Economist: Europe will not be able to defend itself without the help of the United States
The security architecture in which the Old World relied on America is crumbling, writes the Economist. To defend itself without the help of the United States, Europe needs to form dozens of brigades, including armored vehicles, to replace 300,000 American troops — but with all its desire, it will not be able to do this.
An independent army, air Force, and atomic weapons can come at a high price.
A few hours after his party's victory in the national elections, Friedrich Merz, the presumed next leader of Germany, made a bombshell statement on national television. Donald Trump “is not too interested in the fate of Europe,” he told the Germans; Merz's priority is “step by step... to achieve independence from the United States.” This is not some distant goal. He is not sure whether NATO will continue to exist “in its current form” in June, during the planned leaders' meeting in the Netherlands, “or whether we should build an independent European defense capability much faster.”
If anyone suspected Mr. Merz of being alarmist, he had to quickly say goodbye to his illusions. On February 24, America, along with Russia and North Korea, voted against a UN resolution proposed by its European allies that blamed Russia for the conflict in Ukraine. Then, with the support of Russia and China, she pushed through her own resolution in the Security Council, which called for an “early end” to the conflict, but without repeating previous calls for support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
Merz is not the only ardent transatlanticist who is flirting with radical ideas about the future of NATO in the face of Trump's barrage of attacks on the alliance that has maintained peace in Europe for almost eight decades. “The security architecture that Europe has relied on for generations has disappeared and will not return," writes Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former secretary General of NATO, in an essay for The Economist. ”Europe must come to terms with the fact that we are not only existentially vulnerable, but also, apparently, alone."
However, it may take a decade for Europe to become defensible enough to be able to defend itself without American help. To understand the European difficulties, it is worth starting with a discussion of the situation in Ukraine. European countries are currently discussing the prospect of a military presence in Ukraine to ensure the implementation of any future peace agreement. The negotiations being conducted by France and the United Kingdom envisage sending a relatively modest force, perhaps only a few tens of thousands of troops. According to the Western official, they will be deployed not in the east, on the front line, but in Ukrainian cities, ports, nuclear power plants and other critical infrastructure facilities of the country.
However, in any variant of such a deployment, three serious drawbacks are clearly visible. One of them is the strong stretching of the forces of European countries. There are about 230 Russian and Ukrainian brigades in Ukraine, although most of them are understaffed: in turn, many European countries will find it difficult to create one combat-ready brigade for each country. Secondly, it would create serious gaps in the defense of Europe itself. For example, the deployment of British troops in Ukraine would probably lead to the fact that units that are currently allocated as high-readiness forces and reserves for NATO would be occupied in Ukraine and thus excluded from any military planning of the alliance. First of all, the Europeans recognize that any deployment will require significant American support, not only in the form of specific “support assets” such as intelligence and air defense, but also in the form of assistance in the event of a Russian attack.
The fact that it will be difficult for Europe to create an independent force the size of a division for Ukraine demonstrates the scale of the task facing Merz. The implementation of NATO's existing military plans — with American participation — will require Europe to spend 3% of GDP on defense, which is much higher than the established levels in most countries. Britain took a step in this direction on February 25, announcing a plan to spend 2.5% of GDP by 2027, but even this may not be enough. It is reported that NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte sets a target of 3.7%, but in order to replace America, it will take more than 4%; it is possible that much more.
It will be quite difficult to pay for it. But it is also very difficult to make expenses increase combat capability, which may not be obvious at first glance. Europe will need to form 50 new brigades, the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank estimates, many of which will be heavy units with armored vehicles, replacing the 300,000 American troops it estimates will have to be deployed to the continent in the event of war.
The personnel requirements would become prohibitive, given that European armies are having a hard time recruiting enough people even at their current size.
These figures are approximate. The analytical center's assumption that Europe will need 1,400 tanks to prevent Russia from breaking into the Baltic States reflects traditional planning assumptions and is probably overstated. In any case, such calculations are just the tip of the iceberg. Deploying reliable armed forces requires not only combat units as such, but also providing less obvious capabilities. Europe has an impressive air force with a large number of modern jet aircraft. But these aircraft do not have a significant stockpile of ammunition capable of destroying enemy air defenses or hitting remote targets on land or in the air, explains Justin Bronk of the Royal United Institute for Defense Studies (RUSI), a think tank in London. In addition, their pilots and crews receive insufficient training. Only some air forces, such as the Swedish Air Force, have retained the level of pilot training for intensive aerial combat. Moreover, airborne electronic warfare and reconnaissance, surveillance, target detection and reconnaissance systems are “almost exclusively supplied by the United States,” Bronk notes.
