Europe Is Home Alone
For a long time, the European Union could coast on the success of its single market and common rules. But faced with the imperial threat emanating from Russia and the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House, Europe no longer has any choice but to become a military and political power in its own right.
Europe Must Rearm Now
The growing likelihood of an unhinged Donald Trump returning to power and acting on his threats to withdraw the United States from NATO should serve as a wake-up call for Europe. Instead of hoping for the best, European countries must boost their military spending and establish a robust defense union.
LONDON – Donald Trump’s potential return to the White House in 2025 poses a grave threat to Europe’s security. With war in Ukraine still raging, European countries must shore up their defenses against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s revanchist aggressions before it is too late.
The prospect of an unrestrained and unhinged Trump acting on his threats to abandon the United States’ historic commitment to Europe’s defense is so alarming to most European leaders that they appear to be in denial. But after decisive victories in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, Trump is now almost certain to be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in November’s election. Given that he also leads President Joe Biden in national polls and in many battleground states, his return to power is a real and present danger.
During his first term, Trump repeatedly threatened to withdraw the US from NATO, the military alliance that ensures that the US extends its nuclear umbrella to Europe. He was talked out of it by his senior foreign-policy advisers, notably former National Security Adviser John Bolton. But Trump’s increasingly isolationist rhetoric suggests that, if elected again, he will surround himself with yes-men rather than experienced establishment figures.
While Trump needs congressional approval to withdraw from NATO, he can gut American security guarantees without abandoning the alliance formally. He would merely need to declare that the US would not come to the defense of European countries in the event of an attack. And now he has said just that: far from defending a NATO country that came under Russian attack, he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” if he deemed that the NATO ally in question had not spent enough on defense.
Instead of merely hoping for a best-case scenario in which Biden is re-elected and continues to support Ukraine and uphold America’s defense commitments to its NATO allies, Europe must prepare for the worst. Ideally, these preparations should have started much sooner, either after Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 or following Trump’s election in 2016.
Had the groundwork for a European defense union within NATO been laid a decade ago, the European Union could now be benefiting from the advantages of enhanced collaborative defense research and a more efficient military-procurement strategy. At the very least, more European governments should have followed Poland and Estonia’s lead and greatly increased their defense budgets in the two years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
While it is impossible to turn back the clock, failure to act now would be the height of irresponsibility. For starters, Europe must step up its support for the Ukrainian war effort. With the Republican majority in the US House of Representatives refusing Biden’s request for an additional $60 billion in military aid for Ukraine, that embattled country is running low on weapons and ammunition.
Fortunately, the EU has finally approved a four-year €50 billion ($54 billion) aid package for Ukraine that Hungary’s pro-Putin Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had blocked in December.
Europe should also pledge to support Ukraine for the long haul, even if the US no longer will. If Orbán refuses to go along, the other 26 member states must bypass him and provide Ukraine with the resources it needs.
By now, it is abundantly clear that if Russia is not defeated in Ukraine, Putin will attack other European countries. Already, the Kremlin is working to destabilize European democracies by funding far-right and far-left anti-EU parties and deploying a legion of bots to spread election disinformation on social media. Meanwhile, Putin-backed hackers are targeting critical infrastructure such as electricity grids and government databases, and Russian fighter jets violate Swedish and Estonian airspace.
Consequently, Europe must also boost its defense spending. At a minimum, European countries must meet NATO’s 2%-of-GDP target. In February 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared a Zeitenwende (turning point) in the country’s foreign policy, signaling a renewed commitment to rearmament. But nearly two years later, he has yet to follow through on his promise to invest €100 billion in modernizing the country’s armed forces. Notably, Germany’s defense spending is projected to have reached only 1.2% of GDP in 2023.
More EU funding is also needed. Thierry Breton, the bloc’s commissioner for the internal market, has recently proposed establishing a €100 billion EU defense fund to finance joint defense procurement and ramp up production of arms and ammunition. Breton’s proposal – which likely has the support of French President Emmanuel Macron, his close ally – represents a promising first step.
Given that Europe’s economy dwarfs Russia’s, EU countries could easily produce enough weapons to meet both Ukraine’s defense needs and their own. But since such investments take time and require a sustained commitment from national governments, there is no time to waste.
To be sure, Russia possesses a huge nuclear arsenal. By contrast, only two European countries have nuclear weapons: France and the United Kingdom (which is no longer part of the EU and heavily relies on American technology). Given that Putin has already threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Europe must develop its own nuclear deterrence strategy. But this would require a credible commitment from both France and the UK to use their nuclear capabilities to defend countries like Estonia and Poland.
