Security and defence expert Markus Iven rejects the possibility of guarantees for Ukraine that involve sending a force equivalent to the United Nations’ “blue helmets.”
Markus Iven is a strategic issues analyst at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS), a think tank in the Netherlands focused on international defence and security. Prior to this position, he worked at the German military delegation to NATO, after 14 years in the German armed forces, including tours of duty in theatres of operations such as Mali and Niger.
In an interview with José Pedro Frazão for Renascença, the German military strategy analyst says that Europe cannot repeat the mistakes of peacekeeping missions in the Balkans and advocates for a more robust reinforcement of the military presence of Portugal and other European countries in Eastern European countries that are part of NATO.
In the interview, given during a recent visit to Lisbon, Iven warns that Russia is trying to set a “trap” that Europeans should not fall into, by causing disruptions at airports and facilities in European Union countries.
In addition to addressing the Russian threat to Europe, it also discusses security guarantees for Ukraine and a new security architecture in Europe, including recruitment and armament needs for the armed forces of Western Europe.
“What would you say would be the biggest challenge for the European Security architecture other than the Russia threat?
The central question for European security is: who is defending it right now? The answer is Ukraine. This makes the war in Ukraine our central challenge. The less it features in our daily thinking and public debate, the more it will eventually return as a problem.
We already see this logic in Russia’s hybrid attacks against European critical infrastructure, whether undersea infrastructure or airspace intrusions by drones. Russia’s main goal is to divert our attention: the more we focus on these attacks at home, the less we think about supporting Ukraine. That is the trap Russia is setting for us. If we step into it, telling ourselves that we must now prioritize our own national security and that Ukraine must look after itself, then we are doing exactly what Russia wants us to do. That is the Russian rationale.
At the same time, Europe must build up its own forces, because Russia is increasing its ammunition stockpiles while still fighting a war in Ukraine. Much of the equipment they produce is not being deployed in the field. They are collecting and storing it, because the moment they see a vulnerability in European security or NATO defence, they will exploit it.
Looking at the broader picture, we must therefore think about the future European security architecture, because many of our old assumptions no longer hold. The biggest one concerns the transatlantic relationship. It is irrelevant for a Trump administration. At best it is transactional now. Moreover, we see larger shifts in the international order: Russia is no longer the main competitor or primary threat for the United States, as it was during the Cold War. With Russia’s GDP now roughly comparable to Italy or the Benelux states, it is simply not the same challenge anymore for Washington. The United States will be focused on the Pacific and China, and that is the decisive change for Europeans. We are much more on our own. That does not mean the Americans will not support us — probably they will — but not in the way we were used to during the Cold War.
This means we must invest in our own capabilities. It does not help to have soldiers stationed in Portugal, Germany, France, or Italy. We need forward deployment. We must send forces to our NATO allies in the East because they are the most threatened. The moment Russia knows that attacking Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltic states, or Poland means confronting everyone, deterrence is strong.
So we must rethink everything we did in the last 30 years. We should think a little as we did during the Cold War, when Germany was the frontline state and all of Western Europe deployed soldiers to West Germany. The same now has to happen with our eastern allies.
Does Europe need to format this new architecture just forgetting the attention American is devoting to Europe defence?
Eventually yes, and to that end we need to take the world as it is and not how we wish it to be. The biggest threat for the United States in the future is in Asia, not Europe anymore, and therefore Washington is understandably diverting its attention to the Pacific. From their perspective, that is entirely rational. For us Europeans, that means we must step up. At the same time, we should keep the transatlantic relationship as strong as possible, because no matter how much we invest in our own defence, we will not be able to replace what the United States provides today in the foreseeable future. They are the strongest military power in the world, and we need them on our side.
A clear example is what in military terms is called intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. These are the capabilities that gather the information we need on the battlefield to identify the right targets. Today, European states together have around 50 military satellites in orbit; the United States has around 250 — about five times more.
One could make the same comparison for cruise missiles, aircraft carriers, strategic airlift, and logistics — everything one needs against a peer adversary. So yes, Europe needs to be able to defend itself, but in the short and medium term we will not be able to do it entirely on our own.
And that is not even what the United States is asking. They want Europeans to take more responsibility for Europe so that America can take a step back to a supporting role. And the logic works both ways: if the United States is challenged in the Western Pacific or elsewhere, Europeans should also be able to support them in return.
So we are moving from the United States as a permanent “big brother” who is always there for us to a more equal partnership in which both sides need each other. That requires investment in defence — and it must come sooner than 2035, because the window of opportunity for Russia is not in the late 2030s but in the late 2020s, when it could potentially act against Europe.
