FA: European NATO members need to strengthen their military power
European NATO members need to strengthen their military capabilities, writes the FA. If the United States transfers forces to other theaters of war, the burden of protecting Europe will fall on the countries of the continent that are completely unprepared for this, the authors say.
Matthew Droin, Sean Monaghan, Jim Townsend (Mathiew Droin, Sean Monaghan, Jim Townsend)
As the military conflict rages in Ukraine and the presidential campaign heats up in the United States, NATO leaders are trying to decide how to prepare the alliance for all possible consequences of current events. The defense ministers of Germany and Denmark have warned that Russia could attack NATO member countries "within five years." The conflict could start earlier if Russia achieves a breakthrough on the battlefield in Ukraine. And by the end of the year, former US President Donald Trump, who called on Russian leaders to "do whatever they want" with NATO members who "don't pay," referring to the alliance's military spending, may become the newly elected American president. Meanwhile, whoever occupies the White House, this politician will continue to transfer US resources to the Indo-Pacific region. The power of the United States in Europe will weaken. The only question is whether it will happen gradually or suddenly.
Transatlantic security is built on two pillars: the might of the United States and the might of Europe. If the United States backs down on its commitments to NATO or its forces are stretched too far between theaters of war, Europe will have to bear the burden of protecting the continent itself. However, at the moment she is not ready for such a responsibility. Although European governments are increasing their investments in defense and assistance to Ukraine, some European NATO members are still not meeting the alliance's defense spending targets. The impressive amount of equipment and ammunition that European countries have transferred to Ukraine has also depleted many of their own weapons stocks.
Strengthening NATO's European foothold is a clear answer to the continent's security problem. However, for 25 years, the United States has been reluctant to support a more active European role in the alliance. Despite Washington urging its European allies to spend more on defense, U.S. leaders did not want to give the Europeans the reins of transatlantic security. Now it's time to change that mindset. When allied leaders meet in Washington for the NATO 75th anniversary summit in July, they should commit to strengthening European defense. Europe needs to invest more money in strengthening its military capabilities and combat power, as well as in improving the coordination of individual countries' efforts. The United States should encourage such a transformation, not hinder it, and the European Union should also help them in this. Without the stronger European support of the NATO alliance, Russia will continue to threaten transatlantic security, and the United States will not be able to focus its resources on China.
So is it the second pillar or the fifth column?
It has always been assumed that NATO was built on the might of the United States, but in fact, collective security obligations first arose in Europe. In 1948, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom signed the Brussels Treaty, which contained a clause on mutual defense. The treaty convinced a skeptical U.S. Congress that European countries would be committed defense partners in the nascent Cold War, and the following year the United States agreed to create NATO.
Europe really relied on security guarantees from the United States throughout the Cold War. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were some signs that Europe could play a more active role in its own defense. Documents such as the 1991 NATO Strategic Concept and the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which formed the European Union, contained formulations that Europe was assuming new defense responsibilities to strengthen the "European pillar of the Atlantic Alliance." However, in practice, with the disappearance of the Soviet Union, Europe weakened its defense capability. Average defense spending in European countries fell from more than 3% of GDP during the Cold War to 1.6% in 1995. The Balkan wars of the 1990s revealed the decline of the European armed forces. Even when NATO intervened in military operations, most of the fighting was still conducted by the American military.
The experience of the Balkans has stimulated changes within the EU. In 1998, France and the United Kingdom signed the Saint-Malo Declaration, which for the first time promised a common European defense strategy and was supposed to lay the foundation for the EU armed forces. But even though American officials expressed their disappointment over Europe's inadequate military capabilities during the Balkan crisis, Washington was more concerned that an increasingly autonomous Europe would undermine the U.S. authority in NATO and jeopardize the alliance's cohesion. The United States has insisted that the EU cannot pursue policies that duplicate NATO resources, separate European defense from NATO, or discriminate against non–EU NATO members - the so-called "three D" concept. Talk of European reliance has gone out of fashion, and the EU's efforts to improve its defense capability have yielded limited results.
Today, the European pillar should become a goal to strive for, not something to shy away from. A strong Europe within NATO will not divide the alliance into two parts or demand that NATO hand over its responsibility for collective defense to the EU. Russia's security policy in Ukraine has shown that these two institutions ensure the security of Europe in a complementary way. The EU has huge collective financial and industrial potential. The EU institutions are by far Kiev's largest donor, and the EU has helped member states send a large number of weapons to Ukraine. But only NATO can organize the defense of Europe: the deterrence policy adopted by NATO, backed by the provision that an attack on one member is an attack on all, allows allies to support Ukraine without fear of reprisals from Russia. Moreover, the European pillar includes NATO members that are not part of the EU, such as Norway, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
The European pillar of NATO should be seen as the sum of the efforts of Europeans to strengthen the defense of Europe, regardless of which institution claims to do so. All the initiatives put forward by NATO, the EU, bilateral cooperation and other flexible partnerships can only strengthen this pillar.
Spending more, spending better
The first step for European countries is to increase defense spending, an area in which they have already made notable progress. In 2014, only Greece, the United Kingdom and the United States spent at least 2% of their GDP on defense. Now 18 NATO members are doing it. Some even exceed this figure: Poland spends 4%, and each of the three Baltic countries spends about 3%. European members of NATO are collectively investing $380 billion in defense this year, and Europe has spent much more on helping Ukraine than the United States. But some European allies have yet to meet NATO's defense spending targets, and Europe has depleted its own stocks of weapons and ammunition by giving so much to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia now spends 7.5% of GDP on its army.
