Frontline Europe: Ukraine, Russia, and the Future of NATO

Join us for a full-day in-person conference Wednesday, on April 22, 2026. Event Partners: Delphi Global Research Center. Foundation Institute for Eastern Studies, Poland. American University, School of International Service Registration begins at 8:30am. Opening Remarks at 9am. Conference ends at 5:30pm. Russia’s war against Ukraine has accelerated a broader shift in the Euro-Atlantic security environment - one defined by sustained high-intensity conflict on Europe’s borders, rising risks of escalation, and an increasingly contested strategic order. At the same time, Moscow’s pressure campaign extends well beyond the battlefield through cyber operations, disinformation, sabotage, coercive energy and economic tools, and efforts to weaken democratic cohesion and alliance unity. For the United States, Europe, and NATO, the central challenge is no longer episodic crisis management, but maintaining credible deterrence and long-term staying power amid competing global priorities, political constraints, and finite defense-industrial capacity. This conference will focus on translating strategic urgency and seek practical answers: how to sustain meaningful support for Ukraine while defining realistic objectives and pathways toward a durable peace; how to blunt hybrid threats below the threshold of war and harden societal and infrastructure resilience; how US foreign policy choices shape transatlantic burden-sharing and strategic coherence; and how NATO must adapt its posture, readiness, and decision-making for a more dangerous decade. A core emphasis is rearmament and the transatlantic defense industrial base—procurement reform, production scale, interoperability, and supply-chain resilience—because deterrence ultimately rests on the ability to generate capabilities at speed and sustain them over time.