Europe Must Defend Itself

At a recent campaign rally, Donald Trump told his supporters that, during his presidency, he had warned a leader of a “big” NATO country that, if the alliance’s European members did not meet their military-spending obligations, the United States would not defend them from attack. On the contrary, it would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell” it wanted to them.

For former German vice chancellor Joschka Fischer, the message is clear: “the end of NATO and the American security guarantee” may be near, so Europe “no longer has any choice but to become a military and political power in its own right.” To this end, it needs “a common foreign policy, a joint military capability, a European nuclear umbrella, and everything else that forms the basis of meaningful sovereign power in the twenty-first century,” though Europeans remain “unwilling to accept this fact.”

Philippe Legrain of the London School of Economics’ European Institute agrees: “Instead of merely hoping for a best-case scenario” – that is, the re-election of President Joe Biden, who would continue to “support Ukraine and uphold America’s defense commitments” – “Europe must prepare for the worst.” While “European rearmament may seem drastic,” he notes, “the stakes are existential.”

In European Council on Foreign Relations Director Mark Leonard’s view, Trump might be doing Europe a favor. In fact, by forcing Europeans “finally to rethink the core assumptions that have been hamstringing them with regard to the war in Ukraine, Europe’s own defense, and European political unity,” Trump “could end up becoming the European project’s unwitting savior” – but only if Europeans get their act together.

Unfortunately, laments Daniela Schwarzer of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, that has not yet happened. At this year’s Munich Security Conference, “European leaders missed yet another opportunity to show how they plan to strengthen NATO’s European pillar and develop a robust European defense industry.” If Europe does not “pull itself together on defense” before this July’s NATO summit, “2024 may be remembered as the year when Ukraine was abandoned, and the transatlantic alliance shattered, with dire consequences for Europe and the world.”