CEPA also runs the Defense Tech Initiative, which brings policymakers, military officials, industry leaders, and technology experts together to leverage emerging and disruptive technologies. The initiative focuses on enhancing collective defense, preparing for future threats, and fostering transatlantic cooperation in areas such as cyber, drones, propulsion systems, and advanced weapons. By coordinating assessments and encouraging public-private cooperation, CEPA strives to maximize military capabilities and, as the Ukrainians have recently demonstrated, the ability to innovate their way to victory over a larger adversary.

With all the military threats currently active, attention should focus on the countries most likely to cause problems or spark outbreaks of fighting. To do this, we must try to determine which nation has the most effective armed forces. For example, the top ten armed forces in the world by number of troops are:

1. China

2. India

3. United States

4. Russia

5. France

6. Japan

7. Germany

8. Brazil

9. Italy

10. Britain

The top ten by military power differ: United States, China, Russia, India, Britain, South Korea, Pakistan, Japan, Israel, and France.

Note that the top ten by military spending in 2023 is quite different.

1 United States: $916 billion, which is 3.4 percent of GDP and 37 percent of global defense spending

2 China: $296 billion, 1.7 percent and 12 percent of global defense spending

3 Russia: $109 billion, 5.9 percent and 4.5 percent of global defense spending

4 India: $ 83.6 billion, 2.4 percent and 3.4 percent of global defense spending

5 Saudi Arabia: $75.6 billion, 7.1 percent and 3.1 percent of global defense spending

6 Britain: $74.9 billion, 2.3 percent and 3.1 percent of global defense spending

7 Germany $66.8, 1.5 percent and 2.7 percent of global defense spending

8 Ukraine $64.8, 37 percent and 2.7 percent of global defense spending

9 France $61.3, 2.1 percent and 2.5 percent of global defense spending

10 Japan $50.2, 1.2 percent and 2.1 percent of global defense spending

Another factor is the impact of the Ukraine War, which began in February 2022 and continues in 2025. That war, the first between industrialized nations since 1945, will eventually end. That will mean a shift to national reconstruction in Ukraine. NATO nations have promised substantial post-war economic rebuilding aid so Ukraine can integrate it into its war plans. The Netherlands announced it would spend several billion dollars on aid to Ukraine in 2024 and 2025. Germany's GDP is over $4 trillion, while the Netherlands' is about $1 trillion. Germany sent $8 billion in military aid to Ukraine in 2024. Considering its smaller size, the Netherlands has been a major supplier of aid to Ukraine. The Netherlands and Germany plan to provide even larger amounts of aid for the post-war reconstruction.

The Netherlands' 2024 aid to Ukraine includes a wide array of weapons and services. It will include more air defense systems, drones, and munitions for weapons Ukraine already has. Services include training for Ukrainian F-16 pilots and aircraft maintainers. In 2024, a larger share of the aid went to economic reconstruction and current government financing.

Unable to do sufficient damage to Ukrainian armed forces, Russia has been concentrating many of its missile attacks on economic targets. These must be repaired or rebuilt, especially the targets that provide electricity, heat or clean water and sanitation services. The Russians want Ukrainian civilians to suffer. The Dutch can relate to this. During World War 2, German troops occupied the Netherlands, and toward the end of the war, the Germans greatly reduced the food available to Dutch civilians. In the Netherlands, that period of privation is remembered, and they don’t want to see it happen repeatedly to the Ukrainians.

For centuries, Ukraine has suffered periods of brutal occupation by invaders. The most frequent brutal occupier has been Russia, which has also played the homicidal villain several times in the last century. The most infamous Russian occupation incident was the use of famine during 1932 and 1933 to suppress Ukrainian opposition to Russian rule, especially the new Russian ideology of communism, which prohibited private farms and expected all farmers to work for state-owned farms. Many farmers throughout Russia resisted this, but opposition was strongest in Ukraine, where about 20 percent of the Soviet Union’s population lived. Ukrainian farmers were the most productive in Russia and produced most of the wheat for export. Ukrainian resistance produced a horrific Soviet response: the seizure of nearly all the wheat crops in the areas of most resistance. This lasted two years and killed nearly four million Ukrainians, about an eighth of the population. Ukrainians called this the Holodomor, which translates as the Man-Made Famine.

Russia denied the Holodomor ever happened, and many Western nations and their mass media went along with that. One exception was Britain, where one British reporter risked his life by going to Ukraine and obtaining proof of the Holodomor. The Russian government kept denying the famine ever happened until 1983, when a more open communist government admitted that many communist crimes were true. This made an impression on Russians because they realized most of the victims of the Gulag prison camps and communist terror in general were Russians. As a result, during the occupations of Crimea and parts of Donbas in 2014, the Russians tried to win the support of locals.

