Proxy Warfare and NATO's Leverage in Ukraine

In this episode, Antulio J. Echevarria II discusses how NATO might better leverage risk to strengthen the alliance’s extended deterrence. Can NATO increase the risks and costs of war for an adversary without unduly raising the alliance’s own? Can the alliance strengthen the credibility of NATO’s extended deterrence through a proxy strategy of “waging war without going to war”? 

Keywords: risk-benefit models, cost-benefit models, military risk, political risk, Russian deterrence, risk aversion, self-deterrence, deterrence by denial, deterrence by punishment, proxy warfare

Stephanie Crider (Host)

You are listening to Conversations on Strategy. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

I’m in the studio with Professor Antulio J. Echevarria II.

Echevarria is currently a professor of strategy at the US Army War College and the editor in chief of the US Army War College Press, which includes Parameters. He’s held the General Douglas MacArthur Chair of Research and the Elihu Root Chair of Military Studies and is the author of six books on military strategy.

He’s the author of Weaponizing Risk: Calibrating Western Deterrence, which was published by the US Army War College Press in July 2025.

Welcome to Conversations on Strategy, Dr. Echevarria.

Antulio J. Echevarria II

Thank you. I’m pleased to be here.

Host

I’d like to start with understanding risk in strategic thinking. You introduce the idea of weaponizing risk. Please explain how risk-benefit models differ from traditional cost-benefit approaches.

Echevarria

Traditionally, cost-benefit models are designed to persuade an adversary, an aggressor, [or] potential aggressor, that the costs of a particular action are going to outweigh its benefits. The problem has always been that we don’t necessarily know where the cost ceiling is for that adversary, so we don’t know how far we have to go in order to dissuade them from doing the action we don’t want them to take. And the other problem is we don’t really know how much they value that particular object or piece of territory that they might be after.

We do the best we can with our intelligence analysis, and we develop a model that we hope will work. Where, opposed to risk-based deterrence models, risk-benefit models actually allow us to go right at the heart of what an aggressor regime values most, which is its political survival. So, we step back, look at the calculations and, instead of trying to drive up costs in terms of economics or military materiel destroyed and personnel loss, we look at what about this particular situation will pose a direct threat to the regime and its political survival.

Although every regime has a cost ceiling—Putin, for instance, certainly does, but it may be a lot higher [than we expected], as we have seen in recent times—the Russian cost ceiling is much higher than it is for the West and certainly for Ukraine. So, we need a method to get around just a basic cost-benefit approach. So, the risk-benefit approach does help us do that because we have to answer our own question, which is: Are the costs we are about to impose, or threatening to impose, really going to get at the heart of what the regime actually cares about? If so, how long will it take?

Host

I’m glad you brought up Putin and Russia. You suggest NATO’s support for Ukraine amounts to a form of proxy warfare. How might NATO better leverage this proxy relationship to strengthen its deterrence of Russia?

Echevarria

NATO’s best bet is a strategy of deterrence by denial. Deterrence by punishment really kind of reinforces the entire dynamic, or cycle, of a cost-benefit model. We already discussed its shortcomings. But deterrence by denial helps us the most because if the regime can’t take that thing that [it] is going after, it can’t conquer Ukraine, for instance, then it puts its political survival at risk because strategic failure is a threat to any political regime, but especially autocratic [ones].

We have a lot of literature on this. So, strategy of denial by strengthening—the language of the day is to “porcupine it up.” So, “porcupining up” Ukraine or Taiwan or another threatened territory—is one way to, I think, increase extended deterrence.

Now, what we want to do is not just impose costs on an invader or an aggressor but actually defeat their attempts to take over that particular country or its administration, its government. It’s all about imposing defeat, and NATO can do that by mobilizing its political might, its industrial might, [and] its military might in terms of hardware. It won’t really have to put troops on the ground, so that’s a benefit. But it can, in a way, fight a war without going to war, so to speak—so, wage war without going to war. And that’s the best of all scenarios. So that’s what I’m arguing.

NATO, in a way, backed into a proxy war situation with this conflict. But, imagine if it had been better prepared, if the infrastructure had been in place already—the material infrastructure as well as human infrastructure—so you could maintain a flow of materiel, you could move right into rapid training scenarios, provide other support, intelligence support, for instance, right at the get go. Had we been able to do that, for instance, we would have strengthened Ukraine’s ability to defend itself and we would have started weakening Russia earlier on and we would have maybe started to push it towards its cost ceiling faster.

Host

Russia invading Ukraine was not a surprise, right? NATO and Europe could have been better prepared in all the ways you just mentioned.

Echevarria

Right. That’s true. It was not a surprise, but it was still a shock in a way because the preparations we had put in place since 2014 were more a line of hybrid warfare. If you look at what the money was invested in, the US and the Europeans gave support to Ukrainians to bring their defense spending on par with Poland’s and Norway’s [and] others who took the Russian threat seriously. But, a lot of the literature, a lot of the analysts, were talking about another wave of hybrid sorts of attacks.

What came as a surprise was this full-scale invasion, basically what we would call today a large-scale combat operation, that we were not really prepared for. And, had we taken deliberate steps early on, I think we would have seen, perhaps, a different outcome. Now, we might not have still deterred Putin because leaders do make poor choices at times, and he might have wanted Ukraine so badly that he had to attack anyway. But, we would have had Ukraine in a better position to defend itself, [which is] the bottom line. And, again, we would have maybe moved Russia towards its cost ceilings faster. I mean, you could do everything right in the deterrence world and still fail to deter a determined aggressor, but everyone knows this, it’s pretty much common knowledge across the field.

Host

Recommendations. What concrete steps could NATO take now to strengthen its credibility with regard to extended deterrence?

Echevarria

Some immediate steps: I think it could revise its strategic concept, for instance, as well as its political guidance for defense planning. If we include more strategy-of-denial language, and we start talking about the kinds of assistance we are going to be prepared to give to Ukraine throughout a run-up to a conflict again, and throughout the conflict, that sends a message to Moscow that it’s not going to be a cakewalk, that maybe they would want to think twice about this before launching into it.

The other thing we can do—and should do—is to revise the operational documents that NATO has, its foundational ones, for example, the Allied Joint Doctrine for the Conduct of Operations and the Allied Joint Doctrine for Land Operations. Both of those assume that NATO is the one that’s going to be doing the fighting. That is not necessarily the case. We may be aiding someone else who’s doing the basic fighting. So, we should begin to talk about how we would do that more efficiently moving forward. We should work those kinds of scenarios into our general defense plans, we should war-game out in advance different alternatives, and so on, [including] courses of action. We should do all of those things. We can do those concretely right now. Those are my recommendations for immediate steps.

Host

Thank you for making time to speak with me today, Dr. Echevarria. It’s always a pleasure when I get to chat with you.

Echevarria

My pleasure.

Host

Listeners, you can read the monograph at press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/981. For more Army War College podcasts, check out Decisive Point, SSI Live, CLSC Dialogues, and A Better Peace.