Picture: UK MOD © Crown copyright
‘IF THE OTHER GUY SHOWS UP WITH A TANK...’
DEFENDING NATO’S FRONT-LINE? CHACR COMMENTARY // JUNE 2025
BY: Professor Andrew Stewart, Head of Conflict Research CHACR
S
PEAKING at a security conference in Stockholm in January 2023, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Christopher Cavoli, shared a series of personal observations with the audience about the war in Ukraine. Nearly 30 months later, they are each just as valid but one resonates more than most: “Hard Power is a reality. Soft Power is good and useful and even necessary and integrated deterrence of course relies on all elements of national power: economic, diplomatic, informational but the great irreducible feature of warfare is Hard Power. And we have to
be good at it... kinetic effects are what produce results on the battlefield. Cyber, information operations and so on, are very important, but if the other guy shows up with the tank... you better have a tank.”1 Ultimately, promises and reassurances only count for so much, boots and tanks on the ground count most, particularly when fighting with partners. As the recently published Strategic Defence Review (SDR) has reiterated, “[c]ollective security, underpinned by formal alliances and partnerships, is a force multiplier for the UK’s deterrence and defence”. Central to this is ‘NATO First’:
“[f]oremost in how Defence plans”; the “foundation of how Defence thinks”; and, “[e] mbedded in how Defence acts”.2 Despite subsequent ministerial statements, the strong message is that the 76-yearold collective security alliance takes precedence, but within the SDR’s fifth chapter, Allies and Partners, there is some granularity about the “network of robust relationships that delivers global reach for the UK as part of its wider foreign and security policy”.3 Within this section, of a 144-page document running to more than 45,000 words, can be found most of the eight brief references to Estonia, the location of the UK’s current largest
1 // STRATEGIC DEFENCE REVIEW // CHACR
permanent military overseas deployment.4 Despite the brevity, the strategic significance to Britain of the ‘SACEUR Cavoli - Remarks at Rikskonferensen, Sälen, Sweden’; John Vandiver, ‘Hard power is a reality’, Stars and Stripes, January 11, 2023.
1
‘Strategic Defence Review – Making Britain Safer: secure at home, strong abroad’, 2025, 37.
2
Ibid., 73-85.
3
‘10,000 UK Armed Forces personnel deployed overseas to keep us safe this Christmas’, 22 December 2024. As a region, the Baltic is mentioned only twice both relating to best practice and learning from others, specifically when considering approaches to defending Critical National Infrastructures and ‘Total Defence’.
4