“No one should mistake our defensive nature for weakness or lack of resolve. Through our collective strength, we aim to deter and keep the peace. But if someone is foolish enough to attack us, we will fight. We will stop the attack and deny them the ability to achieve their objectives, whatever those may be. We will, in short, ensure any attack, against any Ally, proves utterly futile”.
General Alexus Gregory Grynkewich
Forum follies?
October 16th, 2026. It was a very American speech. At the Warsaw Security Forum this week General Alexus Gregory Grynkewich, NATO’s US Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, addressed the assembled great and good with a Theory of Victory. For me, one of the unheralded awkward not-so-great and not-so-good, the speech was more a Theory of Wishful Thinking when it should have been a “A Theory of Why Big Wars Start”.
There is a marked gap between the ends the Good General described and the ways and means needed to make his ‘theory of victory’ reality. Now, to be fair to General Grynkewich, his speech was more than the usual American military ‘ra-ra’ guff. Given the place and the audience, it was the only speech such a public servant could make. His divided political masters would not allow him to make any other. A speech on Why Big Wars Start would simply be too embarrassing for his bosses.
A Theory of Why Big Wars Start
So, let me make that speech for him. Wars start not in Europe because an autocratic enemy is in a good place, but rather because said leader is in, or about to be in, a bad very place. In Europe, that is Putin’s Russia. Russia is going to pay a big price for its war on Ukraine whatever the outcome. The Reckoning is yet to come but come it will. For Putin the vital need is to put off that Reckoning for as long as possible, preferably beyond the moment he dies of natural causes of old age in his wonderfully appointed dacha.
Traditionally, once Russians start a war it tends never to end until either the Russians have destroyed themselves and their enemies. This is precisely because no Russian leader can ever face the Reckoning for their own actions. For that reason war becomes an end in and of itself because it is the only way for a Russian leader to ensure political and actual survival.
A Real Theory of Victory
A real Alliance “Theory of Victory” would first recognise such a reality and move to reinforce all-important political and strategic solidarity and consensus about what needs to be done. Second, it would ensure the provision and deployment of the forces and resources needed to properly maintain deterrence by denial. Third, any such theory would recognise that big wars start and start suddenly because desperate and increasingly irrational leaders make big miscalculations often misled by the apparent weakness of enemies in the hope of a quick victory. Today, NATO fulfils none of the above criteria which is why Grynkewich’s Theory of Victory is precisely that, a theory.
Take solidarity. The US Administration and the major European Powers, Britain, France and Germany, do not even recognise that Russia poses a threat to some Allies, and if they secretly do then they do not really care that much because Russia does not really pose a threat to them. Given the weakness of NATO’s forward deployed forces it would take relatively little Russian force to overcome them. This means the Alliance does not really have credible deterrence by denial for, say, the Baltic States, as General Grynkewich claimed. Rather, NATO is a bluff in a game of strategic poker ‘reinforced’ by vague promises to deter by rescue, maybe.
Mistrust between the Trump administration and most Europeans is now so dangerously deep that Putin could be forgiven for thinking he will never have a better opportunity to create a new virtual Iron Curtain from Kaliningrad in the north, to Trieste in the south. He is clearly testing such a strategy already by using all means of coercion to deter socially and systemically vulnerable Western European states and societies whilst forcing those east of that line to kowtow to Moscow.
As for forces and resources, Poland is indeed a good example of an Ally willing and able to increase its defence expenditure but they are too small with Warsaw the exception rather than the rule. My own country, Britain, is led by strategic Muppets who through their defence strategic illiteracy are effectively withdrawing failing British forces from the defence of Europe and retreating into their nuclear-armed island. For all the rhetoric, France and Germany are not much better, whilst the U. is about to unleash NATO 3.0 on its Allies. A bad plan at a bad moment that will have bad consequences.
Not only is NATO facing an irrational leader, it is also led by one. President Trump is inconsistent, capricious, and all too often unreliable. No alliance can stand up a credible deterrence and defence posture if its most powerful member and central pillar seems to have decided the problem is not the enemy, but the Allies.
A Theory of Reality
Finally, no Theory of Victory is worth the paper tiger it is written on unless it is grounded in a Theory of Reality. Grynkewich also said in his speech that, “…deterring conflict also requires warfighting readiness, and readiness requires to plan against what is possible, not just what is probable. As America’s first President, George Washington, stated, “The most effective way to preserve peace is to prepare for war.” Actually, General, it was Vegetius in De Re Militarii in the Third Century who wrote “si via pacem para bellum”. He went on, “One essential strength of our Alliance is decision advantage. We sense and see the environment through a sophisticated layering of intelligence provided by multi-source collection assets that deliver tremendous amounts of data. We use this data to develop crucial insights, using advanced algorithms to make sense of these inputs. The key output is a deep understanding of the strategic and operational environment”.
THAT, with respect, General, is your critical problem! How can a 32-nation Alliance led by wildly differing leaders and viewpoints have decision advantage? There is little point in seeing what is happening if your political masters cannot agree on what to do about it at the speed of relevance? The decisive point of engagement when information war, cyber war and crippling sabotage are applied by an enemy in a pre-war emergency is precisely the point at which most Allies will deny you the very means and ways you thought you had available to you!
What General Grynkewich really gave us in Warsaw was a twenty-first century version of the Maginot Line – an impressive facade with little behind it which could easily be bypassed. Only his political masters can provide the reality of victory but they show no signs of doing so. That is why for me Grynkewich’s speech read more like that of a small Dutch boy with his finger in a leaking dyke than a NATO commander confident in his ability to stop the enemy. What is needed is not so much yet another Theory of Victory but rather a Theory of the Unexpected and how to deal with it in all circumstances!
Julian Lindley-French