Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, Chair of the NATO Military Committee, speaking at a press briefing in Copenhagen on September 19, 2026, described the Alliance’s readiness plans for NATO’s eastern flank.
We have three of them, and they are there to make sure we are ready in case of an escalation in that region.
They lay out specific actions, movements and response measures. Everything is largely standardized, so as to speed up the decision-making process as much as possible. And all of this work has already begun. We have 4,000 pages of plans for the eastern flank, covering the full spectrum of situations — from a minor crisis or incursion on our territory, to the invocation of Article 5 and everything that follows.
The Alliance is ready. The command structure is ready. The personnel, the systems and the weapons are ready. Of course, we are increasing their numbers on one hand, and raising their technological level on the other, to keep pace with the changing nature of the threat. But everything we need is already there. And that’s how it should be — this Alliance is 77 years old, and it has been adapting to changing threats the whole time.
So if we are attacked, we know what to do. And I can tell you that today, if they attack, they stand to lose far more than they could gain. That much is certain. That is what deterrence is.
