Every past war was once a future war for which states prepared…or at least they should have prepared. Contemporary Europe is the first community of states that seems to have decided that not only can soft power replace hard power, but that Plato was wrong when he said that only the dead have seen the end of war. Here are ten lessons from future wars past that Europe’s leaders need to re-learn and how and why we need a European Way of War.
- Do not be complicit in war through wilful weakness (Si vis pacem, para bellum)
Leaders in liberal democracies have an unrivaled capacity to ignore danger that costs money. Too many European liberal democracies have become welfare addicts and too often have raided defense budgets to feed the addiction. China, Russia, even the US, have gone the other way and sacrificed welfare programs to fund massive armed forces, and in Moscow’s case a major European war. That war will one day end and if Europe’s liberal democracies continue to starve defense of resources not only will war come like a bolt from the blue, Europeans will be complicit due to wilful weakness.
- Do not start a war but if you have to, start the right one
War is the most unpredictable if human phenomenon. Moltke the Elder famously warned that all plans fail on contact with the enemy. Once wars start the enemy has a vote and they tend to go every which way except the way sought by those who started them. All the major wars of the past century and bit were started in the belief that they would be won quickly. The Kaiser expected a swift victory in World War One. Hitler did in World War Two. Putin did in Ukraine.
The reason is those who starts wars are either facing a desperate situation domestically or they have miscalculated the power of enemies by simply comparing their own strengths and weaknesses with others. If you have to start a war do it because, like Sparta, the longer it waited the more likely defeat at the hands of the Athenians.
- Soft power without hard power is no power
European leaders have become pathetically legalistic and now seem to believe that soft power is an alternative to hard power. It is not. Soft power without hard power is no power. As Thomas Hobbes wrote, “Covenants without the sword are but words and of little use to any man”. The European world-view has been forged by war and the building of institutions that prevent the extreme state behaviour that leads to them. However, that does not mean that Europeans can abandon the art of war.
- Have enough hard power to deter an adversary in his or her own mind
Europeans have also come to believe they need only recognise as much threat as finance ministries or the European Commission tells them they can afford. Peace does not work like that. Deterrence is messaging. Someone like Vladimir Putin needs to believe that any adversary has the military means to hurt Russia, the ways to employ those means and the will to use them.
Europeans seem rather to have retreated into the appeasement of reality. That will only end if there is a collective return to political realism in Europe.
- Do not become too dependent on one ally
History is full of consequences for those who become too reliant upon one ally for their security and defense. Europeans have become so reliant on the United States for their security and defence they are little more than a protectorate. The ironic paradox of what it an absurd state of affairs is that the richer Europeans became in the wake of World War Two the more dependent they became of the United States.
Dependency makes one vulnerable to the vicissitudes and prejudices of an over-mighty ally. The tragedy of Donald Trump is that Europeans should never have got themselves in a position where one man could at a stroke effectively leave Europeans defenseless.
- Have enough hard power to influence the choices of allies
The corollary of dependency on an ally is the need to have enough power in all forms – diplomatic, informational, military and economic (but mainly military) that they are sufficiently vital to enabling said ally to realise their own national security goals. There was a time when the United Kingdom could add such value to the US that its support was almost a vital American interest. That was the Special Relationship when it was actually special. Those days are long gone.
- Fight our own way
We Europeans may not fight the American way of war but then we should not be judged on it. We must develop a European Way of War. We must ask ourselves some more hard questions. What would a European 2030s future force look like? How would Europeans generate military effects across multi-domain warfare that requires a relative mass of manoeuvre forces? How would Europeans coerce an aggressor across the hybrid-cyber-hyperwar, nuclear spectrum? How would Europeans best exploit and apply emerging, destructive and disruptive AI-enabled technologies (EDDT)?
- Create a European Way of War
Europeans are simply not good at the American way of war. A European Way of War would thus be very different and demand the co-ordinated application of all instruments of power across the diplomatic, informational, military and economic domains in ways distinct from our American allies.
