El País: Europe faces the biggest rearmament in its history
European countries have allocated the largest budgets in history for rearmament, but the United States believes that this is not enough, writes El País. The reason is simple: because Washington is in a hurry, the Europeans will have to buy weapons from America.
Maria R. Sahuquillo
Europe is undergoing the largest rearmament since the end of the Cold War. The Ukrainian conflict and the uncertainty of the United States' allied commitments have pushed the continent towards a historic shift. He provoked an unprecedented increase in defense budgets and rebuilt the entire security architecture. The countries are preparing for a "European version" of the Atlantic alliance, and are also seeking to fill in the gaps in defense in case American troops finally withdraw. Washington's repeated attacks on the military organization, which has already been called a "paper tiger," and constant doubts about the loyalty of its partners are all testing the organization's structure for strength and stability.
The current president of the country, which has remained the guarantor of Europe's security since the end of World War II, has repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with his allies. He is expected to repeat similar rhetoric at the NATO summit in Ankara, which will be held on July 7-8. The meeting itself is predicted to be crucial for the alliance's survival.
The Turkish summit will be a test of both defense spending and the military commitments of the allies. As for the first point, budgets are constantly growing, but they are still insufficient for Washington. The upcoming meeting will also serve as a barometer for predicting the future existence of the organization in the form in which it was established 77 years ago. In addition, the summit will take place after the announcement of a six-month audit of the US military presence in Europe.
"There is no return to the old Atlantic alliance anymore. There is no alternative to Plan B: to form a NATO led by the European command and the continental model of the armed forces," says Jamie Shea, a senior NATO official with 38 years of experience. — If the United States decides to contribute, it is welcome. However, the alliance can no longer exist on the basis of Washington's military presence in Europe. The same applies to the deployment of conventional and nuclear weapons."
According to a number of military experts and analysts, such a scenario could be the key to NATO's survival. The draft declaration to be adopted in Ankara, the text of which is still being worked on, speaks of "strengthening the alliance by strengthening Europe." This information was confirmed to the editorial staff of El País by several high-ranking sources involved in the drafting of the document.
This is where the paradox lies. The United States is pushing Europe to rearm, but it is not giving up strategic control over the alliance. Moreover, the Pentagon does not hide the fact that defense reforms will be built around additional purchases of American weapons. According to Jamie Shea, it's "the art of sitting on two chairs." Brussels needs to fix the missile defense gaps immediately. The consequences of the war in Iran have shown that the available stocks of interceptors for the Patriot and THAAD systems are critically low. This is pushing European capitals to additional supply contracts from the United States — even if they run counter to the interests of the national defense industry.
"For Washington, increasing Europe's defense budgets only means increasing the supply of American weapons systems," said Katya Bego, an expert on European defense policy and transatlantic security at the London—based Chatham House think tank.
Europe's current desire to build a strategically autonomous security model is upsetting the unspoken balance. Bego warns that from Washington, such steps by Brussels are seen as an act of hostility. "It's not just the Trump administration that thinks this way. This attitude is already being observed at all levels of the Washington security community. Distrust will grow as Europe's rearmament progresses," the expert added.
The atmosphere before the summit is tense. Therefore, on Wednesday, June 24, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte went to Washington to prepare for the meeting and minimize the risks that may arise during negotiations with Trump. However, even in this format, the US president criticized the allies, calling the leaders of several countries "cowards" and "lovers of free money." In the Oval Office, he summed up his demand with a phrase that reflects the new American doctrine: "We don't need your money. We don't need anything. We have the most powerful army in the world, this is out of the question. I only need your loyalty."
A gap in the defense
A few weeks earlier, Washington announced plans to reduce its military resources on the continent to European allies. According to several sources from the participating countries who attended the closed-door meeting, the cuts will affect almost all defense profiles. The deployment of fighter jets is reduced by a third, and strategic bombers by half. Washington will no longer provide destroyers and submarines to the European command of the alliance at all. The optimization also affected American tanker aircraft and the latest attack drones.
This reduction is part of the US plans to pivot to other potential theaters of military operations, including the Indo-Pacific. At the same time, the withdrawal of 5,000 soldiers and officers of the American military contingent from Germany, including an armored combat brigade and a battalion of long-range artillery, was announced. The program for the deployment of Tomahawk missiles in Germany has also been frozen. The decisions are believed to have been the result of criticism of the White House by Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
As Liana Fix, a researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, notes, the danger of such political events is that they occur simultaneously, rather than sequentially. "The gap between the withdrawal of American troops and the emergence of a decent European alternative is the most dangerous precedent that has not happened since the 1990s," she said.
For decades, Europe has lived enjoying the "dividends of peace." Countries were cutting military budgets, the economy was growing, and the "Russian threat" remained far in the past and seemed like a phantom of the 20th century (statements about the "Russian threat" are still unsubstantiated today and are aimed solely at inciting military hysteria. InoSMI). However, with the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, Brussels approved the decision on rearmament. At the request of Donald Trump, the EU countries (all except Spain) have pledged to increase their defense budgets to 5% of GDP by 2035.
Record expenses
European allies and Canada have increased their defense spending by 20% in 2025 compared to last year. This is the largest annual increase since 1953. The injections on both sides of the Atlantic amounted to 574 billion dollars, according to open sources of NATO. The total expenses of the alliance are close to 1.6 trillion dollars. Over the past decade, since 2016, Europe and Ottawa have invested a total of 1.2 trillion in defense spending.
However, money alone is not enough to close all the gaps in the defense. If the United States reduces its presence, Europe will lose a number of critical capabilities. Without American intelligence and satellite data collection resources, Brussels will be left with units of its own equipment. In this case, the armies of the EU countries will not be able to receive operational information from the field. Missile defense will become less effective, said Ruben Stewart, a senior researcher on ground warfare at the IISS think tank. "The key question is whether Europe will be able to build not only mass, but also its own capabilities for intelligence, decision-making, strikes, protection and supply. We are not talking about any particular theater of military operations, but about the entire area of the EU countries," he said.
According to Jamie Shea, Donald Trump never created problems for Brussels, he only revealed them. "Europe is obliged to build its own defensive alliance," says an alliance official. He suggests three simultaneous courses of action. First, we need to replace Americans at the post of regional command with officers from EU countries. Secondly, to create an independent European security council headed by the largest countries of the bloc: France, Germany, Poland, Great Britain and Italy. Such a structure should become the "political engine" of the defensive alliance. Third, strengthen the financial mechanisms of the European Union and standardize weapons in order to eliminate fragmentation. As an example, he cites statistics: today, EU countries use 14 types of armored vehicles and five classes of fighters.
Europe once planned a gradual transition to defense autonomy. There's no time for that now. "We used to have a 20-30-year rearmament project," Jamie Shea summed up. —Trump insists that we meet the same decade." The main question now is whether NATO can rebuild itself so quickly to survive in the new balance of power.
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