The costs of European peace

After six months of delays, the US Senate has finally passed a $60 billion foreign aid package that will send urgently needed ammunition and military equipment to Ukrainian soldiers. It could be the last check signed in Washington. Donald Trump is the favorite to become the next president of the United States and the senators closest to his “America First” policies, JD Vance of Ohio and Josh Hawley of Missouri, led the opposition to the Ukraine package. Their argument, crudely stated, is that Europe must finance its own defense.

The US money confirmed this week gives Europe about a year to adapt and prepare for this new reality. A generation had grown up that believed that peace and democracy were the natural order of things. If there were wars to be fought, they believed the US would do the heavy lifting. This has now changed. There is war in Europe and America is reluctant to provide most military aid. The Baltic states – which will likely be Russia’s next target if Kiev falls – are rushing to restore their military strength. But Britain has been slow to adjust its spending accordingly.

That changed when Rishi Sunak used this week’s NATO meeting in Poland to announce his ambition to increase British defense spending from 2.2 percent of GDP to 2.5 percent by 2030, if he wins the election. It is a sign of how much the world has changed in the past two years that German government officials are now pressuring the British government to go even further. Britain’s first shipment of military aid to Ukraine – the first in the world – had to be flown via a circuitous route to avoid German airspace.

Five years ago, Germany spent only 1.3 percent of GDP on defense: far below the minimum target of 2 percent that member states had committed to. Now it is leading the rearmament of Western Europe. Germany spent 5.1 billion euros on defending Ukraine last year. This year it has allocated €7.1 billion. Poland, in turn, spends twice as much on defense as it did ten years ago. Spending now amounts to 3.8 percent of GDP, still below the target of 4 percent.

Vladimir Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea – his first land grab in Ukraine – had little effect on convincing NATO’s European member states to take their own defense more seriously. When Kremlin forces defied international law and launched a war in eastern Ukraine that left thousands dead, eleven European NATO states actually reduced their military spending. No wonder Putin felt emboldened to carry out a full-scale invasion. He had already seen Ukraine’s supposed allies looking the other way.

An alliance of wealthy Western and Central European countries should be able to hold its own against the Russian army, even without American support. Yet virtual exercises by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) showed that this was by no means guaranteed. In countering a theoretical Russian invasion of Lithuania and northeastern Poland, the report concluded, NATO without America would be short as many as 62,000 soldiers, 3,750 tanks, 960 artillery guns, 264 fighter planes and 396 pilots. A large part of the problem was that existing armed forces used outdated weapons or were poorly organized. To rectify this would require £340 billion in defense spending.

For too many years, European governments had been busy issuing what they called their “peace dividend” – a theoretical cut in military spending made possible by the end of the Cold War – and even when the threat of war had returned, they continued doing this. So. The armed forces were cut down and the money was instead funneled into social programs. These programs are much more popular with – and much more visible to – voters. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq has prevented many democratic countries from engaging in military operations. Wars became monstrous follies far from home.

Ukraine has reminded Europe of the reality of war. But to what extent does Sunak really intend to rebuild British military strength? As German officials noted this week, there is no good plan for how the British government plans to spend the extra money. It’s also not clear where it will find it. Sunak can promise whatever he wants next year: the chances of him still being in tenth place are slim. Keir Starmer has said he would like to reach 2.5 percent, but that is just an ambition.

Sunak is promising a very modest rebuild of our armed forces – and even then he has no convincing way of funding it. Britain would still lose its place at the forefront of NATO’s most committed military spending. Recently, three former Tory defense ministers signed a joint letter calling for Britain to spend 3 percent of GDP on defense. This is closer to what will be needed if Europe is expected to defend itself. The old days ended when Crimea fell ten years ago; only now is the continent catching up. With Ukrainian soldiers losing ground and running out of ammunition and defense, there is not much time left.