What can Europe do in a World of “Imperial Collusion”

The Institute for European Policymaking @ Bocconi University (IEP@BU) announces the appointment of Nathalie Tocci as Senior Fellow, effective 1 January 2026. She will also join the Institute’s Managing Board (Consiglio Direttivo). 

Tocci, professor of practice at Johns Hopkins SAIS, will assume her responsibilities at IEP@BU as she nears the end of her mandate as Director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in May 2026, a role she has held since 2017. 

Below is the edited transcript of a conversation that Nathalie Tocci had with IEP@BU communication advisor Stefano Feltri on December 11, 2025, at the EGEA bookshop. The event, titled “Should Europe prepare to face a war with Russia?” is part of the series “Europe in the crises - The answers we are looking for”, co-organized with EGEA. Please find more details here. 

In Italy, a very entrenched narrative circulates: that there would be a “bellicist” Europe, a “war party”, a military-industrial complex that manipulates us. And therefore, the idea that Russia is a threat to us would be an illusion. How do you respond? 

Those who today talk about a “war-mongering Europe” are often the same people who, until recently, described this war as a proxy war between Russia and the United States: we Europeans as Washington’s subjects, dragged along by America’s war-mongering impulses.  

And they were waiting for the arrival of a US president who, by “understanding” the nature of the conflict, would reach out to Moscow and close the deal. 

That president, Donald Trump, has arrived, has reached out, and more than reached out. He has, in fact, sided with Russia. And yet the war is not over: on the contrary, Russia continues to intensify its attacks. 

This should clarify one point: it is not the West that “invents” the conflict. And above all, for us Europeans, the issue is not abstract or ideological. It is a war in Europe. 

The United States can debate whether or not it is in its national interest to support Ukraine and Europe: they are on the other side of the Atlantic, they have global priorities, and finite resources. We do not.  

We cannot make this 180-degree turn because the war is here. And because awareness is growing, in many European countries, that the war begins but doesn’t end with Ukraine: Ukraine is the place where it is fought militarily, but the conflict has already crossed its borders in different forms. 

Speaking of “different forms”: today we talk about hybrid attacks, sabotage, propaganda, drones, airspace violations, and pressure on infrastructure. Where is the threshold between “we are not at war” and “we are at war”? Is there a clear moment, or will it always remain a continuum? 

The truth, put brutally, is that Ukraine is the front door that blocks the way to a conventional war in the rest of Europe. 

As long as that door holds, much of what we experience outside Ukraine remains in the realm of the hybrid, the deniable, the “non-attributable”. 

If, hypothetically, Ukraine were to capitulate, that “hybrid” war in the rest of Europe would be destined to become less hybrid. Not only because Russian resources currently employed in Ukraine could be repositioned elsewhere. 

Also, if Russia conquered Ukraine, it could use against us the current Ukrainian resources: today in Europe there are two armies that have direct experience of high-intensity war, the Russian one and the Ukrainian one. Imagining that they could end up on the same side is the worst-case scenario. 

Even in the “best” scenario, that is a truce, many fear it becomes the preparation for the next phase: Moscow rebuilds capabilities and arsenals and, in a few years, tests Europe. Does it depend on how the truce is made, or is the risk structural? 

First of all, I am not convinced that a truce is imminent: the signals coming from Russia do not point in that direction. However, if we imagine a truce, the risk that it will be used to prepare a subsequent phase is real: it is a line of reasoning that has been circulating for a long time. 

That said, we are not standing still. Some countries are doing more than others. Germany’s change of pace is significant: every day a level of preparedness is growing that was not there. And an excess of alarmism must be avoided: Russia is not omnipotent, and it is worth recalling that it did not achieve its objectives quickly even in Ukraine. 

But “downsizing” does not mean denying. Russia’s intention is not limited to the Donbas and is not limited to Ukraine.  

Awareness of the threat is the precondition for everything else to follow: if you do not understand why you must invest, you will never build consensus to do so.  

In Italy, we often debate the other way around, starting from “do we arm/do we not arm ourselves” without bringing public opinion along in awareness of the threat. 

In simulations by various think tanks, the Estonian city of Narva, the Suwałki corridor, the Kaliningrad exclave are often cited as places where a Russian aggression against Europe could be triggered: limited actions, with a “pretext”, for example, defending Russian-speaking minorities.  

But does Putin really need a pretext, or does he already perceive himself at war with the West? 

I do not think he needs a pretext in the classic sense. But hybrid war works precisely on deniability: you act constantly, daily, and at once attributable and not attributable. 