More controversially, countries that find themselves without the protection of the US nuclear umbrella may feel compelled to acquire their own nuclear arsenals. Ukraine, having surrendered the nuclear weapons that remained on its soil following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, has learned the hard way that security assurances are not enough to deter potential Russian attacks.
Every country with nuclear-power plants and the necessary scientific know-how has the capacity to develop its own weapons relatively quickly. France, moreover, could offer to share its technological expertise with other European countries.
European rearmament may seem drastic, but the stakes are existential. With June’s European Parliament elections fast approaching, defense should be at the top of voters’ minds.
The Trump Effect Takes Europe
If disaster can be averted in this year's US presidential election, a second-term Biden administration will be able to count on a much better partner in Europe, owing to the mobilizing effect of Donald Trump's candidacy. European leaders are finally realizing that they urgently need to get their act together.
MUNICH – Not for the first time, the central figure at this year’s Munich Security Conference was someone not in attendance. This year was Donald Trump’s turn.
Like most participants at this annual “Davos of Defense,” I desperately hope that the presumptive Republican candidate will forever remain a former president. This is not merely out of sympathy for my American friends, who see him as a danger to the future of their republic, but also because I fear what he would do to the global order. As a European, though, I am somewhat grateful for Trump’s existence. Even if he loses the election this November, he could end up becoming the European project’s unwitting savior. He has forced Europeans finally to rethink the core assumptions that have been hamstringing them with regard to the war in Ukraine, Europe’s own defense, and European political unity.
As the war in Ukraine nears the end of its second year with no end in sight, Trump’s candidacy is focusing European minds about what victory and defeat might entail. Everyone’s ideal outcome is for Ukraine to recover all its territory. Watching the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, take the stage in Munich hours after learning of her husband’s death, it was impossible not to recoil at the thought of giving Vladimir Putin even one square inch of Ukraine. But as the war of attrition grinds on, it makes less and less sense to consider the matter only in territorial terms.
After all, an even bigger threat to Ukraine than territorial losses would be a Trump peace plan that both cedes territory and demilitarizes the country, thus leaving it condemned to a perilous state of neutrality. Europeans are waking up to the fact that Ukraine can pursue its European and Western ambitions only through dual accession to NATO and the European Union. As Ivan Krastev argued recently, it may be time to start considering a “West German scenario.”
Trump has also unwittingly lent urgency to the ongoing European debate about defense and security. Just this week in Munich, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen promised to hand over her country’s “entire artillery” to the Ukrainians. More broadly, Europeans have already been contributing more aid (military and otherwise) to Ukraine than the United States has. Ahead of NATO’s summit in Washington in July, 20 of the 22 EU members of the alliance (including Germany) are on track to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense.
True, most of this shift is the result of Putin’s revanchism. But Trump’s recent comments encouraging the Russians to “do whatever the hell they want” with NATO members that refuse to “pay up” have raised the ante. Europeans must not only invest more but also change how the money is spent, not least by overcoming the old psychological divisions between NATO and the EU.
But perhaps Trump’s biggest contribution has been to Europe’s political unity. After he was elected in 2016, many feared the rise of an “illiberal international” that would have brought far-right populist parties in Europe into close alignment with Trump’s White House and Putin’s Kremlin. But if Trump is elected a second time, polling by the European Council on Foreign Relations (to be published soon) shows that he would not be welcomed enthusiastically in most European countries, including even Hungary.
One striking consequence of the war (and of Brexit) lies in the repositioning of many right-wing parties. Most notably, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has carefully moved away from her previous Euroskepticism and made a point of cutting all of Italy’s ties with Putin. In Poland, Donald Tusk’s return to the premiership has united a traditionally skeptical electorate behind the idea of a more cohesive geopolitical Europe. The European Parliament elections in June may well result in a sharp turn to the right; but in many countries, the Trump threat could mobilize voters and help candidates who are rallying behind European sovereignty.
Nor are these dynamics confined to the EU. The United Kingdom will probably elect a new government before the end of the year. In Munich, the Labour Party’s impressive shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, made it clear that he would push hard for the closest possible relationship with Europeans on security and defense issues.
But nobody summed up the Trump effect better than (outgoing) Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who implored Europeans to “stop whining and moaning about Trump,” and start focusing on getting their act together. Given the long-term trajectory of US domestic politics, Europeans would need to do this either way, regardless of who wins this November.
