When the celebrity businessman was last in the White House, Trump’s scorn for his allies and rapport with Russian President Vladimir Putin got European leaders taking more notice of longstanding American gripes about money for protecting the West. Hardly had they breathed a collective sigh of relief at his defeat by Joe Biden, when Putin’s invasion of Ukraine finally brought home to most that Europe finds itself between the rock of a spiteful Kremlin and the hard place of a Washington that sees better things to do with its tax dollars.
The result is a flurry of initiatives to strengthen Europe’s own ability to defend itself – “strategic autonomy” in the favoured phrase of French President Emmanuel Macron. Note, for example, the naming of a first defense commissioner in the
new EU executive – one Andrius Kubilius, a former premier of Lithuania whose people are deeply alarmed by Putin’s nostalgia for the Soviet empire. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, a former defense minister of Germany, wants a plan from Kubilius early in the new year on how better to protect the Union. He has already suggested obliging EU member states to stockpile more weaponry – after embarrassing shortages for Ukraine.
This being Europe, of course, the picture is fuzzy and we can expect Kubilius’s White Paper to serve up more of the alphabet soup beloved of EU defense arrangements – check out CSDP and PESCO, EUMS and Eurocorps for starters. Above all, the European Union of 27 countries plays second fiddle in defence to NATO. After World War Two, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, also headquartered in Brussels but drawing on forces commanded by an American general, first faced up to threats from Soviet communism and then, in this century, absorbed Moscow’s erstwhile communist allies, angering Russia in the process. The U.S. defense budget is bigger than those of all 31 other NATO states combined, although EU troop numbers are about the same.
NATO also includes ex-EU heavyweight Britain, as well as Turkey, Norway and Canada, while, despite the recent accessions of Finland and Sweden, four other traditionally neutral EU countries are still not part of the military alliance. Throw in a wide spectrum of enthusiasm, or lack of it, for pooling resources across national governments, and you get the smorgasbord that is Europe’s armed forces today. If Macron’s predecessor General Charles de Gaulle famously complained of governing a country that had 246 varieties of cheese, imagine going to war with a European army that uses two dozen languages and more than a dozen kinds of tank. Americans use just one of each.
History, too, plays a part in dividing Europeans. Macron – during “Trump 1” – may have dismissed NATO as “brain dead”. Germans and Poles are loath to swap the proven deterrent powers of a Washington they see as distant but benign for what to some sound like Napoleonic ambitions in France, home to the EU’s only nuclear arsenal.
So is there no chance of forming an EU army? Some elements do exist. Take Eurocorps. Founded in 1992 by France and Germany, it’s a military unit based on the frontier at Strasbourg/Straßburg and has been deployed by both NATO and the EU, notably in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Africa. Today it counts 11 nationalities, including non-EU Turkey, under the command of a Polish general. Yet Eurocorps today still numbers just around 1,000 soldiers. Size isn’t everything, of course. Eurocorps is a command structure for larger fighting units, several thousand strong, that could when needed be drawn together from existing national forces. It’s hardly an EU army, however.
Indeed, despite having its supporters, the term “EU army” is one most leaders avoid. For one thing, the EU doesn’t, for now at least, stir the patriotism that can spur military service and sacrifice. Look at how jingoistic Brits used fears of a “euro-army” to call for Brexit from the EU (while silent about obeying American generals in NATO). Another argument against adding EU-flagged military muscle is that by complicating things it may weaken NATO. For that reason, expect Kubilius to stick to the mantra of working with, not against, NATO and to deploy the classic weapon of the EU – coordination.
One priority is to cut down duplication. Europeans spend about half what Americans do on defence but waste much of it – call it a 15% bang for 50% of the bucks. Vested national interests have multiplied types of ferociously expensive kit, from fighter jets to rifles. Notoriously, despite sharing basic standards through NATO, EU forces often can’t fire each other’s ammunition, as problems on the frontline in Ukraine have shown.
A second answer to the pincer danger of Russian aggression and American distraction is money. Since the evaporation of the Soviet threat, European taxpayers have saved trillions of euros compared to the Cold War. Irking successive U.S. presidents, few meet a NATO target of devoting 2% of national income to their own defense, while Washington spends nearly twice as much. But European numbers are shooting up, with Germany and France about to hit the target despite post-Covid budget cramps. Few may match the 75% annual jump in spending recorded by Poland last year. But win or lose the vote, Trump’s loud clarity on U.S. self-interest will have a played a role in that.
With more money, some countries are expanding their armies, even following Ukraine in reviving conscription. But troop numbers are not such an issue. The EU’s combined active forces, at 1.3 million, are not far short of the U.S. military and half as big again as the Russians’. Brussels is focusing rather on investments in structures that will allow those troops to fight better and fight together. That includes basic stuff like upgrading road links to help transport troops and materiel, as well as new tech and infrastructure that can also reduce European armies’ dependence on U.S. imports, and goodwill.
Investment, of course, has the handy side-effect of boosting jobs in a sluggish economy. And those keen on bolstering the federating power of Brussels are pushing for more spending to be channelled through the EU’s growing shared budgets and institutions. Just this month, for example, the EU’s European Investment Bank (EIB) and European Defence Agency (EDA) inked a deal that could pump billions more toward European arms makers who are already reporting record order books.
We’re still a long way from an EU army. And, for many, that would be a sad destination for a project founded on a desire to end centuries of warfare. Yet, others see a silver lining for European society. By fostering a sense of common purpose, even perhaps by calling up young people to serve in civilian as well as defence roles, such an EU project might, some suggest, help close ranks across our linguistic and cultural divides. It’s surely not his intention, but whether he’s to be a one-term or two-term president, might a future generation of truly EU citizens be an unlooked-for legacy of Donald Trump?
