Europe has entered a more dangerous era of competition and confrontation. Unlike in 1989, the warning signs are visible. Speaking the Defence and Security Conference, Professor Katarzyna Zysk argued that the challenge is no longer to recognize the shift taking place, but to convert that recognition into capability fast enough to shape what comes next.
Many observers compare today's security situation to the years before the Second World War. Professor Zysk of the Norwegian Insitute for Defence Studies, sees a different historical parallel: 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell and Europe's security landscape was transformed almost overnight. For Zysk, the lesson is not only in the liberation that followed, but also how unprepared much of the world was for the speed of change.
“I remember watching the Berlin Wall come down on a black-and-white television in Poland, where I grew up” she told the audience. “We knew something enormous was happening. But very few understood how fast and how deep the system would change.”
“In June 1989, Poland held its first partially free elections in decades. Two years later, the Soviet Union was gone. Borders, alliances and political realities that had seemed rock solid came apart almost overnight,” Zysk said. “We woke up in a new world. We did not see it coming.”
Today, she argued, Europe stands at another historic turning point, with one crucial difference.
“Our advantage today,” she said, “is that the forces driving change are in plain sight.”
Professor Katarzyna Zysk opened the Defence and Security Conference with a keynote arguing that Europe faces a historic strategic shift and must rapidly convert political awareness into military capability, resilience and deterrence. Photo: Lars Bugge Aarset/Fremtidens Industri
According to Zysk, several major forces are reshaping the international security environment: the redistribution of economic, technological and military power towards Asia, above all China; a deepening, if still selective, cooperation among authoritarian states;, and Russia as a systemic and increasingly volatile threat to European security. She has also pointed at global military spending that rose for the eleventh consecutive year in 2025, and eroded nuclear order as there are no binding limits on American and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals, for the first time in more than half a century.
Of the three shifts, alignment among Russia, China, Iran and North Korea has moved fastest since 2022. It is not a formal alliance, Zysk stressed, but its cumulative effect is significant, and it converges in Ukraine: Iranian drone designs, North Korean troops and shells, and Chinese dual-use goods and sanctions evasion have all helped keep Moscow's war going.
For Europe, the stakes therefore reach well beyond Ukraine's sovereignty. Denying Russia victory, in Zysk's view, is essential both for Europe's long-term security and for checking the advance of authoritarian power.
Cutting across all three trends is a fourth shift, in the transatlantic relationship itself. The 2026 US National Defense Strategy reafirmed American focus on the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific, describes Russia as a persistent but manageable threat, and expects Europe to take primary responsibility for its own conventional defence. Zysk cautioned that this is a simple story of withdrawal: Washington has reaffirmed its commitment to Article 5 and to extended nuclear deterrence. But its mixed messages have led many European states to hedge by deepening bilateral and regional ties.
Photo: Lars Bugge Aarset/Fremtidens Industri
A central message throughout the keynote was that Russia's strategic objectives remain intact despite the enormous costs of the war.
Zysk pointed to President Vladimir Putin's repeated statements that “all of Ukraine is ours”, Russia's claims to great-power privileges and Moscow's broader ambition of securing a sphere of influence, weakening NATO and the EU, and decoupling European security from the United States. Ukraine is central to all of them
“Without Ukraine, Russia cannot be an empire,” she said.
She also highlighted Russia's ongoing military reforms, including a new command structure and plans for a standing force of over 1.5 million personnel. These developments, she argued, point in the same direction: preparations to long-term confrontation and a possible large-scale war. The new units are unlikely to be fully manned while the war absorbs personnel, Zysk acknowledged, but even a partially rebuilt Russian force would pose a serious threat to NATO.
The Northern Fleet illustrates the point. While the war has degraded it and forces into a more defensive posture, it nonetheless retains significant naval capabilities, long-range strike systems and dual-capable weapons, as well as asymmetric means aimed at critical infrastructure. It remains able to threaten targets in Europe, NATO naval forces and sea lines of communication.
