Why IWI Project Europe?

To deter and defend against irregular threats.

Editor’s note: This article is part of Project Europe which focuses on European and European-adjacent security issues to deter and defend against irregular threats, develop IW knowledge, and advance the American understanding of allied, partner, and competitor practices of IW. We invite you to contribute to the discussion, explore the complex IW environment, and help.

Since its establishment in 2020, the mission of the Irregular Warfare Initiative (IWI) has been to bridge the gap between scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to support the Irregular Warfare (IW) community and cultivate IW competencies. Within this broader mission, Project Europe focuses on European and European-adjacent security issues to deter and defend against irregular threats, develop IW knowledge, and advance the American understanding of allied, partner, and competitor practices of IW.

The 2022 National Security Strategy designated mutually beneficial alliances as its center of gravity.  For the United States and the joint force, European allies and partners are a fulcrum of global security.  Shared values, interests, and history make European nations foundational and necessary to achieving America’s strategic goal of perpetuating a free, open, secure, and prosperous world.  Europe sits at the crossroads of the U.S. National Security Strategy and a well-spring of untapped IW wisdom.

Why is Europe Important to US National Security and What IW Wisdom Can Europe Offer?

Global Diplomacy and Might: Together, Europe and the U.S. wield substantial diplomatic influence on the global stage. By aligning their policies and actions, they can more effectively address international challenges. The European continent consists of 52 countries, 44 of which are member states in the United Nations, representing 23% of the world’s voices.  Europe’s United Kingdom, France, and Russia also represent 3 of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council – each with nuclear capabilities and veto power.

Geographic and Economic Endowment: The European continent represents a total land area of four million square miles (ten million km²).  While only 6.6% of the Earth’s habitable surface, the continent boasts coastlines with a combined length of 112,483 km (69,909 miles) including the great power competition theaters of the Arctic, Baltic Sea, and Black Sea. 733 million people live in Europe. These 9.3% of the world’s population punch above their economic weight and account for almost 25% of global economic output.  American and European economic prosperity remain inextricably linked and a driver of the transatlantic relationship. Trade in services and goods between the European Union (EU) and the U.S. are matched by their mutual investments; the biggest in the world.

Innovation and Technological Leadership: American and European nations are leaders in innovation and technology. Collaboration in research and development and setting global standards ensures that advancements benefit the world and are used responsibly. Through innovative partnerships, European countries can wean themselves off the Russian petroleum glut and onto more sustainable energy sources.  In the first six months of 2024, over 50% of Europe’s power generation came from renewable sources, almost half of which was from nuclear energy. With 18 commercial nuclear power plants and 56 reactors, France delivers 70% of its energy needs via nuclear power and is the world’s largest net exporter of electricity. Continuing this trajectory could yield significant benefits for the U.S. and Europe.

Complexity breeds Irregular Conflict: Europe is not synonymous with the EU, nor is it one homogenous area with a monolithic cultural, religious, ethnic, or socio-economic makeup.  Non-Europeans are often tempted to reduce Europe to NATO militarily and the EU economically or politically, forgetting that almost half of the continent’s inhabitants live outside of EU borders. Major geopolitical players such as the Russian Federation and Turkey are European states.  While Turkey has been a NATO ally since the 1950s, neither are EU members.  Additionally, the US’s closest ally, the United Kingdom, left the EU in 2020, thus complicating the political and economic landscape in Europe. Such complexity inspires the directions of Project Europe to better understand the European IW space as it is, explained from all perspectives, not just the most powerful voices or clinical analysts, but also through the eyes of battle-tested practitioners from all corners of the Euro-Atlantic area and beyond.

American Irregular Warfare Deficit:  IW remains an elusive concept across the US government and among US allies and partners. Project Europe will not redefine or change it.  IW encompasses a wide spectrum of operational and tactical maneuvers, but it also occurs at the strategic level and transcends all domains: land, sea, air, space, cyber, and, of course, the human domain. Project Europe seeks to be a platform for IW-minded people from both sides of the Atlantic to collaborate on the multi-faceted and mercurial character of IW.  Many believe the US lacks the concepts and associated doctrine for its irregular warfare capabilities to achieve their potential in strategic competition. Instead of limiting the conversation on IW, Project Europe will focus on bridging the gap in mutual knowledge within allied and partner IW-relevant communities. Through building transatlantic connections, we thicken our understanding of IW concepts, synthesize novel approaches to complex challenges, and better deter, defend, and fortify against IW threats.

