Four BIG questions

As Denmark has experienced recent drone incursions into its airspace, and Copenhagen is hosting two major European summits this week, BIG speaks to one of the country’s leading experts on NATO and European security, Sten Rynning. He is professor of international relations at the University of Southern Denmark and founding director of the Center for War Studies.

Question 1.⁠ ⁠Poland, Romania, Estonia and Denmark have been targeted by drones. These repeated violations point to Russia, despite Moscow’s denials. In the context of the war in Ukraine and broader East–West tensions, these attacks fit into a larger strategy of pressure. Are they meant to test the cohesion or resilience of Western alliances? To probe Europe’s technical capabilities?

In all likelihood, the violations of sovereignty are a Russian attempt to disrupt Western decision-making, to cause public concern and to diminish support for Ukraine’s military effort. The violations expose Western vulnerabilities, no doubt carefully studied, and highlight potential costs of continued conflict with Russia.  

Question 2.⁠ ⁠The EU Commissioner for Defence and Space, Andrius Kubilius, has just announced the creation of an anti-drone wall, essentially a jamming system, by the end of 2026. Several political leaders have declared that any flying object violating a NATO member’s airspace should be shot down, except where this could endanger civilians. How do you assess this European response? Is the EU the right mechanism for developing joint defences? 

Drone defence will be European, but it will not necessarily be an EU wall. The EU is the right place for discussing financial and industrial cooperation as well as societal resilience, but drone defence is also an inherently national defence prerogative and as such integrated with NATO’s collective defence posture. Europe’s nations, if they want this wall in an effective way, must define how its capabilities can be integrated into NATO’s defence posture and support EU-led crisis management. This political architecture must come on top of a serious defence industrial effort, which will largely rest on national will. NATO’s defence planning process and EU oversight are mechanisms of coordination, but the ball is in the national courts.  

Question 3.⁠ ⁠After meeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the US president adopted a tougher tone toward Russia, even saying he was ready to shoot down Russian aircraft entering NATO airspace. That marks a clear shift. How do you interpret this new position? More broadly, to what extent is this hybrid war reshaping NATO’s role and the place the United States occupies within it? 

President Trump has seemingly exhausted his bromance with Russia’s President Putin. He went unexpectedly far in trying to reach an agreement with Russia, breaking NATO ranks and creating real anxiety in Europe that the United States was selling out of alliance solidarity. President Trump’s outreach to Russia began in February when he booted Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy out of the White House and culminated in August with the bilateral US-Russia summit in Alaska. Trump has very little to show for the effort. His recent statements in support of Ukraine, along with reports that the US is ready to supply long-range missiles to Ukraine along with intelligence for deep precision strikes, indicate that President Trump is shifting back to a Western-anchored strategy of supporting Ukraine to obtain a ceasefire and East-West stabilization. The shift is not articulated, though, and much remains uncertain. Trump’s liking of ambiguity continues, and no one is betting on US reliability. This persistent uncertainty encourages Russia to seek to divide the alliance by way of hybrid war. 

Question 4. Denmark itself has been directly affected by drone incursions. Does Denmark see its role evolving within the Alliance? Last month, it struck observers how Denmark decided its largest ever defence investment, in air defence, with Europe-made systems, giving a push to strategic autonomy. 

Denmark is at the very forefront of the effort to support Ukraine militarily, politically, and economically. It is also determined to seriously rearm itself, though it is proving hard to do away with many years of disinvestment and dilapidated defence structures. The political consensus in Denmark is that Russia is on a European-wide offensive, that the United States has become less reliable, and that small countries like Denmark must seriously rearm to protect themselves in a competitive environment. Denmark is not ready to support the idea of ‘strategic autonomy’ for Europe on the grounds that the dependence on US protection remains deep and that political uncertainty behind Europe’s cohesion remains significant. But it is most certainly seeking to rebalance transatlantic relations and to incite Europeans to put their money where their mouth is.