Not only were we witnessing a brutal return to the power politics of “iron and blood” in Europe, but we were also seeing a new form of state-on-state warfare. Rather than merely applying brute force, Russia instead undermined the integrity of Crimea from within and without the need for a conventional attack. I watched the clips on CNN and BBC News 24 on the widescreen TV in my office in SHAPE. It showed soldiers in green uniforms, with no identifying unit insignia, faces obscured with balaclava helmets, driving similarly unidentified vehicles. As my fellow commanders and I watched, we all knew who those vehicles belonged to and who was operating them—but proving it was another thing. It was highly professional and expertly implemented and we couldn’t even consider doing anything to counter it as Ukraine was not a member of NATO.

In the days that followed we received regular updates from NATO’s Intelligence Fusion Centre, as they listed the Russian tank armies and airborne divisions now preparing to invade the rest of Ukraine. At the same time, we witnessed an unprecedented buildup of Russian forces on the borders of the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Now this was very much our concern, as “the Baltics”—as NATO refers to them—had been NATO members since 2004.

Then President Putin spoke in the Kremlin on 18 March 2014 and formally admitted Crimea into the Russian Federation.

The next morning I sat with my direct boss General Phil Breedlove, US Air Force and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, the SACEUR, for the daily operational update in the Comprehensive Crisis Operations Management Centre at the heart of SHAPE, which is NATO’s strategic military headquarters. This newly refurbished, state-of-the-art command center was built to replace an old-style Cold War bunker. It is NATO’s strategic nerve center and it is specifically designed for the challenges of twenty-first century conflict. Manned by its mixed military and civilian staff from the twenty-eight nations of the Alliance, it is also able to integrate its planning with the multitude of different international organizations and other agencies with whom NATO does its essential business. With its banks of computers, multiple media feeds from different 24-hour news channels and social media, and its real time satellite and drone surveillance imagery, it allows SHAPE’s Command Group to think, plan, and act strategically.

The glass walls and open-plan architecture of the brightly lit conference room made the atmosphere more like the trading floor of a New York investment bank than a traditional military headquarters, as successive “briefers” outlined the developing situation on the ground to the Command Group and its supporting staff.