Europe Is Significantly Boosting Its Defense Spending. Can the Continent Become a Military Superpower?
In effect, they could spend far less and still achieve much more. It’s the twin dynamics of seeing this rapid increase in spending, with this strong incentive to spend better and to really think about this as a European issue — as part of European integration.
Security has long been the purview of nation-states, and to see a reconceptualization of EU security and defense so firmly focused on the integration piece — the pooling of sovereignty — is tremendous.
There was an op-ed in the New York Times recently arguing that this shift is a mistake — that Europe’s pursuit of ‘superpower’ status would put a strain on social budgets; that its vision can’t be realized as an economic engine due to inefficiencies. Do you agree? What do you think is behind it?
I think what’s driving this change is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the uncertainty Trump has caused after he threatened not to abide by Article 5, NATO’s collective defense guarantee, and to turn toward Russia. (The latest news, of course, is that he’s turned away from Russia.) I think that’s really what’s driving it.
In that op-ed, which talks about how this defense leap could also jump-start the EU economy, and questioning whether it’s just as much about jump-starting the EU economy as it is defense — I don’t agree with that. It’s a secondary effect of what is without a doubt a true need and vision to become stronger in the face of the Russian threat.
The other narrative you see besides that one is many people saying that the EU is trading off on other goals; that in order to spend so much on defense, it’s giving up on other goals. And I really don’t see that at all. I think that’s an assumption that doesn’t reflect action.
So much of what the EU does in its long-term grand strategy is underway, and it’s well in advance of its goals in terms of reaching its Paris Climate promise. It’s actually ramped up its humanitarian missions and operations, even while facing this new challenge — which is a more traditional threat — in Russia. So, there is a way in which the framing in that Times op-ed is a bit disingenuous.
When did the conversation around beefing up defense start in Europe?
Well, it’s actually part of the EU’s foundation: it is a security project committed to peace. One of the interesting pieces of evidence of this is in 1954, they attempted to create an EU common army and a common defense union.
But that was too much too soon, and ever since then, they have been working towards that more incrementally. And then you had a major breakthrough and formal agreement in 1992, when you had the first Common Foreign and Security Policy, which paved the way for a common defense in 2003.
So, we already had EU troops under an EU flag twentysome years ago; but I think the context was different. The EU, at that point, wrote its first European Security Strategy (its first collective security strategy) in 2003, and it assessed that the challenges they were facing were certainly not traditional boots-on-the-ground, certainly not an attack from Russia. At the time, they really wielded all of their power and resources toward what they thought would be the most pressing necessity, which was peacekeeping, humanitarian action and crisis management.
So, it’s kind of this really long arc of many decades since the birth of the EU, and then this sense that the world isn’t doing what they anticipated it would do. The situation today is much more tenuous, and this strikes at the heart of EU identity.
The EU’s role in the world has been to create and sustain a liberal international order, where you wouldn’t have countries like Russia invading Ukraine, and you wouldn’t have countries like the U.S. turning away from that larger community.
The realization now is that things may pivot — that the EU might have to go back to old school security. But they haven’t deviated from all of the peacekeeping and other actions that they’ve been engaged in all along.
By investing more in defense, do you think European leaders are simultaneously setting themselves up for more conflict — or potentially gearing up to clash with Russia?
I think that the EU is still fundamentally a peace project. So, building up and rearming is not to go to war. The idea is to do this in order to discourage war. But at the same time, as Russia has already aggressively attacked Ukraine, I think the EU will absolutely do whatever it takes to protect Ukrainian sovereignty.
So, if it comes down to it, EU leaders are thinking they may have to use this rearmed posturing to help Ukraine. But the last thing it wants is to have to deal with Russia directly, and they hope that Russia will not attack an EU member state. If it does, they will be prepared to respond.
It is possible down the road, if things do return to where leaders really want them to be in foreign policy terms, which is dealing with humanitarian crises, peacekeeping and stability — that there will be ways in which this effort can contribute to those goals down the road.
It’s interesting times, but it does recall that idea of a defense union back in 1954. In order to have a union like that, you need to have the wherewithal to act.
Tanner Stening is Northeastern Global News reporter. The article was originally posted to the website of Northeastern University.
