RUS0010
Written evidence submitted by Council on Geostrategy
The Council on Geostrategy is an independent non-profit organisation situated in Westminster. Through its ‘politely disruptive’ approach, it focuses on shaping British strategic ambition in an international environment increasingly defined by geopolitical competition and the environmental crisis, so that the United Kingdom (UK) is best able to succeed and prosper in the 21st century.
James Rogers is Co-President (Research) at the Council on Geostrategy. He has written extensively on Russia’s strategy towards the Euro-Atlantic area, with a particular focus on the Baltic region and Ukraine.[1] He spent several years in Estonia at the Baltic Defence College, including as Acting Dean. He has also worked with RAND Europe and held fellowships at the European Union Institute for Security Studies.
What are the strengths of the UK’s overarching deterrence posture, including specifically its ability to impose costs on Russia?
1. Since the Kremlin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, His Majesty’s (HM) Government has demonstrated growing strategic clarity in deterring Russian aggression. This posture relies on an integrated three-track approach:
a. Deterrence through resilience: Hardening the UK domestic architecture to resist Russian sub-threshold (or grey zone) operations;
b. Deterrence by denial: Strengthening the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) eastern front and expanding its northern flank to block conventional Russian military options;
c. Deterrence by punishment: Punishing Russian revisionism in Ukraine through frontline military denial and global economic penalties. Britain also reserves the right to inflict overwhelming punishment on Russia in the event that it uses nuclear weapons against its fundamental interests, e.g., attacking the British homeland or a NATO ally.
2. Key strengths and pillars of Britain’s posture:
a. National resilience (sub-threshold defence): HM Government has systematically closed structural vulnerabilities that the Kremlin historically exploited for political gain:
i. Legal protections: Implementing the National Security Act and the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, formally categorising Russia as a high-tier hostile state actor;
ii. Economic decoupling: Eliminating national exposure to Russian hydrocarbons, neutralising Moscow’s primary energy-leverage weapon.
b. Reinforcing NATO (strategic and conventional deterrence): The UK has acted as a primary security anchor for northern and eastern Europe by:
i. Strategic renewal: Renewing the continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent and expanding the ceiling of the UK’s stockpile of nuclear warheads;
ii. Broadening nuclear options: Investing in 12 F-35A Lighting II Joint Combat Aircraft to be able to deliver American B61 nuclear gravity bombs;
iii. Forward presence: Contributing disproportionately as the framework nation for NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence (EFP) in Estonia, supporting the United States (US) position as framework nation for the EFP in Poland, assisting the Polish government when confronted by Belarus’ sub-threshold attacks, establishing a persistent Arctic footprint in Norway, and renewing the British maritime presence in the North Atlantic;
iv. Diplomatic enabler: Providing immediate bilateral security assurances to Finland and Sweden during their accession to NATO, effectively collapsing Russia’s strategic depth in the Baltic Sea.
3. Denial and punishment in Ukraine: The UK’s unique strength has been its role as a strategic catalyst – acting as a high-risk first-mover to break European policy inertia:
a. Normative enforcement: Challenging illegal Russian maritime claims around occupied Crimea via the freedom of navigation transit of HMS Defender in 2021;
b. Information warfare: Jointly declassifying and weaponising pre-war intelligence with the US to strip the Kremlin of a false-flag pretext for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and warning European allies of unwarranted dependency on Russian hydrocarbons;
c. Material and financial punishment: Breaking international taboos by providing lethal aid (NLAWs, Challenger II tanks, long-range missiles like Storm Shadow), acting as a European logistics hub, and engineering sweeping sanction regimes against Russian financial institutions and elites.
Strategic assessment: An entwined, bi-focal outcome These three dimensions are deeply interdependent. By catalysing the degradation of Russia’s conventional forces in Ukraine, the UK directly reduces the immediate military threat posed to the NATO alliance. Simultaneously, domestic hardening reduces the Kremlin’s capacity to retaliate via sub-threshold subversion within the UK. Ultimately, HM Government’s posture yields a mixed but distinct result: ● An allied success: Intra-alliance deterrence has held. Russia has not attacked a NATO ally, recognising the severe conventional and nuclear thresholds it would trigger, backed by British and American nuclear might. ● A failure of external deterrence: Pre-war policies failed to deter the initial 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and subsequent cost-imposition measures – while severe – have failed to punish the Kremlin to the extent of forcing a military withdrawal. The UK’s strength has lain in its ability to sustain and scale costs, rather than achieving immediate behavioural modification. |
What are the weaknesses in the UK’s ability to deter aggressive Russian activity, with a particular emphasis on deterrence through punishment? What should the UK do to address these?