Should disaster be averted this time around, a second-term Biden administration could count on a much better partner in Europe. As many US watchers have noted, Trump is both the biggest threat to American democracy and the most powerful mobilizer of Democratic Party voters. It is a risky business, but there is a chance that the Trump effect could leave the transatlantic order stronger than it has been for a long time.
Will Europe Ever Get Serious About Defense?
At this year’s Munich Security Conference, European leaders missed yet another opportunity to show how they plan to strengthen NATO’s European pillar and develop a robust European defense industry. Yet with the prospect of another Donald Trump presidency looming, there can be no room for such failures.
MUNICH – “Words, words, just words,” sighed one VIP attendee at the Munich Security Conference as representatives of three European Union member states discussed security cooperation. “China will get the message: ‘No need to worry about us here,’” said another about the signals being sent from Bavaria.
A lugubrious mood hung over the entire gathering of policymakers and security experts this past weekend. Leaders seem overwhelmed by the confluence of crises and deepening global challenges; many simply appeared exhausted. The news about Ukraine losing the city of Avdiivka certainly did not help. Ukraine’s ammunition supplies are running low, and no one knows if US President Joe Biden will be able to get another aid package through Congress before the end of his current term. Meanwhile, the death of the imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny further underscored the brutality of Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship in Russia.
But the biggest chill came from the looming prospect of a second Donald Trump presidency, which would weaken NATO and increase tensions with China. The timing could not be worse: Russia may be trying to send nuclear weapons into space, and China’s defense budget has reached record highs. On the conference stage, the dialogue was mostly about reassuring European allies (as it is every year). In the corridors, however, US participants warned their friends that they should start preparing to take care of themselves.
Unfortunately, Europe’s governments are proving unequal to the task – and this despite a large land war on the continent, the threat of a regional war in the Middle East, increasing fragility in the Western Balkans, and hybrid warfare reaching deep into European societies. “Without security, everything else is nothing,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. How right he is.
The situation looked much better just one year ago. Inspired by President Volodymyr Zelensky and his fellow Ukrainians’ show of courage, Western democracies had united in support behind the Ukrainians as they entered the second year of full-on war. Military and financial aid had taken off, and the transatlantic partnership was as strong as it had been in many years. There was great hope for the expected summer offensive that the Ukrainian military was going to launch with Western support.
Now, the mood is bleak, and Europe’s strategic challenges are multiplying. It must bolster its economic security in the face of a more assertive China, improve relations with other countries beyond NATO, and build up its own defense. European leaders urgently need a plan to meet these goals.
Yet while European Commission officials and the leaders of smaller EU member states (such as the Baltics) came to Munich with a strong sense of purpose, many others were missing in action. Notably, French President Emmanuel Macron and Poland’s newly elected prime minister, Donald Tusk, both stayed home. Scholz could have invited them to a Weimar Triangle meeting among three of the EU’s largest defense spenders and supporters of Ukraine. That might have sent a powerful message.
Germany itself has come a long way. In addition to establishing a €100 billion ($108 billion) fund to comply with the NATO defense-spending target (2% of GDP), it is also Europe’s largest source of aid to Ukraine, and the first country to send a permanent combat brigade to Lithuania to strengthen NATO’s eastern flank.
These moves form a strong foundation on which to build – if there is effective leadership. Suppose a few EU leaders had come to Munich with a coordinated message about how to move ahead with defense cooperation, or even an endorsement of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal to create a defense commissioner position. That could have helped change the tone ahead of the European Parliament elections in June. Of course, as the leader who will top the European Peoples’ Party (EPP) list in the elections, von der Leyen herself also could have played a larger and more public role in setting stronger European defense goals.
This overall lack of leadership and coordination almost buried some recent good news. Just ahead of the Munich conference, Ukraine signed new long-term support agreements with the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. But this was another missed opportunity. Why not make a bigger show of the three largest European countries reaffirming their commitments to Ukraine? And why not use the occasion to develop a concrete plan to meet Ukraine’s dire need for ammunition and to cut off Russian procurement of equipment for its troops?
Munich could have been where European leaders stood up to say: “If others step away, we will step up.” Instead, the message one heard most often from Europeans and Americans alike was, “Democracy takes time.” While true in principle, Ukraine does not have time for such fecklessness. Security, freedom, democracy, rule of law, and human dignity are all on the line in Ukraine. As Zelensky put it, “Dictators do not go on vacation.”
