Russia could be ready to use military force against NATO within five years. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul echoed that warning in a speech last month, saying that German intelligence services believe that Moscow is “at least keeping open the option of war against NATO by 2029 at the latest.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in early December that while Russia is not planning to go to war with Europe, “if Europe suddenly wants to go to war with us and starts, we are ready right now.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a meeting of the Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) at the Senate Palace of the Kremlin in Moscow on December 8. Pavel Bednyakov/Reuters

The consensus among Baltic countries is that an attack against them could come as soon as in three years’ time. When researchers at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School looked into the warnings and predictions made by various officials about Russia’s readiness and willingness to launch a war against NATO, they found that the most often mentioned years are 2027 and 2028.

Recognition of this threat has led NATO to develop contingency plans for how to defend against a possible Russian aggression against the Baltics.

But experts warn the alliance’s plans don’t stack up.

“There’s a plan, with numbers. But the governments are not taking the necessary steps to implement it. We are still planning based on things that don’t exist,” said Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at RUSI. He highlighted the risk of trying to structure a defense response based on a wish list rather than reality, instead of accepting the resources that are available, and planning based on those.

The British government earlier this year asked three high-profile experts – former NATO chief George Robertson, Gen. Richard Barrons, former head of the Joint Forces Command, and Fiona Hill, a former senior director at the US National Security Council – to conduct a strategic review of UK defense. The trio presented it with a manual on the steps needed to be ready for war.

Speaking at the RUSI event last month, Barrons said that the UK must rethink the resilience of its infrastructure, build up its armed forces, reserves and civil defense, and invest in its health service, industry and the economy, to allow a quick pivot to a war footing.

“We frankly don’t need much more analysis to tell us what it is we need to do. The problem is that we need to actually do it,” he said. He points to “civil society and our politicians” having other concerns as the reason for the lack of haste.