However Russia’s war in Ukraine ends, Europe is staring uncomfortably down the barrel of a decade of defence. A wounded, vengeful Russia will remain a threat as long as Vladimir Putin, or like-minded successors, are in power. There is no way back to the post-cold war security order, which was cracked by Moscow’s assault on Georgia in 2008, ruptured by its annexation of Crimea in 2014, and finally shattered by its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February last year.
The end of Europe’s “holiday” from defence is going to be expensive and impose painful choices between guns and butter, which the left will find particularly uncomfortable.
After initial hesitation in Berlin and Paris, European countries have stepped up arms and ammunition deliveries to Ukraine, and many – not least the UK – will need to replenish their own threadbare forces, depleted by three decades of “peace dividend” savings.
Nato, which holds its annual summit in Vilnius this week, has reinforced its eastern flank but is under pressure from Baltic states and Poland – who feel an existential threat from Russia – to go much further and fortify their borders more heavily than makes military sense. Having seen what happened to Ukraine, Baltic leaders understandably don’t want to see Bucha-like atrocities on their own territory and are demanding greater frontline protection.
However, as the chair of Nato’s military committee, Adm Rob Bauer, told me, if you stationed a brigade permanently on the border of each of the seven nations on the alliance’s eastern flank, six would be in the wrong place if a Russian attack came. Rapid reinforcement from central hubs in Poland and western Europe remains the best strategy, provided Europeans make the investments in infrastructure, logistics and air defence to make that work.
The accession of Finland, and soon of Sweden, will strengthen Nato in the Baltic and the Arctic, but with ammunition stocks critically low and much equipment not in working order, especially in Germany, it will take a major multi-year investment programme to make European armed forces fit for purpose.
Having watched two 20th-century former Soviet armies waging a mostly 20th-century war of attrition in Ukraine, Nato must be wary of focusing too much of its defence investment on fighting the last war with heavy metal platforms such as tanks, combat aircraft and aircraft carriers. To be credible and deter aggression, the alliance certainly needs more functioning tanks than it has today. But the war has shown that 21st-century capabilities such as real-time space and drone surveillance, precision-guided munitions, armed drones, crowdsourced intelligence and relatively cheap anti-tank weapons, can trump Russia’s lumbering armour and artillery.
The sensible way to avoid waste and duplication would be for Europeans to procure more of their weapons, communication systems, logistics capacities and ammunition in common, as they are starting to do to supply Ukraine with Nato-standard munitions.
While the UK was the quickest and most vocal supporter of Ukraine, the European Union has arguably undergone the biggest transformation, from an overwhelmingly civilian, economic regulatory body into a geopolitical player. Who could have imagined the EU spending billions of euros of common funds to supply arms to a neighbour at war?
Yet defence remains the most fiercely guarded national prerogative, and defence ministries are deeply reluctant to pool and share equipment even with Nato allies, while politicians want arms factories on their turf (preferably in their own constituencies) rather than teaming up with European partners for greater efficiency. Battles over national control of defence industries, proprietary technologies and arms exports are complicating both Nato initiatives to rationalise defence investment and the European Commission’s efforts to ramp up ammunition production.
If the EU’s joint procurement scheme for Ukraine succeeds in its goal of supplying 1m rounds of artillery ammunition this year, it should be expanded to meet other common needs. And the EU should consider joint borrowing to finance common defence enablers such as strategic airlift. Raising taxes for defence will be hard given the competing demands of the green energy transition, post-pandemic public health care and adapting societies to the digital future.
Europeans have been extremely lucky to have President Joe Biden’s consensual transatlantic leadership. Just imagine the mess if Donald Trump had been in the White House when Putin’s tanks barged into Ukraine, or if he were to return after next year’s US presidential election.
So European leaders must do more for their own defence, not only because of the Russian menace, but also because they cannot count indefinitely on the US doing most of the heavy lifting to defend Europe. Washington is itching to pivot more of its resources to the strategic competition with China. We will need to fill the gaps if and when US forces are shifted to Asia.
The head-in-the-sand attitude to defence has been a bipartisan affair. Conservative leaders such as Angela Merkel were no more eager to invest in military capabilities than socialists were. Some on the left – in Germany for example – nevertheless imagine that strengthening Europe’s defences for a more brutal world with a bully in the Kremlin eager to exploit western weaknesses is somehow a rightwing conspiracy by the military-industrial complex to divert urgently needed funding from schools, hospitals and public transport.
It isn’t. You just need to look at what has happened to the schools, hospitals and railways in Ukraine to know that defence isn’t a distraction from strengthening our social fabric, but an essential protection for it.
Paul Taylor is a senior fellow of the Friends of Europe thinktank and author of the report After the war: how to keep Europe safe