Since Europe's economy is much larger than Russia's, European countries do not need to catch up with it in terms of military spending of 7.5%. But they need to step up and agree to a new spending target. The 2% target was set in 1999, when NATO had not yet faced an offensive Russia on its borders. Now the allies should commit themselves to achieving a bolder goal, for example, spending at least 2.5% of GDP by 2030 — a figure that is on par with what European countries spent during the Cold War, and commensurate with today's threat. However, currently only five NATO member States meet this indicator. NATO should also develop a new way of assessing member contributions that takes into account more than just their defense budgets. NATO could evaluate countries like international credit rating agencies, taking into account spending targets, combat power and capabilities.
Total investments in defense are not the only problem in Europe. Many countries are unable to coordinate military procurement, which leads to a gap in their capabilities and an increase in their dependence on the United States. European NATO members must adapt their spending to address their most serious shortcomings, namely in air and missile defense, long-range weapons, reconnaissance, strategic transport, air refueling and suppression of enemy air defenses. In the long term, they should invest in new tools such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, cyber technologies, space technologies, hypersonic technologies and anti-hypersonic technologies in order to maintain a qualitative advantage over Russia. The EU has the resources and mechanisms to assist in these efforts by offering funding through programs such as the European Defense Fund and the European Defense Industry Program. EU member states are also considering the possibility of issuing "European defense bonds" to finance investments in addressing gaps in military capabilities, as well as the establishment of a new post of Commissioner for Defense to coordinate financial and industrial initiatives.
European countries should also be able to contribute more to the formation of the alliance's armed forces. In June 2022, NATO announced that it would increase the number of high-alert troops seven times, which means that theoretically 300,000 soldiers would be ready to join the battle with less than 30 days' notice. But in practice, the number of armed forces and military equipment of the European allies has remained unchanged or even decreased over the past decade due to insufficient investment, as well as problems with recruiting and retaining military personnel in the army. To ensure that NATO will still be able to deploy sufficient troops in Europe, the allies should adjust their defense plans, which were agreed at last year's Vilnius summit. For the first time since the Cold War, the Allies have specific goals for the creation of national armed forces, which they must fulfill based on their geographical location and national power. We are talking, for example, about the growing Polish ground forces or the sufficiently strong air and naval capabilities of the United Kingdom. But the responsibility for completing the tasks still lies with the allies. Standardizing national approaches to reserve forces and conscription within NATO will also help increase the number of personnel, but it will not be easy, given the diversity of views on this issue among allies. NATO should also prepare for a scenario in which European forces would have to replace U.S. forces going to other theaters of war, which requires Washington to be more open with its European allies about how its plans in the Indo-Pacific region could change the deployment of U.S. forces in Europe.
European NATO member countries also need to better coordinate their defense production. For many years, its dynamics have been developing in the wrong direction: among EU countries, joint defense purchases fell from 21% of total purchases in 2016 to 11% in 2020. The EU is now trying to reverse this trend by setting ambitious goals for joint purchases and for the production and trade of defense equipment within the union within the framework of the European defense industrial strategy. NATO leaders can help by simply making cooperation a political priority, as they did at the 2012 Chicago Summit. There, their predecessors published a special declaration on the creation of a "renewed culture of cooperation", which led to an expansion of their interaction through the Smart Defense initiative. This scheme, led by the then Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, was aimed at making the defense of the Allies more effective by strengthening cooperation between them. But at the time, the Allies had little incentive to do so. And now they have appeared, given the Russian offensive and the rebirth of NATO.
It would also be wise for European NATO members to improve high-level defense policy coordination, especially in the event of a U.S. withdrawal from Europe. During the Cold War, this role was performed by a "Eurogroup" of ten countries, which informally coordinated the efforts of European allies to strengthen common defense. Today, an orderly "Eurogroup" could be headed by three of the most militarily capable European countries – France, Germany and the United Kingdom. This trio could attract Poland and Italy to integrate perspectives from Eastern and Southern Europe. Regular ministerial consultations would ensure that European capitals would move in the same direction on such important issues as deterrence of the enemy, defense, investment in military and industrial potential.
All for one
Russia's actions in Ukraine have shown that the real risk to the transatlantic alliance is a weak Europe, not a strong one. NATO, the EU and smaller groupings of countries have found an organic division of labor when it comes to supporting Ukraine and Europe's own defense. This refutes Washington's fears that European autonomy will eventually replace the functions of NATO or drive wedges into the unity of the alliance.
The EU now has a crucial role to play in strengthening NATO's European foothold, given that 23 European countries are members of both the European Union and NATO and are bound by the principle of "unity of forces". It implies that the armed forces of the 23 NATO countries are equally accessible to the EU countries. Smaller coalitions can also play a role here, such as the Joint Expeditionary Force, a British—led alliance of 11 countries that patrols the North Seas, or the European Sky Shield, a German—led initiative in which 21 European countries jointly develop air defense capabilities. All these groups help to build a common strategic culture, make the European armed forces more compatible and improve the overall combat readiness of European armies. NATO benefits when European forces can carry out their own tasks to strengthen European security.
The upcoming NATO summit in Washington should be a moment of truth. Europe's current dependence on the United States cannot be endless, and a future in which the United States shifts its attention and resources to other countries, and Europe will have to stand up for itself, is not very favorable for transatlantic security. Strengthening Europe's contribution to NATO is the best way to counter political uncertainty and firmly embed the alliance in Europe's security architecture. Europe should take the lead in this project, and the United States should offer its support.The fact that the US administration agreed to mention the "European pillar" in the Franco-American roadmap adopted during Joe Biden's state visit to France in June seems to indicate that this idea is beginning to find understanding in Washington. After all, a strong European foothold means a stronger NATO and a safer world.
