The conflict in Ukraine has been a proving ground and an experiment in the endurance of Western military strategy. It has been an experiment in the endurance of Ukraine’s military as well as the United States and those of its European allies. As the conflict prolongs, the calculus of Western involvement keeps evolving—movements that will shape the future of the conflict and the European security equation for decades.
One of the most dramatic changes has been Washington’s willingness to grant Ukraine more latitude in the deployment of American-provided long-range missiles. Arms such as the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), formerly tied to the periphery of the Ukrainian border, are now employed to hit targets within Russian territory. It is a turnabout from previous self-restraint, under which the constant fear was that of escalation. Ukrainian troops now fire at Russian military storage facilities, airfields, and troop concentrations deeper in the rear behind the line. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put top priority on these targets, labeling missiles a more effective negotiation than diplomatic words. The timing, on the eve of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, suggests that Washington wanted to sign a stronger military agreement for Ukraine before policy breezes shift once again.
On the battlefield, these long-range strikes have changed Russia. ATACMS missiles, which can strike nearly 200 miles distant, push Moscow to bring important assets further into the rear, complicating logistics and air support. With sparse supplies of these missiles, they can’t be a silver bullet, but their effect is psychological and tactical. And as one of the top American defense officials joked, their presence alone makes war costlier for Russia and demonstrates how Western assistance has gone into high gear. The United Kingdom also offered support by permitting the deployment of Storm Shadow cruise missiles in Russia, which is yet another point of leverage over Moscow.
Western fighter aircraft deployment has similarly concrete effects. Ukraine’s hoped-for F-16s are not just another squadron of gear—they’re a more profound involvement in the NATO infrastructure. They allow for the capability to offset Russia’s air dominance and project a greater Ukrainian presence into higher-value targets. How well it goes will depend on how many actually get delivered, what they’re loaded with, and how fast pilots and ground staff get ramped up. Time is needed to train, and doctrine updates to exploit new planes aren’t a small undertaking. But in the long term, F-16s might fill Ukraine’s air gap and lay the groundwork for better deterrence.
But in the background is uncertainty. With Trump having been elected president and continued fears about Ukraine aid from him, fears abound that US aid will be reduced or turned off. Ukraine relies extensively on American weaponry and ammunition, from rocket artillery and howitzers to sophisticated air defense systems and battlefield reconnaissance.
Were Washington to withdraw support, European allies would quickly move to take up the slack—a problem compounded by the size of U.S. production capacity and stockpiles. European factory floors have gained momentum, but to compete with the country’s capacity to make HIMARS rockets, ATACMS missiles, or Patriot interceptors is not something that can happen overnight. European nations know what is at stake. The financial capability is there, but the real hurdles are in the production capacity, logistics, and intelligence.
Europe may be able to supply some of the artillery and air defense capabilities, but it lacks the scale and satellite cover of the United States to bring them into the battlefield. Caching Ukraine’s own native defense industry has been a secondary consideration, but that is a long-term solution. In the near term, the Europeans would need to become riskier by taking on increasingly from their own treasuries or even buying U.S. military equipment for Ukraine—if Washington approved such purchases. To this is added the constant threat of another escalation in hostilities. The Kremlin has continually threatened that Western arms crossing Russian borders would demand broader war, even nuclear war.
But to date, they have only been used as weapons of threat, not as portents of action. Western leaders have tiptoed across Russian “red lines” at each successive level of assistance, unwilling to trigger but not yet willing to withdraw either. The danger of miscalculation still exists, but the trend indicates that Russian bluster is intended more to produce caution than to change Western policy.
Besides the military competition, the information war has also earned an equally major place. Russian disinformation campaign, which had been characterized by analysts as a “firehose of falsehood,” seeks to deter Western cohesion and undermine popular opinion backing for Ukraine.
Misinformation spreads in Europe, America, and even globally, supported by conspiracy theories as well as ideologically driven differences. On the Western side, the US and the West have sought increasingly to wager on preemptive intelligence leaks and propaganda immunity attempts. Capturing this information war now comes to be seen as essential to maintaining the supply of weapons and assistance. The course ahead is unclear. The war has demonstrated Western will’s immunity as well as its vulnerabilities, particularly when political currents change.
For Ukraine, acquiring knowledge quickly and acquiring new capabilities will be as crucial as the transit of hardware. For the West, unity and credibility in the face of bullying from Russia are the challenge. What is decided today will determine the course of this war as well as the shape of European security for a generation to come.
