Defense Experts Clash Over Escalation Risk to Europe

Two of Belgium’s most prominent defense voices have publicly split over whether Europe’s military support for Ukraine risks drawing the continent into a direct war with Russia — a debate that unfolded just as Russian strikes landed within kilometers of the Polish border.

In an exclusive double interview published by Het Laatste Nieuws on 13 September, Tom Sauer, a professor of international politics at the University of Antwerp, and Michelle Haas, a defense researcher at Ghent University and the Egmont Institute, laid out sharply opposing readings of the war and its trajectory. The exchange took place at the Army Museum in Brussels.

A Reversal on the Record

The headline moment came from Sauer, a nuclear weapons expert long known for arguing that suggestions Russia would attack a NATO country were “absurd.” He now says the opposite.

“If we do what some journalists are proposing today, I think there is indeed a chance that Russia will attack the EU and NATO,” he told HLN, referring to proposals to shoot down Russian missiles from European territory. “Then we are at war with Russia. It is insane, what I sometimes read.” He added: “And now I say, for the first time — and you have the scoop — that it could happen. Because there is escalation underway, partly fueled by Western experts and journalists.”

Sauer argues Russia is winning slowly on the battlefield and that the only realistic end is negotiation. “The only way this ends, unless one of the two sides is totally defeated — and I do not see that happening — is through negotiation,” he said, noting he has called for talks for four years.

Haas counters that Russia believes time is on its side and that the costs imposed on Moscow are not yet high enough to change its position. “To reach a diplomatic solution, both parties should actually think: we have nothing more to gain from continuing this war,” she said. “We are not there yet.”

A Contested History of Missed Chances

The two diverge sharply on the 2022 Istanbul talks, a pivotal moment invoked as evidence that the war could have ended early. Sauer claims Putin phoned Zelensky shortly after the invasion to negotiate, that talks in Istanbul advanced far, and that Ukraine was willing to forswear NATO membership. He blames then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson for flying to Kyiv to tell Zelensky not to sign.

Haas disputes that account as too simple. “Do you believe that if they had not done that, Russia would have stopped?” she asked. “Russia set conditions that were simply unacceptable, also for Ukraine. That the war could have been stopped at that moment, I do not believe.”

On the question of incentives, Sauer proposes offering Putin a “positive scenario” — sanctions relief and renewed economic ties with the US and EU once a ceasefire holds — while Haas recoils at rewarding a state firing roughly 200 ballistic missiles a month at Ukraine. “I do not think he acts that rationally,” she said of Putin. Sauer laughed and replied that he believes Putin acts very rationally indeed.

The Hybrid Campaign and the Border

Haas points to a wider hybrid campaign against Europe — espionage and sabotage — in which Russia is one actor, with intelligence reports increasingly pointing to Moscow. That concern was underscored the same day the interview appeared. According to HLN, Russian attacks struck near the Ukraine-Poland border at Yahodyn, hitting a fuel station and a locomotive about two kilometers from Polish territory. Poland scrambled fighter jets in response.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called the strikes “Putin’s terror knocking directly on the doors of the EU and NATO.” No violation of Polish airspace was detected.

The timing sharpened the central question of the interview: how close is the war to Europe’s own borders, and does Europe’s response lower or raise that risk?

The Failed Peace Mission Behind the Debate

The exchange followed another fruitless diplomatic push. US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Putin in Moscow for roughly three hours and then traveled to Kyiv to see Zelensky — producing no breakthrough. As VRT NWS reported, Russia expert Marijn Trio said “no rapprochement is visible at this moment,” describing Putin as intransigent and insistent on the full Donbas, which Ukraine deems unacceptable.

Zelensky has said he wants to negotiate but that Putin holds back, while Trio warned the conflict is escalating further and the Ukrainian population is increasingly exhausted.

The Money and the Politics

Sauer also challenges the scale of Europe’s military buildup. He notes that well-armed European NATO members together spend some €550 billion a year on defense, and that Belgium alone is moving from 1.3% to 2% of GDP — about €14 billion annually. “The more we spend on defense, the less remains for other things,” he said, arguing that public resentment over diverted funds is driving voters toward radical parties. He adds that both Ukraine and Russia must feel secure, or Europe faces “a new Cold War.”

Haas warns the opposite risk: rebuilding economic dependence on Russia, or failing to invest in defense, would leave Europe vulnerable. “Not in combination with making ourselves vulnerable,” she said. “And that is exactly what we do if we rebuild economic dependence on Russia or do not invest in defense.”

What to Watch

Sauer cites nearly two million soldiers killed or wounded and warns that Ukraine is short on Patriot interceptors and that many young people no longer want to fight. Haas expects the war to continue into the winter, as Zelensky has predicted.

The interview, published with 70 reader comments, captures a genuine fault line in European thinking: whether arming Ukraine deters escalation or invites it. For now, with diplomacy stalled and strikes edging toward NATO’s eastern flank, both experts agree on little beyond the stakes — the war shows no sign of ending soon.