With Russia intensifying efforts to destabilize European nations that support Ukraine, NATO’s top military commander on Monday detailed a blueprint to deter Moscow in the event of outright war, a concept he summarized as “block, blunt and break.”
The commander, Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich of the U.S. Air Force, said the alliance does not view a military confrontation with Russia as “imminent or inevitable,” despite Russian sabotage, arson, cyberattacks and disinformation aimed at rattling European resolve and severing weapons supply lines to Ukraine.
But in that environment, the general said he had made a deliberate decision to publicly disclose the core of NATO’s classified war plan — known as its “theory of victory” — to bolster confidence across 32 allied countries.
“What I want to do is assure the one billion citizens of our alliance that we’ve got this,” General Grynkewich said on Monday at the Warsaw Security Forum. “We know what we need to do. We know how we would do it.”
Yet even as the American four-star commander stressed that NATO’s ultimate defense rests on unity, stark geopolitical contradictions echoed through the conference hall. President Trump’s decision to unilaterally ease sanctions on the Kremlin in order to purchase Russian diesel fuel highlighted a jarring disconnect between NATO’s military planning and European support for Ukraine, and the White House’s transactional diplomacy and hostility toward Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump appeared to blame Ukraine — not for the first time — for the war, and said it should “get a new president.”
By injecting hard cash directly into the Kremlin’s coffers, the administration risked undercutting years of allied economic pressure, muddying the Western coalition’s deterrence messaging and testing the very solidarity General Grynkewich was in Warsaw to project.
Even if the amounts of diesel purchases are small, the symbolism of division is large. Ukraine and Europe argue that only economic and military pressure will persuade President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to end the war he started. Mr. Trump and his envoys apparently favor enticing Mr. Putin with “deals,” instead.
The tension was evident earlier in the day when Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland warned that the defense of Ukraine and the security of NATO are inextricably tied.
“Anyone who, for any reason — treason, stupidity, or money — wants to weaken Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression is clearly acting against their own nation, the security of their own state, and its sovereignty,” Mr. Tusk said.
Pressed afterward on whether European allies could count on Washington to defend them, General Grynkewich dismissed suggestions that the United States would waver, citing the thousands of American forces along NATO’s eastern flank, including in Poland. He also pointed to recent summit communiqués that reaffirmed the bedrock collective-defense guarantee of Article 5.
European fears of an emboldened Russia have been increasing. Michal Koudelka, the director of the Czech Security Information Service, the country’s external spy service, warned his Parliament on Monday that Russia could escalate “in a matter of months rather than years to a significantly riskier and more serious operation,” which could include, down the road, limited military action against a NATO state.
General Grynkewich said the new NATO doctrine draws directly on modern battlefield lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East.
Specifically, he said, the blueprint pairs precision weapons with what he described as “affordable mass” — large numbers of autonomous systems, drones, and electronic warfare assets designed to sustain a protracted war of attrition.
The “block, blunt, and break” strategy he outlined is designed to stop an invasion in its tracks without trying to conquer the enemy’s homeland.
First, he said, allied forces immediately “block” an attack at the border to prevent enemy from seizing territory, a change in strategy since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Next, they “blunt” the offensive by hitting advancing troops from the air, sea, and land to strip their momentum. Finally, if the attack continues, they “break” the enemy by targeting the supplies, communication links, and command networks that keep their frontline forces fighting, weakening the aggressor to the point of collapse.
General Grynkewich stressed that NATO is not interested in taking an adversary’s land. By limiting the objective strictly to the tactical and operational neutralization of the adversary, NATO intends to deny the enemy any pretext for escalation, he said, placing the moral and strategic burden of expanding the war squarely on the aggressor.
“Implementing the theory of victory I’ve described today would require me to issue orders that I hope to never give,” he said. “But let there be no doubt, should war come, we will block, blunt any attack, and then if it does not cease, we will break the forces conducting aggression against us.”
Kremlin officials have routinely dismissed the alarms being raised across Europe.
“We have no intention to fight Europe, to engage in warfare with Europe; that is utter nonsense,” Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said during a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in September. “But Europe is preparing for war with us,” he said. “This could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Adam Goldman contributed reporting from London.
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