1. The primary weakness in HM Government’s ability to deter Russian aggression through punishment is not a lack of potential leverage (though enhanced defence spending would undoubtedly strengthen Britain’s hand), but a persistent disconnect between bold strategic rhetoric and a hesitant execution of will. This manifested in two distinct operational failures: the pre-invasion timidity of 2021, and the subsequent failure to follow through fully on cost-imposition once conflict began:
a. Pre-invasion timidity (2021):
i. In the critical months leading up to Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the UK’s deterrence posture suffered from a profound conceptual flaw. HM Government mistakenly treated intelligence declassification (‘pre-bunking’) and rhetorical warnings as a substitute for hard, pre-emptive cost-imposition. Still constrained by a pervasive fear of ‘provoking’ the Kremlin, the UK and its allies refused to deploy a forward-leaning, pain-inducing posture while Russia was massing its forces;
ii. Lethal aid, while forward leaning in relation to European allies, remained strictly defensive and low-scale, and the financial architectures of ‘Londongrad’ were left largely untouched. By signaling that British punishment would only ever be reactive and conditional on an open invasion, the UK inadvertently confirmed to the Kremlin that the upfront geopolitical costs of its planning phase would remain entirely manageable.
b. Post-invasion escalatory inertia and insufficient follow-through:
i. Once the invasion occurred, the initial burst of British leadership gradually devolved into a pattern of managed escalation and self-imposed constraints, fundamentally undermining the credibility of deterrence through punishment. This lack of follow-through is visible across two primary vectors:
1. Kinetic sanctuary: By maintaining strict, self-imposed geographic and operational boundaries on how Ukraine could utilise British-supplied long-range strategic assets (such as Storm Shadow cruise missiles), the UK effectively granted Russia a cross-border sanctuary. This signaled to the Kremlin that its domestic military-industrial complex would be shielded from direct, high-consequence British punishment;
2. Financial bureaucracy: On the economic front, the punitive campaign plateaued. While HM Government successfully ‘froze’ billions in Russian sovereign and oligarchic assets, it failed to translate these temporary measures into permanent, aggressive asset forfeiture and seizure. Hiding behind peacetime legal friction and property rights frameworks, Britain revealed to the Kremlin that Western economic statecraft possesses a definitive, manageable ceiling.
What should the UK do to address these weaknesses? To rectify these failures, the UK should abandon its defensive risk-mitigation mindset and move to a posture of continuous, unrestricted cost-imposition that actively shapes the Kremlin's calculus: ● End self-imposed kinetic restraints: HM Government should make it clear that it will unilaterally lift all geographic and operational limitations on the deployment of UK-supplied and produced weapons systems when it seeks to support an ally or partner under attack. Deterrence through punishment requires proving to the aggressor – Russia – that any cross-border escalation or sub-threshold sabotage will result in an immediate and overwhelming British response sufficient in scale and force to turn any attack into a grinding and costly war of attrition. ● Enact a sovereign asset seizure framework: The UK should stop acting as a legal custodian for frozen hostile capital. HM Government should introduce fast-tracked legislation under the National Security Act to convert the frozen central bank assets of hostile or aggressive powers into permanent sovereign forfeitures. This effectively weaponises the UK’s legal jurisdiction, proving that aggressive revisionism results in the literal dismantling of an aggressor regime’s foreign wealth. ● Operationalise ‘warfighting readiness’: Domestically, HM Government should follow through on the mandates of the 2025 Strategic Defence Review and the 2026 Defence Investment Plan. This means moving beyond standard procurement cycles to establish ‘always on’ munitions factories so that British munitions can be supplied quickly and at scale to allies and partners. The UK should also build out the newly established Cyber and Electromagnetic (CyberEM) Command to launch active counter-containment operations against Russian state-backed IT infrastructures before sub-threshold attacks land on British soil.
Vitally, these measures should be signalled through speeches or statements from the prime minister, or the foreign secretary, or the defence secretary, so that aggressors – such as Russia – are under no illusion as to the consequences should they challenge Britain’s fundamental interests.
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What are the key strategic enablers for more effective European deterrence of Russia? What are the challenges and opportunities for the UK in creating those?
