Council of Europe head says European countries are ‘not really well-prepared’ to confront ‘the challenge of hybrid threats’ from Russia: ‘It is evolving quite rapidly, and we need to adapt’

The Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, Alain Berset, told Newsweek in an interview on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York that European nations remain inadequately prepared to confront modern hybrid warfare tactics associated with a potential broader confrontation with Russia.

“We are not really well-prepared for this, to be honest,” Berset said, adding that European countries must “evolve to confront, to face, the challenge of hybrid threats.”

Background on the warning

Berset, a two-time former president of Switzerland, has led the Council of Europe — the continent’s oldest and largest intergovernmental organization, comprising 46 member states — since assuming the role of Secretary-General on September 18, 2024.

In the interview with Newsweek, he pointed to the Russia-Ukraine war as evidence of how rapidly armed conflict has changed, with tanks and other conventional weapons increasingly supplemented or replaced by drones capable of inflicting damage at greater range and lower cost.

“It is evolving quite rapidly and we need to adapt to this,” Berset told Newsweek.

He said the threat extends well beyond the battlefield, noting that drones and airspace incursions represent only part of the challenge.

“The most important thing in this context I think it is about information and about infrastructure and information manipulation and information interference,” Berset said.

Asked about Europe’s vulnerabilities, Berset acknowledged “some weaknesses, probably in the energy systems, in the security system, in infrastructure in general.” He said the continent was still working to keep pace with the changing threat landscape.

“And I think maybe we are not well-prepared for this,” Berset said. “But it is an evolution.”

Europe’s two-fold task

Berset told Newsweek that despite the scale of the challenge, there are signs Europe is moving in the right direction.

“On the very short term, I think we are maybe seeing that there is a gap between what is needed and what we have,” he said. “But at the same time, if we consider the recent evolutions, let’s just say the last two or three years, I mean the institutional evolution is huge.”

He cited decisions by European governments to build greater independence and strength in arms and defense production as evidence of progress.

Defense spending among the 27 European Union member states — all of which also belong to the Council of Europe — is projected to exceed $516 billion this year, a 75 percent increase from five years earlier. The EU’s ReArm Europe Plan, also known as Readiness 2030, aims to mobilize up to $800 billion in additional defense investment.

Berset argued that military spending must be matched by investment in democratic institutions.

“We need the same resolve through the investment for democratic security and democratic values and strong institutions,” he told Newsweek.

He warned that while European countries are investing heavily in armies and armaments, they are simultaneously experiencing “a strong backsliding in democratic values and the quality of debates everywhere,” a trend he said risks producing “over-armed countries” with “no democratic control” to restrain them.

His proposed remedy is a framework he calls “democratic security.”

“It means to have a comprehensive approach where we have democratic institutions in a country able to control what’s happening and not having an extremist group winning elections somewhere because of manipulations, or a lot of other reasons and then taking control of super well-armed armies,” Berset said.

Political backsliding across the continent

Berset’s comments to Newsweek came amid gains for nationalist and populist political movements across Europe.

The far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party posted a historic showing in state elections in northeastern Germany this month, putting the party within reach of a governing majority for the first time in the country since World War II. Similar nationalist and populist momentum has been recorded in Austria, France and the Netherlands.

Berset told Newsweek that such political disruption is not unprecedented in European history, describing it as part of the “living body” of European democracy.

He said the resilience of that democracy lies in its capacity to “absorb shocks,” citing the 2008 financial crisis, rising inequality, sovereign debt crises, Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, the subsequent rise of populist parties and the COVID-19 pandemic as a compounding sequence of destabilizing events.

He added that the acceleration of social media, artificial intelligence and deepfake technology, alongside expert forecasts assigning a 10 percent to 20 percent probability to human extinction risk, has left citizens struggling to make sense of the world.

“When I was young, it was bright. It was quite clear. It was like a highway,” Berset said. “Now, it’s impossible to predict what will happen in three or five years.”

Berset told Newsweek the Council of Europe’s strategy is not aimed at restoring the past but at building new tools to defend democratic principles without infringing on free speech.

“It is a balance not easy to find,” he said. “Because the first reaction when we are not well prepared is to police speech, is to ban parties, is arrest people and everything is OK, but you are creating the next wave of problems with this.”

The shifting U.S. position

Berset told Newsweek that one factor distinguishing the current period from past European crises is the changing posture of the United States.

President Donald Trump has pushed European governments to take on a greater share of their own defense burden while criticizing the liberal politics he associates with his domestic political opponents. Trump has at times directly praised nationalist movements, including the AfD, describing the party’s strong showing as a reaction to “horrible immigration rules and regulations.”

He has also questioned U.S. security commitments to Europe, including threatening to withdraw from NATO, while downplaying warnings from European leaders about the risk of Russian escalation.

Berset, who recently traveled to Washington, D.C., for talks on the state of relations with the United States — an observer state at the Council of Europe — told Newsweek that “we have all been surprised by this new way of doing politics.”

He characterized Trump’s approach as an effort at “maybe making the world a bit unstable, not to create instability, but to create a context where things are moving and it is possible to make some deals.”

Even so, Berset said the transatlantic relationship remains essential, questioning the logic of any pivot by Europe toward China, Russia or the BRICS bloc.

“I think that it is an evolution and I think there is no way back and also no necessity to have a way back,” he told Newsweek. “The question is and it is for the U.S. and for Europe and for others, what can we do to create a stable and productive environment? Because this instability that we have now, I’m not sure that it is very productive on the long term for the economic development.”

Berset added that Europe’s collective strength is “quite strongly underestimated,” pointing to the fact that 27 EU nations largely share a single currency and a common body of law as evidence that the continent can act as a unified bloc.

He said he hopes European governments can set aside their differences to address shared challenges “taking into account the hard realities, geography, energy access, health, education, defense and security and demographics.”

Berset told Newsweek: “Maybe it’s too optimistic. But I think that if we just have a look at the history, optimism was in the very most cases the right option.”