All told, European leaders missed yet another opportunity to show how they plan to strengthen NATO’s European pillar, establish greater deterrence on the continent, stabilize their neighborhood, and develop a robust European defense industry – that is, how to see to their own security.
Yet Europe is facing a determined aggressor who will surely continue his provocations. Only if the West effectively backs Ukraine will Putin understand that he is doomed to fail. The situation demands short-term action and long-term engagement – all of which calls for a different leadership mindset. Most European citizens would be receptive to a change in tone before the European elections. After all, a recent Eupinions poll shows 87% support for stronger security and defense cooperation.
The next opportunity for European leaders to show that they are serious will be at NATO’s summit in July. If Europe does not pull itself together on defense, 2024 may be remembered as the year when Ukraine was abandoned, and the transatlantic alliance shattered, with dire consequences for Europe and the world.
BERLIN – Europe’s situation in 2024 is difficult, even dangerous. In Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression – an effort to wipe the country off the map and annex its territory – is entering its third year. In the United States, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for November’s presidential election, is making wild threats against America’s longstanding allies, even encouraging Putin to attack European countries that do not spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense.
If Trump wins in November, it would probably be the end of NATO and the American security guarantee. Europe would be completely on its own, trapped between an imperial Russian neighbor and an isolationist America on the other side of the Atlantic. Making matters worse, Europeans continue to cling desperately to an inherited grouping of “sovereign” nation-states, even though most are sovereign only on paper, because they are too weak to face current geopolitical realities on their own.
The situation demands greater European unity: namely, a common foreign policy, a joint military capability, a European nuclear umbrella, and everything else that forms the basis of meaningful sovereign power in the twenty-first century. Europeans, however, remain unwilling to accept this fact.
Europe is economically prosperous, technologically and scientifically advanced, and generally a good place to live (with strong democracies and the rule of law); but it is not a major power. That is a status it still needs to achieve, and it must do so quickly under the pressure of current events. The clear and present danger that Putin poses apparently has not been sufficient. Will the additional threat emanating from Trump do the trick?
Judging by past experience, it is easy to be pessimistic in this respect. Russia’s war has been going on for two years, and Europe still has not really come to terms with the fact that a great power is once again pursuing an imperial, predatory aggression against a smaller, peaceful neighbor. Apart from the East Europeans and the Scandinavians, most people in most European countries – including the political class – harbor illusions anchored in the bygone era of the post-1989 peace.
This mindset has had real-world consequences. Europe lacks ammunition, air defenses, heavy equipment, and almost everything else that Ukraine needs to defend itself effectively. And now, there is a growing risk that US assistance for Ukraine will end, owing to Trump’s isolationist stranglehold on the Republican Party.
Yet there is much more at stake in Ukraine than its own people’s freedom and sovereignty. The future of a democratic Europe itself is now in question. Putin wants a large-scale territorial revision of the post-Cold War map, to ensure Russia’s predominance and restore its status as a global power. He will do whatever it takes to achieve that objective, and he almost certainly will not be satisfied with taking only Ukraine. Russia has converted into a war economy, and Europe must take that fact seriously.
As for Trump’s recent threat, it should come as no surprise. During his first term, Trump told the Europeans that he considers NATO obsolete, arguing that it has been kept alive at America’s expense, and that the US should quit it. The European response since then has been to cling recklessly to the status quo, as if nothing had changed. Now, Europe must make up for lost time as it prepares for the worst-case scenario: another Trump inauguration next January.
For a long time, the European Union could coast on the success of its single market and common rules. But faced with the imperial threat emanating from Russia and the danger of being abandoned by the US, it will have to become a military and political power in its own right. That means stepping up coordinated rearmament efforts to improve its own defense readiness and deterrence capabilities. The EU must bring the same focus and energy to bear on the goal of common security that it did on its successful economic modernization.
Let’s not fool ourselves: Putin and Trump – both separately and together – are forcing a historic paradigm shift in Europe. While prosperity and social protection remain important, Europe’s security will have to be the top priority on the agenda for years, and perhaps even decades, to come.
In the best-case scenario, the transatlantic alliance remains in place after the US elections. But we shouldn’t bet on it. Europe must firmly commit to strengthening its defense capabilities, because it has a neighbor that poses a long-term military threat and simply cannot be trusted. Continued European naivete could prove fatal.