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Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)

The Center for European Policy Analysis | CEPA’s mission is to ensure a strong and democratic transatlantic alliance for future generations.

Media:press@cepa.org The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) is a non-partisan think-tank dedicated to re-inventing Atlanticism for a more secure future. Headquartered in Washington, D.C. and led by seasoned transatlanticists and emerging leaders from both sides of the Atlantic, CEPA brings an innovative approach to the foreign policy arena. Our cutting-edge analysis and timely debates galvanize communities of influence while investing in the next generation of leaders to understand and address present and future challenges to transatlantic values and principles.

03/31/2026

Small players are quietly reshaping the global semiconductor race. Countries like Vietnam and Ireland, though minor producers, have become essential links in supply chains that make chips cheaper, more resilient, and less dependent on China.

Christopher Cytera shows that no country can dominate the full semiconductor ecosystem alone. As specialization deepens, resilience depends on a network of allies where even outliers like Vietnam and Ireland play a critical role in keeping the West competitive.

03/31/2026

Sabotage, espionage, cyberattacks, drone incursions. Russia is waging a shadow war across Europe because it fears all-out warfare against a more powerful adversary. The Kremlin knows that attacks below the threshold of war exploit Western confusion and inertia.

Europe's failure to deter is not a lack of awareness. It is a persistent mismatch between how Russia fights and how the West responds. Cable disruptions are framed as accidents. Cyber intrusions are managed as technical incidents. By the time attribution debates conclude, the moment has passed.

In a new report, Samuel Greene, David Kagan, Minna Ålander, Mathieu Boulègue, and Douglas White examine why deterrence has failed across three fronts, infiltration, undersea infrastructure, and cyber-kinetic attacks, and what a robust allied response must look like.

03/31/2026

Four years ago, Ukrainian forces liberated Bucha. What the world saw there made war crimes documentation an urgent institutional priority. Ukraine's National War Museum has since built a model for doing that work in real time.

Teams of historians, archivists, and psychologists deploy to liberated areas within hours of the guns going quiet. They have now worked across more than 35 regions, gathering survivor testimony and physical evidence before it disappears. Embedded psychologists have worked with more than 700 people since July, including children, wounded soldiers, and civilians released from Russian captivity.

Mitzi Perdue makes the case that preserving evidence and preserving people are not competing priorities. It is a lesson Bucha taught the world, and Ukraine is still living it.

03/31/2026

Conflict in Europe is no longer confined to the battlefield.

As Ukraine faces continued bombardment, Russia is opening a second front through covert operations designed to destabilize without triggering direct conflict. Arson, sabotage, assassinations, espionage, and drone disruption are part of the coordinated campaign.

These actions stay below the societally defined threshold of war, using proxies and plausible deniability to obscure responsibility while steadily applying pressure. Across Europe, infrastructure, aviation systems, and political figures have already been targeted.

The goal is not escalation, but persistence. Shadow Warfare turns conflict into a continuous condition rather than a defined event.

NATO leaders warn current responses may not match the threat, raising the question of whether more proactive measures are needed.

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03/30/2026

Russia’s shadow war is no longer subtle, it is accelerating across NATO’s eastern flank.

From drone incursions over Nordic and Baltic states to airspace violations and large-scale military drills, Moscow is testing vulnerabilities while maintaining plausible deniability. These attacks disrupt critical systems, expose weak points, and erode public trust without triggering a clear military response.

Fuad Shahbazov shows that the strategy blends intimidation with ambiguity, allowing Russia to pressure Europe while avoiding direct escalation. As hybrid operations intensify, the challenge for NATO is no longer detection, but responding at speed and scale.

03/30/2026

The Pentagon has cancelled the E-7 Wedgetail, the planned successor to NATO's aging AWACS surveillance aircraft. The official reason is cost, with the price tag rising from $588m to $724m per aircraft. The replacement plan relies on Cold War-era Navy radar planes and space-based sensors built for Golden Dome.

The problem is that Europe cannot simply follow suit. Building a space-based radar and battle management system is a different proposition for the EU than for the US, and the gap between ambition and capability is significant.

Michael Peck warns that the timing is awkward. NATO had planned to buy six E-7s by 2031. Europe's best near-term alternative is Sweden's GlobalEye, which costs roughly half as much but is likely less capable. The Western bloc could most benefit from sharing any single platform. It is choosing to diverge on exactly that one.

03/30/2026

Foreign capital is quietly reshaping America’s tech sector at an unprecedented scale. Since 2025, over $10 trillion in investment commitments, much of it from sovereign wealth funds, has flowed into sectors like AI, energy, and semiconductors.

Elly Rostoum reports that the real risk is not just where the money comes from, but who ultimately influences the technologies underpinning military power. As globally financed private firms take on a larger role in defense innovation, control over critical systems is shifting away from governments toward opaque, transnational ownership structures.

03/29/2026

The shadow war across Europe is no longer covert, it is constant, coordinated, and escalating.

From cyberattacks on major companies to sabotage of cables and railways, Russia and its proxies are probing infrastructure, destabilizing societies, and testing the limits of response. Europe has made progress, especially in cybersecurity, but its defenses remain fragmented and too slow for the pace of the threat.

Marija Golubeva highlights that the core challenge is coordination. National silos and limited data sharing leave gaps that adversaries exploit in real time.

As hybrid attacks grow more integrated and cross-border, Europe’s response must do the same. The shadow war has already begun, and disjointed defenses risk ensuring it continues.

03/28/2026

Russia is not alone in waging shadow warfare. Iran and North Korea are probing democratic systems for vulnerabilities. China employs the same playbook in Europe and Asia, with Taiwan as its most visible target.

The aim in each case is the same: paralyze decision-making and keep retaliation below the threshold of open war. Free societies face a growing array of adversaries who have studied Western inertia and are deliberately exploiting it. The window to respond is narrowing.

03/28/2026

Shadow warfare is no longer a gray-zone threat. It is active, persistent, and already targeting US and European interests.

At a recent House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Christopher Walker outlined how Moscow and Beijing deploy sabotage, cyberattacks, disinformation, and coercion below the threshold of war, exploiting ambiguity to avoid direct retaliation while steadily eroding security and public trust.

The challenge is no longer recognizing the threat. It is responding to it with speed, coordination, and clarity before it becomes something more.

03/27/2026

Russia’s shadow war is no longer confined to Ukraine, but unfolding across Europe.

Moscow is carrying out a sustained campaign of sabotage, drone incursions, cyberattacks, and covert violence designed to degrade infrastructure and weaken political will while staying below the threshold of open war. Samuel Greene and Christopher Walker frame this as a borderless conflict, where attacks on NATO territory, dissidents, and critical systems are all part of the same war, exploiting Western hesitation and fragmented responses to steadily escalate pressure.

03/27/2026

Russia does not view conflict through a binary war-peace lens. In the Kremlin's worldview, the war in Ukraine, covert operations in Europe, and the repression of dissidents abroad are not separate efforts. They are fluid fronts in a single existential struggle.

That outlook has deep roots in Soviet-era concepts of permanent confrontation, in which conflict is not an exception to normal politics. It is its organizing principle. Understanding that is the first step toward responding to it effectively.

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