Katarzyna Zysk Photo: Lars Bugge Aarset/Fremtidens Industri
Zysk warned against assuming that Russia's difficulties in Ukraine reduce the danger facing Europe. Today, she said, Russia would struggle to sustain a major conventional war against a united NATO.
“But the risk lies not only in what Russia can do,” she said. “It lies also in what Putin believes NATO's resolve and Russia's strength. He has misjudged both before.”
The scenario she outlined is a limited one: seizing a piece of ground in order to split the Alliance over whether to retake it, all under a nuclear umbrella. The head of Czech intelligence, she noted, has warned that this could happen within months, not years.
At the same time, Europe faces increasing pressure below the threshold of open war through cyberattacks, sabotage, intelligence operations and airspace incursions and attacks on critical infrastructure.
“This is a salami-slicing tactic,” Zysk said, characterizing it as aimed to condition the adversary to accept the last escalation as the new normal, then escalate again with successive provocations gradually become normalized.
The danger is a drift into an Article 5 crisis with no single event to trigger the response we expect.
Photo: Lars Bugge Aarset/Fremtidens Industri
Despite the bleak outlook, Zysk's message was ultimately about action. Europe, she argued, has largely made the intellectual transition and understood the nature of the challenge. The task now is to translate that understanding into capability.
“Money is not capability,” she said.
What matters is conversion: turning political intent into industrial capacity, combat power and resilient societies, faster than the threat evolves and at a scale large enough to change Russia's calculations.
She highlighted four priorities that should guide European defence efforts: speed, resilience, endurance and cohesion.
The war in Ukraine has demonstrated fast military innovation cycles that now take weeks, not years, and every acquisition decision in the region, Zysk urged, should be tested against that standard.
At the same time, resilience has become critical as modern conflict increasingly targets societies, infrastructure and civilian systems alongside military forces. Combat power cannot be sustained without resilience. National plans, she suggested, should face one question: what still works on day three of a coordinated attack?
Europe must also develop the endurance to sustain support for Ukraine and maintain defence investments over the long term. Putin still believes he can outlast both Ukraine's resistance and Europe's political cycles, and as Ukraine faces another winter of strikes on its energy infrastructure, Zysk warned.
She was also candid about the cost at home. Most Europeans support higher defence spending, but majorities in countries such as Germany, Italy and Spain oppose cutting other public spending to pay for it. That is where public consent will be tested.
“Putin is betting on exhaustion,” Zysk warned.
Finally, cohesion remains essential as the other three depend on it. Growing Nordic-Baltic cooperation, from integrated defence planning, military mobility, and closer industrial partnerships demonstrate real progress., Yet threat perceptions still differ across the Alliance, and NATO and Europe still lack a comprehensive Russia strategy, one that sets the terms of competition instead of reacting to Moscow's.
“Cohesion must be maintained, not assumed.”
Photo: Lars Bugge Aarset/Fremtidens Industri
Returning to her analogy to 1989, Zysk argued that Europe today has something it lacked then: advance warning. The challenge is no longer to recognize the change, but to respond to it quickly enough.
“Our geography leaves us very little time for delay,” she said.
Russia's war, she noted, was built on a misjudgement of Europe. If Europe gets conversion right, Putin will have misjudged it again, and will face a Europe renewed in its armed forces, its institutions, its societies and its democracy, “with a free and strong Ukraine at its heart.”
“In 1989, we understood the change only afterwards,” Zysk concluded. “This time we can see it coming. There is no excuse."
Katarzyna Zysk. Photo: Lars Bugge Aarset/Fremtidens Industri
Professor Katarzyna Zysk is Professor of International Relations and Contemporary History at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies (IFS), part of the Norwegian Defence University College, and one of Norway's foremost experts on Russian security and defence policy.
Her research and publications focus on Russian military strategy, nuclear deterrence, Arctic security, and the role of emerging technologies and AI in defence innovation. She has held senior leadership roles at IFS, been a visiting fellow at Stanford University, the University of Oxford, Sciences Po, and the US Naval War College, and regularly provides analysis and briefings to NATO, allied governments, parliaments, and defence institutions.