Jaanika Merilo
Visiting lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Security Sciences
It is high time for Europe to step up and forge a strategy that is grounded in reality, backed by commensurate budgets, and that embraces innovative solutions. The war in Ukraine has shown that modern war is a hybrid war that has no geographical borders.
Russian government-backed cyber attacks are hitting Ukraine’s allies, with impunity, causing real financial damage and weakening public trust in governments. We keep investing in passive defense while seemingly not having an extensive enough action plan for fostering and developing these innovative solutions that support our systems and countries in this new type of war. We cannot and should not just rely on the United States stepping up—the first lines of defense are the first kilometers of NATO.
It is encouraging that the Baltic countries, forming the first line of defense with Poland, have realized the full extent of the potential danger and have started thinking about how not only to increase budgets and readiness for conventional warfare but also how to support innovation in drones, surveillance, intelligence, and cyber defense. It is imperative that the conventional defense powerhouses of Europe follow.
Anand Menon
Director of UK in a Changing Europe
Talking a good game. It is perhaps what Europe does best, especially on security. There has been no lack of rhetoric about the way Europeans have been preparing for a second Donald Trump presidency. Reality, however, lags some way behind.
If Europe really had prepared for this U.S. electoral outcome, they’d have started when Trump was first elected. Lead times when it comes to defense capabilities are long, and changes cannot be made overnight. It is not merely a question of spending more. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has seen some increases in defense expenditure on the part of European states. What’s needed is to ensure that cash is spent in the right way, avoiding duplication and fragmentation. This remains an elusive goal, not least because of the significant political and economic pressure on governments to protect indigenous industries however uncompetitive they might be.
We have been here before. Europeans have become adept at declaring that the moment has come for them to do more to ensure their own security. The problem is that it is far too late to turn good intentions into outcomes should Trump really decide that the era of European dependence on American military power should come to an end.
Georgina Wright
Senior fellow and deputy director for international studies at Institut Montaigne
Europeans don’t have a choice but lack the political courage. Nor have they shown themselves capable of bold common strategic thinking. To change this, leaders would need to make defense spending a priority and be honest with citizens about the trade-offs. To guarantee democratic support, they need to be willing to debate those who oppose more defense spending at home. This has already happened in Poland and the Baltics. There has even been a change in rhetoric in Denmark and Luxembourg. But countries like France and Germany are lagging and more needs to be done.
Similarly, Europe has had three years to step up arms production since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet it is lagging. A pragmatic approach is necessary: increasing procurement and helping businesses to meet demand through supply-chain guarantees and long-term contracts; purchasing European arms first while remaining open to buying foreign arms when necessary; and letting the EU use its budget or bonds to support joint efforts.
It will require a change of mindset – to act as if the United States had already withdrawn from Europe. The irony is that Washington is more likely to continue to extend its security umbrella if we can credibly demonstrate what we can bring to the table.
Erik Brattberg
Senior vice president at Albright Stonebridge Group
The writing has been on the wall for years, but Europe kept ignoring the warning signs. As a result, Europe finds itself today more—not less—dependent on Washington for security amid Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
Donald Trump’s overwhelming election victory means Europe cannot muddle through as the United States keeps shifting strategic attention and resources elsewhere. But even doing the bare minimum—such as scaling up support for Ukraine in anticipation of a Trump “peace deal” between Kyiv and Moscow, pledging to spend at least 3 percent of GDP on defense, or agreeing on a €100 billon EU defense fund—will likely prove a tall order.
While Poland and the Nordic and Baltic states are leading the way, Germany is in disarray, France lacks the fiscal space, and the UK is still unsure about its relationship with Europe. European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen has good ambitions, but EU unity is lacking.
Rather than wasting time on theoretical debates about strategic autonomy, European capitals must quickly come up with an actionable plan for doing significantly more on defense with the goal of keeping the United States under Trump engaged in European security while building a stronger European pillar inside NATO through enhanced EU defense efforts and sub-regional cooperation between key European allies.
Oana Lungescu
Distinguished fellow at the Royal United Services Institute
It’s all about the money. Most NATO countries have taken a decade to start investing at least 2 percent of GDP in defense. Some—including Spain, Italy, and Belgium—still haven’t hit the mark, while others—such as Germany—may not be able to sustain it. European leaders must remind their publics that the world today is more dangerous than it has been in generations, that during the Cold War defense spending averaged 4 percent—which only Poland reaches today—and that any reduction of U.S. defense support would mean spending significantly more.
So Europeans should move quickly toward investing 3 percent of GDP on defense, not just to show Donald Trump that they are equalizing what the United States is doing, but in order to implement NATO’s new ambitious defense plans and to strengthen the combat capabilities that both Europe and Ukraine urgently need. Closer NATO-EU cooperation, as announced by the new leadership of both organizations, is welcome. The reality is that Europe alone is much more vulnerable than America alone, so it’s in the interest of the Europeans not just to reduce reliance on the United States but to invest even more in what keeps Europe and America together.
Nicolai von Ondarza
Head of research at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP)
Europe’s security cannot hinge on a few thousand U.S. swing-state voters every four years—this is almost conventional wisdom by now. Yet, Europeans have so far failed to learn from repeated wake-up calls. In a combination of learned helplessness, fiscal pressures and distrust in joint financing, competing national interests and the ever-present intellectual trap of pitting the EU and NATO against each other, Europe is hardly any more capable of guaranteeing its own security today than it was in 2016.
Given the Russian war against Ukraine, the stakes for European security are higher, but the conditions are more difficult, too: the governments in France and Germany are weak, the UK has left the EU, and while Poland as well as the Nordic and Baltic states have invested in their security, they have also become more distrustful of their Western European allies.