1. To construct a credible European deterrent against the Kremlin, three primary structural enablers are needed: the integration of the defence industrial and technological base to generate mass, the fluid movement of military forces, and a sophisticated framework for managing escalatory dynamics. The re-election of Donald Trump has served as a decisive geopolitical stimulant, forcing a transition away from continental security dependency. By mandating that the UK and European allies assume greater responsibility, Washington has effectively accelerated the drive toward greater strategic self-sufficiency. For deterrence to be effective, European nations must develop the independent capacity to out-match and out-pace Russian military production and operational force;
2. For Britain, this evolving landscape presents acute industrial hurdles alongside three significant strategic opportunities. While the UK’s defence-industrial base remains fragmented following decades of under-investment, the 2026 Defence Investment Plan signals a pivot toward ‘warfighting readiness’ with a commitment to invest just under 2.7% of GDP. Rather than duplicating the conventional mass of continental powers, the UK is positioned to serve as a strategic catalyst, focusing on the following decisive opportunities:
a. Ukraine’s European vanguard: Britain can lead a high-readiness formation within NATO to stabilise the Ukrainian front. This requires acting as a first-mover by provisioning deeper-strike assets and removing all geographic restrictions on their use against military-industrial, and especially energy and logistical, targets within Russia;
b. A sub-strategic nuclear backstop: As the US refocuses on the People’s Republic of China’s rise and expansion in the Indo-Pacific and Western Hemisphere, the UK – in coordination with France – should do more to provide Europe’s ultimate backstop. There is a clear opportunity to field a sub-strategic nuclear capability to bridge the escalatory gap, potentially even through new nuclear sharing frameworks with frontline allies, such as Poland, Germany, and Romania;[2]
c. Securing the maritime flanks: The UK must project power to stabilise exposed boundaries, from the High North via the JEF to the Black Sea. By supporting new regional security groupings with a persistent maritime presence, Britain can actively contest Russian revisionism and safeguard critical sea lines of communication.
How can the UK work with allies and partners to strengthen the strategic enablers for more effective punitive deterrence against Russia? For example: through NATO; directly through the EU; other bilateral allies and partners.
1. To translate these strategic enablers into an active posture of punitive deterrence, the UK should operationalise different multilateral and bilateral architectures, using each international forum strictly on the basis of its real-world strategic utility:
a. Through NATO: The vector for kinetic and strategic punishment: NATO remains the indispensable framework for conventional mass and escalation manoeuvre. The UK should work within the alliance to shift its core doctrine toward active cost-imposition:
i. Coalition building for deep strike: The UK should use NATO planning channels to coordinate the ‘vanguard’ coalition of European states, aligning rules of engagement to ensure the collective, uncapped delivery of deep-strike assets to the Ukrainian theatre;
ii. Nuclear integration: The UK should utilise NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group to align its emerging sub-strategic capability with continental defence plans, offering an autonomous, alternative layer of deterrence that directly holds the Kremlin’s strategic calculus at risk;
b. Propose a European Security Council to harness the European Union (EU): The UK should champion the creation of a European Security Council (ESC). Operating entirely outside the formal treaties of the EU, the ESC would function as an agile, minilateral directory of Europe’s largest defence spenders – principally the UK, France, Germany, and Poland. If properly conceived, such an architecture would be uniquely valuable to HM Government because it would fulfill a dual purpose: bypassing the EU’s bureaucratic inertia while intersecting with its structural mass (see box);
1. How the ESC could bypass the EU: Moving at speed When immediate kinetic or sub-threshold cost-imposition is required, the EU is inherently structurally unsuited due to the fact that its 27 member states must reach consensus. An ESC would allow the UK to bypass these institutional bottlenecks: ● Decoupled decision-making: The ESC operates on a minilateral basis, allowing Europe’s heavyweight military powers to coordinate rapid intelligence sharing, authorise deep-strike permissions for Ukraine, and execute cyber counter-containment operations within hours, entirely free from the vetoes of neutral or Russia-aligned EU member states. ● A peer-to-peer sovereign forum: By moving foreign and security policy out of the EU’s orbit, the UK circumvents the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and the regulatory power of the European Commission. It firmly re-establishes European defence as an intergovernmental enterprise where the UK negotiates as an undisputed nuclear-armed equal. 