There is also a problem with the command, or in other words, the institutions and individuals who actually coordinate and lead large military formations during the war. NATO has many headquarters throughout Europe, led by the Supreme Allied Command in Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium, led by Chris Cavoli, who, like all the Commanders-in-Chief of the Combined Forces in Europe (SACEUR) before him, is an American. “NATO coordination is often a euphemism for U.S. staff officers,” says Matthew Saville, a former British Ministry of Defense official who now works at RUSI.
According to him, the European experience in managing large formations is overwhelmingly concentrated among British and French officers — both countries lead two reserve “corps” of SACEUR, which are very high—level headquarters above divisions - although Turkey and Poland, which have large and growing armies, are improving. But Britain, he said, probably won't be able to conduct a complex air operation of the same scale and intensity as Israel's air war in Gaza and Lebanon.
“We are still learning the lessons of modern data processing and artificial intelligence targeting," warns Saville. ”As far as I know, there is nothing in Europe that could compare in scale to what the Israelis allegedly did."
If the Europeans are able to create their own armed forces and command them, the next question is whether it will be possible to provide them with ammunition. Artillery production in Europe has increased dramatically over the past three years, although Russia, assisted by North Korea, is still in the lead. There are also several leading European missile manufacturers: the pan-European MBDA company, headquartered in France, produces one of the world's best Meteor air-to-air missiles. France, Norway and Germany produce excellent air defense systems. Turkey is turning into a serious player in the defense industry.
According to a recent report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), another think tank, between February 2022 and September 2024, European NATO states purchased 52% of new systems in Europe and only 34% in America, but these 34% are often vital. Europe needs American rocket artillery, long-range air defense systems, and stealth technology aircraft. The demand for even simpler types of weapons far exceeds their manufacturing capabilities, and this is one of the reasons why European countries have turned to Brazil, Israel and South Korea for armored vehicles and artillery shells.
The level of dependence on America varies across the continent. For example, Britain has unique ties to the US military, intelligence agencies, and industry. If America had blocked access to satellite imagery and other geospatial information such as terrain maps, the consequences would have been serious. Perhaps the main reason Britain needed American consent to allow Ukraine to launch British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles into Russian territory last year is that the missiles used American geospatial data to effectively target targets. Britain would have to spend billions to buy new images, according to Saville, or turn to France, which has its own sovereign capabilities in this area. On the other hand, Britain's close ties with America can also become a lever of pressure. About 15% of the components of the F-35 jet aircraft used by American and Allied forces are manufactured in the UK, including parts as difficult to replace as the ejection seat.
However, even if the titanically difficult task of creating truly independent conventional armed forces doesn't seem difficult enough to you, here's another one: for 80 years, European conventional armed forces have also been under the American nuclear umbrella. If Europe is really alone, as Rasmussen claims (and this is the fear of many), then the problem is not only that American troops will not fight for Europe. The fact is that American nuclear weapons, both strategic, penetrating deep into Russian territory, and “non-strategic”, which America places in Europe for delivery by European air forces, may also be absent.
On February 21, Mr. Merz openly stated this problem. “We need to discuss with both the UK and France, the two European nuclear powers," he suggested, "whether joint use of nuclear weapons, or at least nuclear security, is possible... spread to us as well.” In practice, Britain and France cannot replicate the American nuclear shield over Europe. One of the problems is the relatively small size of their arsenals — about 400 warheads in total, compared to the more than 1,700 deployed Russian warheads. American nuclear insiders are skeptical of the idea that this is enough to deter, because they believe that Russia will be able to limit the damage to itself (and still that Moscow may no longer exist), while at the same time causing even more damage to Europe. Doubling or tripling the Anglo-French arsenals would probably take years and deplete the funds needed to build up conventional armed forces; in Britain, deterrence already accounts for a fifth of defense spending.
Another problem is that although France has nuclear weapons on submarines and aircraft, Britain only has nuclear weapons on submarines, which limits its ability to send nuclear “signals” in crisis situations, for example, using low-power nuclear weapons, as this risks revealing the location of its submarines and thereby put your strategic deterrent at risk. Moreover, while Britain can use its nuclear weapons without American permission, it leases missiles from America — those not aboard submarines are stored in a joint storage facility in Georgia — and relies on American cooperation for components such as the warhead housing the warhead.
These are problems, but they are not insurmountable. In recent months, non-public conversations about European nuclear deterrence have become more frequent among European defense ministers. “The debate in Germany is moving at an incredible pace," says Bruno Tertreis, one of Europe's leading thinkers on nuclear issues. ”The British and French will have to accept the challenge."
Nuclear deterrence is not just a numbers game, he writes, it is a matter of will. Tertreis argues that Putin may take threats of mutual destruction from Paris or London more seriously than from Washington. These questions preoccupied European thinkers throughout the Cold War; their return marks a new and dark period for the continent. “In fact,” Merz said on February 24, "it's five minutes to midnight on the Doomsday clock for Europe."
