“War Itself” — Inside NATO’s New Stance On Russian Hybrid Attacks

-Analysis-

ROME — It was an interview with the head of the NATO Military Committee, Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, in The Financial Times, that signals a fundamental shift in European security.

In short, the Italian-born Admiral argues that the Alliance can no longer limit itself to responding to cyber and hybrid attacks, but must consider more effective options. This could even include preemptive action in sectors where an attack could paralyze entire states, effectively redefining the boundaries of defense.

It is not a change of tone, but of logic. What used to be seen as sub-threshold warfare has become Moscow’s operational strategy.

The interview, given in late October, appeared just as Russia was intensifying its cutting of cables in the Baltics, drone strikes on critical infrastructure, airport disruptions across Europe, cyber attacks, and the deployment of its ghost fleet in international waters. These are not isolated incidents. They form a low-cost, high-yield strategy aimed at Europe’s very metabolism, its energy, its data, and its infrastructure.

Cavo Dragone argues that this pressure is not only about Ukraine, but about Europe’s systemic vulnerability.

Three strategic orders

All of this is unfolding while the United States, Ukraine, and Russia enter a decisive phase in their negotiations. The interview therefore becomes, perhaps unintentionally, a signal to Moscow that Europe’s vulnerability is not up for negotiation; to Kyiv, that Western support is holding; and to Washington, that critical infrastructure is the real arena of competition.

Here the clash between three strategic orders comes into focus. The American order, increasingly centered on deal-making, tends to treat security as something negotiable, to be managed through exchanges and compromises. The European order, normative and defensive, still believes that stability derives from rules, predictability, and international law. The Russian order, revisionist and asymmetric, sees competition as a space of friction where hybrid warfare, sabotage, and psychological pressure are normal tools. The incompatibility of these orders forces stark choices.

Classic deterrence, based on red lines and shared rationality, no longer holds.

First: deterrence must be rethought. In hybrid warfare, retaliation comes after the damage has already been done. Classic deterrence, based on red lines and shared rationality, no longer holds. Russia strikes precisely where the Western response is legally uncertain, politically costly and militarily risky. Cavo Dragone highlights the gap between the European ethical and legal horizon and Russian ruthlessness, and argues that deterrence must become structural: constant surveillance of cables, networks and critical nodes so that any sabotage carries an immediate and visible cost.

Second: legality must be transformed into an instrument of force. Europe operates within legal and democratic constraints that Moscow does not acknowledge. This is a strength, but also a vulnerability. Europe must update maritime law, the responsibilities of flag vessels, the attribution of actions below thresholds, and red lines on critical infrastructure so that the law becomes a legitimate basis for action rather than a unilateral brake on it.

Wearing down from within

Third: the political governance of security must be rebuilt. Hybrid warfare is not aimed at occupying territory, but at undermining public trust, disrupting energy and services, and shaking institutional continuity. It is a conflict that wears down societies from within. The response must be integrated: a political center that brings together intelligence, cyber, defense, internal security, and private actors, turning vulnerabilities into organized resilience. Invisible warfare has become the standard form of global competition. Europe must decide whether to endure it or govern it.

Europe is built on law and transparency; Russia on their erosion.

Around this framework, growing strategic entropy is spreading across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific space. France is exploring new forms of leverage. Germany is preparing defense plans for a conventional attack, and below the radar, the debate over nuclear deterrence is intensifying.

An identity question

Across Europe and Asia, doubts about the American umbrella are growing, and the temptation to consider nuclear weapons as an independent guarantee is resurfacing, fueling uncertainty and instability in the international system.

The difficulty is not only technical, but also about identity. Europe is built on law and transparency; Russia on eroding both. NATO must defend its principles without allowing them to become vulnerabilities, finding a way to reconcile an American ally that negotiates according to logics of transaction with a Russian adversary that operates through destabilization.

This is why invisible war is not the prelude to war. It is war itself. A war fought not along borders, but along the infrastructure that keeps the continent running. Europe’s strategic survival will depend on its ability to arrive at the negotiating table as an actor that defends not only territory but systems, continuity, resilience and rights — and the ability to build a credible deterrent capable of navigating the gray zone without being overwhelmed.