Given past form, the most likely reaction to Donald Trump’s victory is therefore one of hanging separately, of European nations competing for Trump’s favor in a transactional world. To achieve the opposite, a real miracle of European political leadership would be required—one that overcomes the EU-NATO divide and the tensions between fiscal rules and defense expenditure, and one that brings about tangible joint investment in Ukraine und European military capabilities.
Judy Dempsey
Nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie Europe
No. Europeans won’t and can’t.
They won’t because the big member states—Germany, France, and Italy—are determined to protect their own national armaments industries. All the talk over the years about pooling and sharing resources and common procurement efforts has yielded little.
Tell Poland. It is rapidly building up its defense infrastructure by purchasing American kits. When Warsaw wanted to shop elsewhere, like in South Korea, it came under huge pressure from Washington not to do so. This is an important point. The United States wants Europe to take more responsibility for its defense but not at America’s military industrial expense. It is a major military supplier of components to many European countries. Making that break would take time and a political will for Europe to build up a common defense and procurement strategy.
But Europeans can’t make that leap. The member states refuse to unify their weapons systems, be it tanks, helicopters, fighter aircraft—not to mention the chaotic state of logistics. More fundamentally, the EU member states don’t have a common threat perception, despite the war in Ukraine and the turmoil in the Middle East, to pull together and think defense, security, and strategy. What a lack of foresight.
Jeremy Cliffe
Editorial director and senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations
Europe is more than rich enough to fund its own security. Voters largely get the need to do more. And ample blueprints for action already exist, not least the recent trio of reports by Enrico Letta, Mario Draghi, and Sauli Niinistö. Why, then, are its efforts to date so fragmented and paltry?
Fundamentally, it comes down to leadership. A more self-sufficient Europe needs: one or more individual leaders strong enough to turn the steering wheel; a powerful “engine” of major states capable of providing momentum; and a compelling argument to citizens about the costs, to keep the endeavour on the road politically. None of these is conspicuously abundant today.
But none is entirely absent either. Where French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz are weak, Ursula von der Leyen is the most powerful European Commission president since Jacques Delors. Where the Franco-German engine is spluttering, there is potential in a wider alliance of core states also including the UK, Poland, Italy, and Spain. And in the Draghi and Letta agendas, and proposals like defense eurobonds, there are practical ideas in the ether for raising the money in politically sustainable ways that do not involve gutting welfare states. The shock of Donald Trump’s victory can, and must, bring those factors together.
Katja Bego
Senior research fellow in the international security program at Chatham House
Though the extent of U.S. retrenchment from the continent remains to be seen, Europe needs to plan for a worst-case scenario. This means assuming Europe will soon be left shouldering most—if not all—of the burden of supporting Ukraine, fending for itself when it comes to defense, and facing a two-front trade war with China and the United States. This at a time when Europe already finds itself in a leadership vacuum, under fiscal constraint, and beset by internal and external crises.
The picture is bleak, and the years ahead will be painful and dangerous. But there are reasons to be hopeful. While several decades of geostrategic atrophy are hard to reverse, we are starting to see meaningful progress toward rebuilding Europe’s defense industrial base and addressing the need for a united front. There is also growing momentum for the incoming European Commission to challenge long-lived orthodoxies around coordinating defense issues at the EU level.
But more is needed. The era of transactional thinking about 2 percent spending targets is over. It is now time to make bold choices on defense integration, to choose European over national champions, and to put the continent’s industrial base on a war footing. Because while we may not be interested in war, war is interested in us.
Benjamin Tallis
Director of the Democratic Strategy Initiative
Yes, we Europeans can significantly reduce our security reliance on the United States. We can build a strong, capabilities-based—and thus credible—European pillar to restore NATO as an alliance, rather than the U.S. protectorate we allowed it to become. It would be the best way to keep the United States—and its critical enablers—invested in European security while we build ourselves up and reduce dependence over time. It would give us the capabilities we need to defend ourselves.
But this will take time that we don’t have and so, in parallel, we need a smarter strategy to compensate for our shortcomings in the short-term, using new military technologies, EU funds, and the new defense commissioner as accelerants. We must also have the hard conversations with allies that are lagging behind—whether from bad judgement or bad faith—and demand they step up or ship out. Playtime is over. Real peer pressure was a part of NATO’s success in the Cold War and it’s a part of alliance politics that we forgot.
Now, we need real leadership and strategy to provide the immaterial infrastructure of courage and will, and so should clearly assess and follow those who are strategic leaders rather than rely on outdated hierarchies.
Ester Sabatino
Research associate for defense and military analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies
It is not a matter of possibility; European countries have to reduce reliance on the United States.
There is uncertainty over what a second Donald Trump presidency means for European security, but it will probably be characterized by a more transactional approach. This requires Europeans to show deeds and become more serious on priorities and goals. Moreover, the fundamentally worsened international security and pervasiveness of the new and varied challenges facing Europe make a changed approached in security necessary regardless of the next U.S. president. The war in Ukraine made this even clearer by highlighting the deficiencies of European partners, from a lack of investment and capabilities, to low and shaky levels of readiness.
NATO-EU countries have substantially increased defense budgets since 2014 and the level of investment profiting European companies grew in the last couple of years. For a real European Zeitenwende to happen, however, more radical changes are needed, starting with long-term budget allocation and national planning as well as more coordinated joint procurements. A long-term vision is essential to allow the defense industrial base to plan investments and ensure their sustainability in the mid- to long-term.
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