That lowered the civilian death toll but did not turn most of the occupied population into loyal citizens of Russia. By 2020, most Ukrainians in the occupied territories wanted out. The most desperate moved to Russia, many others wanted to get to Ukraine, and others sought to go anywhere but Ukraine and Russia.

The Holodomor and many other past incidents of Russian brutality led to Russian troops being initially ordered to not attack civilians during the 2022 invasion. That failed to make civilians any more receptive to the Russian presence and, within a month, troops were told they could loot and not tolerate any resistance from civilians. Russia denied that civilians were being killed or that widespread looting was taking place. Cell phone cameras carried by most Ukrainians made those claims difficult to sustain. Nor were Russian denials of the heavy casualties inflicted on the Russian forces, who believed they would easily defeat the Ukrainians and occupy the capital, Kyiv, within two weeks. After a month of this, Russian troops around Kyiv were ordered to withdraw to Russia and try to conceal evidence of mass murder before they left. This produced some mass graves, but many bodies were left in plain view, and many surviving civilians had video evidence of who did what. Russia again denied it, insisting these civilians were killed by Ukrainian forces to make the Russians look bad. Once more, the video evidence, especially from Ukrainians who witnessed it and could identify some of the perpetrators, made the atrocities difficult to deny.

Mindful of that, Russian occupation forces in parts of Ukraine that were seized early on and are still under Russian control were ordered to try hard to win over the locals without resorting to mass murder. The main occupation zone lies north of Crimea and centers on Kherson city, the capital of Kherson province. Russian forces captured Kherson City during the first week of the invasion and have held most of the province ever since. The city is a major port because it is located near the mouth of the Dnieper River and the Black Sea. The Dnieper is a major navigable river for Ukraine and has long been used to move cargo, especially exported wheat.

Ukraine has been trying to recapture Kherson City and province ever since and finally did so at the end of 2023, aided by a growing partisan movement inside Kherson province and passive resistance to Russian occupation by most Ukrainians in the province. Some Ukrainians agreed to work for the Russian occupation, and they were soon the targets of attacks by Ukrainian partisans. Some of the turncoats were killed, but more worrisome to the Russians were indications that other Ukrainian officials quietly agreed to work for the partisans. The Russians eventually concluded that many of their Ukrainian administrators were working with the resistance from the beginning.

At the same time, the Russian occupation forces still had orders to try and win over the Ukrainians or at least discourage them from joining an armed insurrection. To help with that, the Russians sought to Russify the province as quickly as possible. That meant replacing Ukrainian cell phone service with Russian service. They blocked Ukrainian TV and radio transmissions. Russian ID documents became mandatory, and the ruble became the required currency. Access to Russian-controlled utilities, especially water and electricity, depended on how cooperative local civilians were. These efforts aimed to link Kherson to the Russian economy. The initial reason for pacifying the population was to make life safe for Russian troops in Kherson. That was never fully achieved, and since then Russian troops must worry about roadside bombs or anti-vehicle mines, as well as sniper fire and assassination via pistol or a bomb planted in a vehicle.

The goal was to hold elections that could be portrayed as honest and show most Kherson residents supporting annexation by Russia. The Ukrainians did not cooperate and used clever tactics that Russian Information War specialists recognized and struggled to counter. The Ukrainian resistance was armed and dangerous, but also mindful of the need to outdo Russia's information war campaign. Some of the American aid packages for Ukraine included a lot of Cold War-era PARM anti-vehicle mines that were never used. The Germans developed these mines to halt or disrupt a Soviet invasion that never came. The Germans believed Ukrainian partisans could use these mines. This proved true, and the Ukrainians wanted more after receiving nearly 15,000. Germany must resume production to meet Ukrainian demand.

Ukrainians depict the Russian occupiers as worse than the German Nazis of World War II infamy. This is particularly embarrassing for the Russians because the official Russian government justification for the invasion is to liberate Ukrainians from neo-Nazi Ukrainians led by President Zelensky, who is Jewish. This tragicomedy was understood by many in Russia early on and led to a largely unarmed, but often violent, resistance movement inside Russia and Belarus.

Russia denies the extent of the resistance in Kherson, calling armed partisans local bandits and gangsters. Video evidence escapes Kherson, and Russian troops stationed there complain to friends and family back home. This intensifies resistance to the war inside Russia, where the government wages its own information war to generate support, or at least discredit critics. The growing inability to suppress accurate news helped cause the Soviet Union to dissolve in 1991. Former KGB officers who brought back many aspects of Soviet rule over the last two decades are struggling to manage media and image control. It’s the 1980s all over again, but worse. This reminds us that information war isn't a state monopoly and is often a multi-sided conflict.

James F Dunnigan