This means European nations must act together, even though threat perceptions differ significantly between Western Europe and the East.
Because if even one European nation does not survive, the entire European project — the EU and NATO — would fall apart. And that is exactly what Russia is aiming for.
Can you explain how the collective defence of Europe could not pass by the article 5 of NATO?
Article 5 is one of the central pillars of NATO. That means an attack on one ally is an attack on all. “All for one and one for all” is the basis of NATO’s mutual defence. However, there is a common misinterpretation that Article 5 has to be “invoked” by all the heads of state and government in the North Atlantic Council. Legally, this is not the case. The mutual defence clause is an individual commitment of every nation to every other NATO ally. That is important to understand. Even if some nations were to abandon an attacked ally, all the others would still be obliged to provide support. So, especially if a major ally were missing, that would mean that the burden and risk fall on the others.
How does that align with the idea of a European pillar of NATO?
Right now, the United States is asking Europeans to provide more forces and capabilities for NATO defence plans. Europeans are starting to do that, but it is not happening fast enough. The American view is straightforward: they do not just want to share the burden for European security, they want to shift it. They argue that the main burden should be on the Europeans, because it is their continent — and from their perspective, that is understandable.
Europeanisation therefore means taking responsibility not in rhetoric but in hard military capability. That starts with ammunition. You do not need to be a military expert to understand that you always need stockpiles. Today, for some critical munitions, Europe has only enough for a few days of war — not even weeks. Yet politically this is difficult, because you do not see stockpiles. Societies only understand the value of ammunition at the moment they are attacked — when it is missing.
That is the reality of deterrence. You only feel that there is a war once you are already in it. And once you are in it, you fight with the forces you have, not with the forces you hope to have in 2035.
You talk about reinforcing the eastern flank of Europe. But on the Atlantic front – and this is the perspective from a Portuguese observer – decreasing the investment on Atlantic shores and on its cables and vessels, this could be viewed as less important, because it needs to deal with the eastern flank. How do you balance east and west in Europe from a NATO perspective?
NATO follows a 360-degree approach and looks in all directions. The main threat, however, now comes from Russia, because it is currently the only actor that poses an existential threat to the survival of a NATO ally. That is why the eastern flank must have priority. At the same time, the Arctic and the North Atlantic remain critical, because any major support from the United States to defend Europe must cross the Atlantic. So, this is not about choosing between East and West. It is about prioritizing where the threat is. Consequently, the Atlantic, just like the Mediterranean, is essential to deterring Russia and, if necessary, defending NATO allies.
We have hybrid attacks, and we have the drones disrupting European airports. Do you think Europe is coping well with this stress test?
We have seen an increase in what one could call hybrid attacks — or attacks below the threshold of major conflict — by Russia since 2022. We have seen undersea cables cut, intrusions into European airspace, and even explosive devices sent in parcels.
This is a deliberate trap the Russian Federation is setting for Europeans. The moment we divert our attention from Ukraine to these hybrid attacks, which affect us individually as nations, we will reduce the resources and focus we provide to Ukraine. It is already happening and is exactly what Russia intends.
Russia sees our weakness in the fact that we are individual nation-states. With relatively cheap hybrid attacks against different European countries, the Russians can force us into very costly defensive measures and resilience efforts. The problem is: a perfect defence against hybrid attacks is not possible. Hybrid attacks by their nature are asymmetric: they constantly find new weak points.
So we must be very careful not to step into this trap. It may feel natural to focus first on our own national defence rather than on Ukraine, but that is exactly what we should avoid unless we want to play exactly by Russia’s script.
Where is the connection between security guarantees for Ukraine and the new European defence architecture?
The idea of security guarantees for Ukraine goes back to the Budapest Memorandum, where Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons and was promised that the great powers would not violate its sovereignty. Those commitments were broken by the Russian Federation. That is why Ukraine is pushing so strongly for real security guarantees, now that NATO membership has — for now — become more unrealistic.
So we Europeans need to offer something else that will help Ukraine if Russia restarts the war in the future. From a Russian perspective, it would be in Moscow’s interest to settle the war now if the terms are unfavourable for Ukraine. If Ukraine has to give away critical territory, limit its armed forces, and is prevented from joining NATO, then Russia can play the long game. It can lock Ukraine into a pseudo-frozen conflict that it can escalate at will. Over time, the problem then solves itself for Russia: Ukrainians will leave a state that cannot survive economically and militarily in the long term, and Russia can eventually take over what is left — whether in a few years or decades.