This also changes the way we think about security. In the “black and white” world, deterrence was the key word: I avoid the attack because the other knows he would pay a cost given the capacities I have built. In a hybrid scenario, where the attack is already underway and is often deniable, what makes the difference is resilience: the ability to keep functioning, absorb the shock, adapt, learn and transform. It is not only “recovering”, it is also getting back up by changing. 

In this light, how do you interpret the words of NATO Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone about the need for a “proactive” response to Russia in contexts of cyber and hybrid war?  

It was read as “we Westerners also carry out attacks analogous to Russia’s”, but the idea seems to me a bit different: if the centre that launches the attack is identified, NATO countries must be able to neutralise it. 

“Offensive” and “defensive” are categories that belong to another type of war. If the attack is already underway, “prevention” means acting: identifying, interrupting, neutralising. Not in order to “provoke”, but because otherwise the other continues to push, rationally, as far as he can. 

And if Putin made the leap toward something non-deniable? Not a cyberattack only with difficulty attributable to Russia, but troops entering and taking a city, a clear action. What happens on the NATO side today? 

This is the central problem: Putin tests the limits, and so far, the lesson he receives is that he can continue to push. We have seen air and maritime violations and provocations, and, out of fear of escalation, often there is no reaction.  

If there is no reaction, why should he stop? 

And today, there is also a further element of ambiguity: it is not only that European allies have reacted little. It is that from the American side, on more than one occasion, the response has been minimising: “maybe a mistake”. This erodes the credibility of deterrence and makes the calculation riskier. 

Let’s come to the new US National Security Strategy just published by the Trump administration. One element that strikes me is the shift from the logic of “burden sharing” to “burden shifting”: no longer sharing the costs of European security, but American disengagement.  

Another crucial element is the US priority of reintegrating Russia into the international system. How do the deterrence towards Moscow that Europe wants to build and the reintegration of Moscow into the international system requested by Trump fit together? 

We have lulled ourselves into believing that Trump is unpredictable and incoherent. If you look at US foreign policy as a whole, you see different impulses. But on Europe and Russia, the direction has been very clear for a long time: they have stated it, they have demonstrated it, and now they have also written it down. 

The vision that emerges is coherent and, in my view, resembles an “imperial collusion”: the United States sees itself as the first of the empires and recognises for other empires (Russia, and partly China as well) a legitimate sphere of their own. 

In this framework, we Europeans risk becoming “territory to be carved up”: if Europe is disintegrated into little “statelets”, it is easier to achieve. 

And indeed, the “operational” documents that accompany the public one tend to detail the means: how do you weaken Europe? By supporting parties and governments that are intrinsically Eurosceptic, so that they do that work from within. It is a coherent vision. The point is that we must take note of it. 

This approach also calls NATO into question: the Trump administration has also floated giving up the American SACEUR, leaving the post to Germany. The SACEUR is NATO’s military commander, the highest operational post that has always been held by an American, while the Secretary General has always been a European. Is it realistic to “Europeanise” NATO? Would it be a good thing? 

In an ideal world, it would be logical: why reinvent the wheel if the organisation works? The problem is that NATO has an American strategic, operational, technological, and industrial backbone. You cannot remove that backbone and insert another one without consequences. 
Just think of the most extreme implications, such as the nuclear level and the conventional “enablers” that make the umbrella credible. 

If you separate roles that are today integrated in the same chain of command, you introduce additional steps and points of friction. 

It is one of the reasons why, in parallel, the idea of “coalitions of the willing” is growing: not so much for a deployment of troops in Ukraine (which would presuppose a ceasefire), but to think through what to do in the scenario in which the war continues and the United States pulls out. 

If you had to give one concrete recommendation to European institutions to reduce the risk of war, what would it be? 

There is a psychological problem even before a practical one: a disconnect between what many recognise in private and what is said in public. 

I have had conversations with top European figures who, behind the scenes, speak openly of American disengagement and the risk of “betrayal”; but then at official events they repeat that “the United States is our greatest ally”. I understand why one does it, but in this way, we communicate weakness and a detachment from reality. And weakness invites the other side to persist with aggression. 

Concrete actions, especially on rearmament, in part are being taken, albeit unevenly, across countries. But the priority right now is to acknowledge the reality publicly and recover agency: to stop behaving as if we were condemned to impotence. 

 There are smaller, weaker countries that are more dependent on the United States and yet show greater political autonomy than ours. We, as Europeans and as the European Union, have become accustomed to thinking of ourselves as fragile, and thus we end up truly becoming so.