Read the Report here
Read the Executive Summary here
On 4 August 2026 a drone carrying an improvised explosive device was discovered within the secure perimeter of Leipzig/Halle Airport in Saxony, amongst parked Ukrainian Antonov freighters. The device failed to detonate. A second drone collided with a cargo aircraft which was going around after the airport had been closed. Leipzig/Halle is not an ordinary airfield but serves as a hub for NATO’s Strategic Airlift International Solution, through which materiel is moved to allies on the eastern flank and to Ukraine. On 1 September 2026 the Federal Minister of the Interior announced that the configuration of the drone, its components, the explosive and the detonation technology were all familiar from other Russian hybrid operations, and that the police investigation, the pattern of the offence and intelligence findings from German and partner services together established Russian responsibility. The Federal Foreign Minister ordered the closure of the Russian consulate-general in Bonn and the termination of the lease of the Russian House in Berlin.
The Leipzig incident was an attempt by a foreign state to interdict a military supply line within the territory of an ally. It forms part of a campaign which has been conducted against European states for two decades. Yet despite this growing threat, there has been a tendency in British politics to treat the question of European security as an argument about our relationship with Brussels rather than as an argument about our physical safety. The United Kingdom remains a party to the North Atlantic Treaty, and Article 5 obliges us, in the event of an armed attack upon any party in Europe or North America, to take such action as we deem necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain security. This obligation is in no way conditional on our view of the European Union.
The argument which follows rests upon two propositions. The first is that Russia constitutes a present and continuing threat both to the United Kingdom and to our European allies, and that the character of this threat has altered. The second is that we may no longer assume that the United States will always be there to take the lead.
Europe’s response to the events of 2022 has been welcome, enabling British bilateral treaties with France and with Germany, a deepened Joint Expeditionary Force, a series of political formats amongst the larger European states, a Coalition of the Willing of thirty-four countries and, on the EU side, a White Paper, a readiness roadmap, a €150 billion loan instrument and a defence industrial programme.
When those arrangements are set out and examined together a gap becomes apparent. There exists no standing legal and institutional framework within which the democracies of Europe, including those outside the EU, may take a decision to act militarily and then give effect to it, should the United States determine that a particular contingency is not one in which it wishes to be involved. Each of the arrangements now available is either bilateral, or regional, or confined to the membership of the European Union, or improvised for a single crisis. Should the next contingency arise in a form which does not conveniently resemble the last, the work will have to be begun again.
This paper argues that the gap should be closed by treaty. The analysis proceeds in four parts. Section 2 sets out the strategic context, comprising the Russian threat, the changing character of conflict, the reorientation of American policy and the position of the United Kingdom. Section 3 examines the arrangements which now exist and explains why, individually and cumulatively, they do not answer the threat. Section 4 sets out the proposal for a new treaty framework, anchored within the Atlantic Alliance, modelled in material respects on the Modified Brussels Treaty of 1954, open to all European democracies including Ukraine, and to which the European Union should itself accede. Section 5 addresses capability, industry and procurement, in the absence of which the proposed framework would be an empty vessel.
The Leader of the Opposition was right to warn, in her speech of 3 September 2026, that conflict is coming, and right to remind the country that under Article 5 an attack upon any NATO country is an attack on all of us. The commitment to reach three per cent of gross domestic product on defence by 2030 deserves support. Unlike the government of the day, the Opposition does not have the research and analytical resources of the Civil Service available to it. But as the alternative government, the Conservative Party will need to develop its ideas about how and according to what priorities the money is to be spent; alongside whom our forces are to fight in the event that the Americans stand aside, and on what legal basis they would do so. Those are questions to which a party seeking to form the next government must have answers.
