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Will NATO attack targets inside Russia? The evolution of the doctrine
A few days ago, news of a new NATO land warfare concept circulated in the media. It is worth examining, although some of its assumptions have been known for some time.
In the “NATO Land Warfighting Concept” document, the idea of forward defence of the eastern flank appears. We spoke with Artur Kacprzyk, an expert from the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM), about whether the plan revealed by the German newspaper Bild is a novelty compared to previous documents of this type.
Old plan – a new form of communication?
According to the expert, the text in question should be viewed as a summary of many years of NATO actions and is not particularly new. What is new, however, is the method of communication, as this time the North Atlantic Alliance decided to present its concepts to a wider audience through the media. “Lately, we have seen various statements and reports regarding the growing fears of NATO states that Russia might test their solidarity through some form of provocation or a limited attack. Publicising the Alliance’s preparations for a potential defence against Russia is intended to help deter it and reassure the societies of NATO itself,” the PISM analyst stated.
Forward defence of NATO's eastern flank
As Artur Kacprzyk points out, the concept of forward defence of NATO’s eastern flank has its roots in documents adopted in 2019-2020 – the NATO Military Strategy and the Concept for the Deterrence and Defence of the Euro-Atlantic Area (DDA). The documents are classified in their entirety, but the main tenets of the concept are publicly known. The most important of these is to prevent Russia from seizing any part of the territory belonging to the North Atlantic Alliance member states. This is a significant shift in thinking that only occurred after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“Only then did the civilian authorities of NATO countries become inclined to actually build forward defence capabilities. This was publicly indicated by, among others, the previous SACEUR Gen. Cavoli and the Chair of the Alliance’s Military Committee, Adm. Bauer. It was then that the need to defend “every inch” of NATO began to be widely discussed; the Alliance adopted more detailed defence plans, and member states committed to providing significantly larger high-readiness forces. Furthermore, there was a further increase in the presence of allied troops on the eastern flank,” the expert recalled.
The year 2022 was also a breakthrough for another reason – it was then that NATO broke a political taboo regarding counter-strikes on Russian territory using conventional means. “The German Bild writes that, according to NATO plans, such counter-attacks would be aimed at Russian troops and their logistical support. Again, military officials in the Alliance had thought about this before, but many politicians considered these concepts so controversial that they did not want to hear about them. It is still a sensitive topic, but not as it once was (…)” – he continues, recalling, among other things, a statement by Adm. Rob Bauer from two years ago, when the Chair of the NATO Military Committee stated that in the event of war, the Alliance would have no problem deciding to strike the Russian missile launchers threatening it.
What about drones?
The PISM expert also commented on the ideas presented in the Bild article indicating a desire for the mass use of unmanned aerial vehicles and the creation of an autonomous zone on NATO’s border with Russia and Belarus.
“The border “autonomous defence” zone using tactical drones mentioned in the article is nothing other than the EFDL, or the so-called deterrence line on the eastern flank, which has been under construction since 2025,” Kacprzyk stated, adding that in recent months we have also seen growing interest in long-range strike drones, both at the level of member states and NATO structures.
“The current SACEUR, Gen. Grynkewich, recently suggested that such capabilities could fill some of the gaps in the missile capabilities of the European part of the Alliance,” he added, and finally touched upon the topic of the potential use of NATO special forces on the territory of the Russian Federation.
“If the Alliance is indeed now allowing for such a possibility, even at the level of military planning, it represents the breaking of further “taboos” in NATO’s recent history and its approach to defence against Russia,” the expert concluded.