2. How the ESC could intersect with the EU: Translating strategy into structural mass While the UK does not need Brussels for military action, it recognises that the EU possesses immense regulatory and financial leverage. The ESC serves as the perfect intersection point to leverage that mass: ● The transmission belt for economic punishment: The ESC could feature a permanent seat for the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs. When the core powers within the ESC decide on a punitive strategic direction – such as an aggressive regulatory blockade of Russia’s maritime shadow fleet – that mandate could be fed directly down into the EU itself. The EU can then use its sweeping legislative machinery to codify and enforce those macro-sanctions across the single market. ● Directing defence-industrial scaling: Rather than the UK trying to navigate the protectionist access clauses of fragmented EU defence funds from the outside, an ESC allows the UK to shape pan-European industrial priorities from the top down. By aligning requirements at the ESC level first, the UK ensures that subsequent continental procurement initiatives (such as the SAFE programme) are adapted to include British-based technical and manufacturing expertise, producing the deep ammunition and missile magazines required for long-term European deterrence. |
c. Via bilateral and minilateral partners: The vector for agile, immediate results: Because the EU is routinely slowed by consensus-building and institutional friction, the UK’s primary vehicles for rapid, punitive deterrence will remain agile, purpose-built minilateral groupings:
i. The UK-led Multilateral Defence Mechanism: Rather than waiting on Brussels, the UK is already driving European rearmament through its own flexible minilateral procurement engines. This is demonstrated by the newly launched Multilateral Defence Mechanism – which Poland has actively bypassed EU inertia to join – enabling joint, large-scale orders to scale defense-industrial mass at speed;
ii. The northern flank: Under the July 2026 UK-Netherlands Enhanced Maritime Partnership, the UK is pooling resources to co-develop cutting-edge autonomous and amphibious technologies, creating a high-readiness hybrid countermeasures network through the JEF to protect critical infrastructure and project immediate power in the North Atlantic;
iii. The Black Sea region: While the UK has focused on deterring Russia in northeastern Europe, Russia’s aggression has been most pronounced in the southeast. The UK can bypass wider institutional gridlock by forging a targeted maritime pact with regional littoral states such as Romania and Ukraine. By pairing British naval engineering with local infrastructure (such as Romania’s Galati shipyard) to co-produce advanced, sensor-heavy surface combatants, the UK can deploy a persistent, treaty-compliant naval force with the capacity to inflict decisive force at a key point of geopolitical friction.[3]
How well does the UK Government take decisions on striking a balance between deterrence by denial versus deterrence by punishment – and what should be done differently?
1. HM Government’s decision-making suffers not from a failure to recognise the threat – the UK explicitly and correctly diagnoses Russia as the most ‘pressing’ and ‘immediate’ danger to Euro-Atlantic security – but from an institutionalised risk aversion and a chronically reactive strategic culture.[4] The core issue lies in the profound gap between threat acknowledgment and operational execution. When translating strategic awareness into policy decisions, Whitehall remains paralysed by a defensive, risk-mitigation mindset. Instead of adopting an aggressive, uncompromised approach that treats Russia as an active enemy to be pressed down – continuously – the National Security Council (NSC) routinely defaults to managing escalatory risk. This results in a posture that is perpetually reactive, waiting for the Kremlin to seize the initiative before formulating a conditional response;
2. This approach profoundly misreads the factors shaping Russia’s risk calculus. The Kremlin’s decision-making is non-linear and insulated from broad macroeconomic pain; the Russians willingly absorb economic penalties as long as elite cohesion is maintained and the state apparatus remains secure. By maintaining a hesitant, risk-averse stance designed to avoid escalation, the UK’s decisions achieve the opposite of their intended effect. Russia views a purely defensive, reactive posture not as a stabilising mechanism, but as a green light to test boundaries via aggressive sub-threshold actions, including cross-border sabotage, cyber warfare, assassinations, and electronic disruption;
3. To alter this calculus, HM Government must abandon its reactive crisis-management framework and embrace a doctrine of general deterrence, where denial and punishment are deployed as a synchronised, offensive capability. Britain should stop targeting the broad Russian economy through slow, bureaucratic sanctions and instead ruthlessly target the regime’s true centres of gravity: energy companies, specific machine-tool supply chains, military-industrial managers, and the personal wealth of the mid-tier security apparatus (the siloviki). Instead of absorbing sub-threshold attacks and responding gradually, the UK must establish a baseline of reflexive, forceful, asymmetric retaliation. This should overwhelm and disorient the Kremlin’s response options. HM Government should not wait for Russia to probe British critical infrastructure; it should identify assets and capabilities the Kremlin values, and target them ruthlessly. If the Kremlin knows that the UK will no longer just absorb blows, but intends to keep it on the back foot, it may think carefully before challenging British interests.
8 July 2026