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The European Way of War would thus need to be close but distinct from the American way. To credibly deter a high-end aggressor acting across Europe’s broad spectrum of vulnerability a collection of relatively small and mid-sized countries would need to generate core resilience, planned redundancy, and a mass of force that can demonstrably maneuver at scale across air, sea, land, cyber, space, information and knowledge. Any such force would also need to make radical use of AI and robotics across both the strategic and tactical space to offset a relative paucity of personnel.
- Plan a European Way of War
A European Way of War would need five elements: a European Strategic Audit; a European Future Force Concept; the balance between Force Integration vs Command Collectivism – a Technology and Shadow Industry Plan and Affording and Costing Europe’s Future Defence.
- We need a European Strategic Audit now
What instruments of power would Europeans need to deter and if needs be fight if the Americans were busy elsewhere or simply no longer in Europe? What space exactly would Europeans need to defend? How would Europeans deter? What would a European concept of deterrence look like? How would a European escalation ladder be crafted across grey zone warfare to cyber warfare to high end conventional warfare and nuclear warfare? What would be the relationship between civilian and military instruments of power? How could a relatively small European forces generate the great effects needed? What would a high-end European First responder force look like? What would be a European Multi-Domain Operations look like? What minimum force would be credible in such a role? How would such a force be commanded and organised? How would such a European force be equipped and armed? What technologies will Europeans need? What reforms would be needed to the European Defence, Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB)? Given the growing importance of emerging, destructive and disruptive technologies in the Order of Battle what other parts of the European technological base would need to be engaged? What reforms would be needed to European defence supply chains to ensure secure supply and re-supply? How much would it all cost and when would such a defence need to be in place?
Small force, great effect
This is not the first time Western forces have faced the challenge of generating great strategic and political effect with relatively small forces. In 1941, Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the Western Way of War by putting steel before flesh to offset a relative lack of mass. Steel before flesh was a compromise between the American and British ways of war.
The Americans had to win two systemic wars simultaneously in both Europe and the Asia-Pacific, as they might do today. For the Americans. the policy of ‘Germany First’ was purely performative, given what the Japanese had done to the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. To run a genuinely world war the Americans forged a mass of everything, all the time, everywhere and very quickly. It was not always pretty, but it was effective. Whilst there were significant British forces in the ‘Far East’ London was overwhelmingly focused on winning the war in Europe, as Europeans would be today. With a relatively small population, albeit reinforced by dominion and imperial forces, the British were forced to innovate far more than the Americans. That is why steel before flesh became the Allied mantra and why it has evolved into technology before flesh as way to offset a lack of intrinsic military mass.
The real lesson of future war past
The real lesson of future war past is threefold: fight the next war not the last war better, exploit your strengths and prepare. The European Way of War must emphasise the real lessons of all future wars past in which the balance between strategy, innovation, technology and precision over ever greater distance with ever greater destructive power. After all, that is the lesson of Europe’s current future war from Ukraine.
A war in which the effects of a relatively small Ukrainian force have been magnified by the clever use of robotics to generate great effect. That must be the very essence of the European Way of War. During the next defence planning cycle (10-15 years) emerging, destructive and disruptive technologies (EDDT) will emerge first as systems on existing platforms, such as artillery, armor and ships, and then bespoke autonomous system-platforms.
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Thereafter, the impact of such new technologies on the character of war will be extensive and driven by those who have a concept for their use and access to them. Therefore, if a European Way of War is to be realized it will require not just radical new thinking, but radical new civil-military partnerships, a new approach to people protection and power projection, and a European security architecture across air, sea, land, cyber, space, information and knowledge that is very different to today.
Though much is taken…
The character of war changes, but not its nature. For all the promise of the robotic wizardry of future war the hard truth is that major war will always demand as its butcher’s bill the death of millions of innocents and the sacrifice of millions of others across the last hard yards of struggle. Vegetius was of another age when he wrote if you want peace prepare for war because in his day at a time when the Roman Empire was staggering war was endemic. Today, we are also staggering and autocrats know it. Now is their moment to make war once again the autocrats policy of opportunity because we have made it so with our wilful, self-obsessed weakness.
In the words of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are; we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield”.
The Italian version of this article is published in Aspenia 2-2026.