Any lasting peace — or anything that could genuinely be called peace, without future Russian coercion or attacks — therefore requires real security guarantees. These cannot be a UN “blue helmet” peace mission. We would need tens of thousands of soldiers from European nations, trained and equipped to deter a heavily armed and hostile Russia. We should not repeat the mistakes we made with lightly armed peacekeeping forces in the Balkans.
And for a long time?
When we look at the Russian Federation, it is very likely that neither the Russian society nor the political regime is going to integrate itself peacefully into a European security architecture anytime soon. So, whether we like it or not, we must understand that deterrence and, if necessary, defence against the Russian Federation is something we will have to sustain not just for the next few years, but probably for decades.
Of course, we can hope that in the very long term — after peace in Ukraine and after the Putin regime — relations could normalise again and Russia might return to a common European security architecture…
That means that you have the front line in Ukraine with boots on European boots on the ground. It’s so different from the situation we have now, where the line stops at the Poland border.
When we think about future European and Ukrainian security, there are several options. We can either supply Ukraine with significant financial and military support so that it builds armed forces capable of defending itself against Russia in the long term, or we deploy our own forces there. The best solution would probably be a mix of both, because that would provide the greatest security. Russia, however, wants a weak Ukraine that it can threaten, control, or destroy at will in the future. This is visible in the original 28-point Witkoff–Dmitriev peace plan, which proposed limiting Ukrainian forces to 600,000 and forbidding Europeans from being present on Ukrainian soil. It is a grotesque idea: the victim, not the aggressor, is forced to limit its forces.
Of course, any negotiation must consider the Russian perspective to make long-term arrangements acceptable to them. But trust has been broken repeatedly — by the Russian Federation against Europe. We should remember that shortly before the 2022 attack on Ukraine, Putin explicitly claimed that Russia would not attack and that Europeans were overreacting. Those statements turned out to be lies. So, we should be very careful about trusting anything that is said and must always back up any agreement with our own security measures.
There is a challenge for the public opinion. Thinking about the recruitment debate in Germany, you have to increase the pace of recruitment much faster than the time frame now projected in Germany to fulfil all the needs, objectives and goals that are on the strategy of reinforcing the military side of Germany?
Russia has a population around 140 millions. Every year over the past decade, at least around 250,000 men have been conscripted. Unlike many European states, Russia never abolished conscription. If Russia were to mobilise fully — and it has not even done so during this war — we would face an enormous number of Russian soldiers.
They would be able to threaten the small and medium-sized powers in Eastern Europe, and for many of these nations it is impossible to defend themselves alone. That means we would have to send a large number of forces even in an escalated situation short of open war. The best defence in this case is to have the capabilities to do this in advance, because then war does not start in the first place: you deter it.
If Russia understands that we would have a very large force and real capabilities available when needed, then we can deter a war from the very beginning. In my opinion, this means we will need conscription again. Germany is already taking steps in that direction. The German armed forces are planned to grow from around 183,000 today to around 260,000 active soldiers, plus around 200,000 reservists. To achieve this, all young people now receive a questionnaire asking whether they want to serve voluntarily, and the armed forces define how many personnel they need each year. If there are not enough volunteers, Germany will potentially move towards full conscription.
From an expert perspective, I think we should already go there now. The longer we wait, the stronger the signal to Russia that we are not serious about our defence, and the greater the risk that we realise later that we have wasted precious time. We should move towards general conscription as quickly as possible. That way, you train large numbers of soldiers without permanently taking them out of the labour market, while building the ability to scale up the armed forces quickly if needed. That is the key to deterrence.
If we look at the Ukrainian army, most of the forces now in combat are no longer those who were there at the start of the invasion in 2022. Generally, the professional soldiers from the time of the invasion have been killed, wounded, or promoted by now. Most of the army today consists of reservists and newly mobilized soldiers.
That means modern war can live without soldiers, even with increased technology, when you need just people to operate drones and no needs of further investment in boots on the ground?
In the last decades — and arguably throughout human history — politicians and societies have hoped for a “clean” war: few casualties, short duration, and guaranteed victory. But that is a bias, and we should be careful with our own biases. Technology keeps advancing, as it always has, but we are still not heading towards a war of robots fighting robots. And even if that were the case, war would still remain a human affair. In essence, war is a struggle of human will.
The only real “clean” war is the one that never starts. Therefore, credible deterrence is the cleanest form of military operations: it prevents war from beginning at all.”
Source: José Pedro Frazão, Renascença, December 29, 2025
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