Eclectic IW Enrichment: Because Europe is not a monolith, the US must hear multiple voices from the European continent to incorporate and conglomerate perspectives. Because the US cannot be easily mimicked due to size and scale, Europeans must incrementally-graft concepts and collaborate to ensure successful application. Deep and meaningful transatlantic IW understanding goes beyond just reading doctrine and country specific materials. It requires exploration of European institutions, value systems, judicial systems and governance practices. It requires appreciation for the conditions which led to certain decisions by state and non-state actors, empathizing with local sentiments and cultures, and of course taking the perspective of adversaries as much as allies and partners.

Project Europe is Built with Three Directions in Mind

• Contextualize: By understanding IW concepts, capabilities, and competencies in their context, like-minded trans-Atlantic nations strengthen their collective deterrence, shore up their vulnerabilities, and bolster their resilience to irregular threats.
• Operationalize: Through the operationalization of IW concepts, Project Europe will uncover historical examples of IW approaches and reveal potential contemporary applications of IW concepts on the modern or future battlefield.
• Explore: Exploration of IW seeks to extrapolate the impact of new technologies, reveal special operations insights, and uncover intelligence applications and implications for decision-makers and warfighters in the IW enterprise.

Post-Soviet Europe Remains Peppered with IW Lessons

Since the Cold War’s end, hotter wars have repeatedly returned to Europe. In March 1992, Russia attacked eastern districts of the Republic of Moldova. The war in Transnistria was a military conflict that, despite all the human sacrifices and political efforts since then, ended terribly for the Moldovans. Since then, Moscow continued to exert military, geopolitical, and economic pressure in Europe’s east. In 2008, Russia annexed Abkhazia and South Ossetia In response to Western efforts to integrate Georgia into Euro-Atlantic institutions. President Putin went further to annex Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Non-attributable actions by Russia have included the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in England in 2018, and the attack on a political opponent of the regime, Alexi Navalny, in 2020 with a nerve agent.  The next step in escalating the conflict was marked by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 where Russia used a mixture of conventional military forces, cyberattacks, information operations, and semi-autonomous paramilitary corporations to annex additional territory. 

The Soviet campaign of political warfare dubbed “active measures” used to manipulate media, sway public opinion, and intimidate or influence the West found new life in Putin’s Russia.  All these actions contributed to the retardation of democracy in Europe, perpetuated corruption, and led to a rise in populism. In addition to these conflicts, Russia continues to maneuver in the human domain to leverage spy networks and agents of influence toward reacquiring the lost colonies of the Soviet Union – some now under the protection of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). There is much to learn about IW from Russia and much work to do in defense of American and European mutual interests.

Study and Engage with IWI Project Europe!

The U.S. National Defense Strategy makes it clear that the US relies on integrated deterrence to effectively compete and perpetuate the rules-based international order the world has enjoyed since the Second World War. Integrated deterrence seeks to integrate all tools of national power across domains, geography, and spectrum of conflict while working with allies and partners. Project Europe is looking for contributions to the discussions about IW resources and tools of Euro-Atlantic power and influence, and how to build the strongest possible coalition of nations to enhance our collective security, shape the global strategic environment, and solve shared challenges.

NATO, the anchor of European security architecture, is perceived by Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea as a puppet of American power. Unfortunately, several European allied countries have a significant portion of their population who agree.  In the wider geopolitical context where the Russian Federation clearly designated the US and NATO as a direct threat to its security, we must deconstruct and discuss these narratives. The “not one inch eastward”  alleged promise (not formal political agreement), serves as the central pretext in Russian discourse for a full-scale conventional war against Ukraine. Without introspection of narratives, there is a fertile ground for revisionist powers to succeed through information warfare, exploit systemic weaknesses, promote insecurity and instability, construct new battles spaces, and asymmetrically erode US and European advantages.  Project Europe provides a way to fight back.

IWI Project Europe will build on the success of the Irregular Warfare Initiative and expand our community to include more voices from our European allies and partners, as well as subject matter experts from beyond the transatlantic family. Together we will collaborate across the IW enterprise, achieve deep knowledge of IW in Europe, and ensure IW dominance to prevent major war, mitigate the negative impact of existing conflict, and swiftly return to peace on favorable terms if deterrence fails.

Follow Project Europe here and contribute to the discussion by submitting an article. 

Dr. Olga R. Chiriac is the Project Europe Director at the Irregular Warfare Initiative, a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work of the University of Bucharest, and a Fellow at the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest, where she co-directs the Black Sea Program. She is a 2022 US State Department Title VIII Black Sea Fellow. Her book “Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation: Implications for Black Sea Security” was published by Palgrave Macmillan in February 2024.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.

Main Image: Flags of member countries at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, July 7, 2016 (US Department of State, Flickr)

If you value reading the Irregular Warfare Initiative, please consider supporting our work. And for the best gear, check out the IWI store for mugs, coasters, apparel, and other items.