NATO and EU leaders are suddenly urging their member states to spend more on defence in a panicked reaction to the arrival of the Donald Trump-led U.S. Administration—as well as the perceived threat of a future Russian invasion.
On Monday, January 20th, Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign affairs chief and former Estonian prime minister, said the European Union must boost its defence spending to “prepare for the worst” and be able to defend itself “alone if needed” against a belligerent Russia. She warned that
many of our national intelligence agencies are giving us the information that Russia could test the EU’s readiness to defend itself in three to five years.
Kallas also seemed to suggest EU countries revisit their priorities: “We spend billions on our schools, healthcare, and welfare. But if we don’t invest more in defence, all of this is at risk.”
On Wednesday, Andrius Kubilius, the EU defence commissioner and former prime minister of Lithuania, urged NATO countries to increase their weapons stockpiles faster. The stockpile targets, which member states are obliged to meet, should be achieved by “no later than 2030, instead of in 2044, as planned,” he said, adding that the EU would financially support these efforts.
On Thursday, January 23rd, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said Europe must invest more in defence, ramp up arms production, and take a bigger share of spending on Ukraine aid. He urged the United States to keep supplying Ukraine with weapons to fight Russia’s invasion and said he was sure Europe was ready to pay the bill.
Recalling that Russian troops are steadily advancing and slowly occupying territories in Ukraine, Rutte said:
We really have to step up and not scale back our support for Ukraine. The frontline is moving in the wrong direction.
A similar warning was made on Monday by French president Emmanuel Macron, another hawkish politician, who had previously suggested that European soldiers should be sent to Ukraine to fight Russia. Macron said Europe should spend more on its own defence, but the billions of euros of taxpayer money spent on military budgets should not be used to buy only American weapons, but should be invested in home-grown defence industries.
The desire to get into an arms race with Russia certainly raises the question of how it would be financed. European countries have already been pouring vast amounts of money into their own militaries, and have given huge amounts of money to Ukraine for the past three years, since the invasion of Russia.
The European Defence Agency said that in 2023 alone, EU countries invested €279 billion in military spending, the highest amount ever recorded, and even that sum was expected to be overtaken last year with €326 billion.
According to the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine Support Tracker, the EU has provided Kyiv with €45 billion of financial and humanitarian aid. In addition to that, each of its member states has helped Ukraine massively, with Germany, the largest spender, contributing €11 billion military aid alone.
A recent Reuters report says that among major economies only Germany has room to substantially increase its defence spending.
France is on track to meet NATO’s 2% target, but political turmoil has added to budgetary pressures. Spain and Italy are far behind, at less than 1.5%. Pan-European borrowing could be a long-term solution, but Nordic countries and Central European countries irk at the thought of heaping up more debt, following a similar arrangement during the COVID pandemic.
The desire to boost arms manufacturing may be wishful thinking on the part of EU leaders. Donald Trump’s promise to end the war as soon as possible by negotiating directly with Russia may be a better solution.
