Europe has to defend itself

In the past week Nato has announced a new scheme for channeling aid to Ukraine that doesn’t involve the US, and Poland’s defence minister has said Europe must think about its own security “above all”.

So what? He’s right. Trump’s re-election is forcing Europe – in a way that even the invasion of Ukraine did not – to take full responsibility for its own security for the first time since World War Two.

• That will require a step change in European production of artillery, tanks and ships.
• That in turn will require European Nato members to double defence spending to 3 or 4 per cent of GDP.
• Shared security needs give the UK an opening to rebuild its relationship with Europe.
• But meeting those needs could take ten years.

Such are the views of experts and think tanks scrambling to reassess Europe’s security architecture in light of America's choice of an isolationist as president.

Ten years is too long. Russia is already waging a hybrid war on Europe. Acts of violence and sabotage, violations of air space and constant propaganda and disinformation are Russia’s weapons in this war. The former Dutch defence minister Kajsa Ollongren says: “If Ukraine itself is not a reason enough for Europeans to act – then the fact that we are already under attack should be a reason to act”.

European intelligence agencies believe those acts of violence may include

• the recent crash of a DHL cargo plane in Vilnius;
• the dispatch of two incendiary devices on DHL planes flying to the US and Canada; and
• the cutting of two under-sea fibre-optic cables in the Baltic by a Chinese ship sailing from a Russian port.

Asymmetric numbers. Russia has nearly twice as many fast jets and naval vessels as Germany, France and the UK combined, and more than three times as many tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. It is producing roughly three times as many artillery shells per year as the entire EU at one tenth the cost per shell (and has received more in addition from North Korea than Ukraine has received from Europe).

The central question. Would Russia ever use this arsenal to mount a conventional attack on a Nato member?

Answers, various. In April the inspector general of the German army, Carsten Breuer, said Putin would be ready to attack Nato within five to seven years. Norbert Röttgen, a former chair of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, writes that “without strong defences standing in his way, Putin will have no reason to stop at Ukraine”.

This we know. The Baltic states have argued for years that it’s complacent to believe Putin would be deterred by Nato’s Article 5 collective defence guarantee if he thought the alliance lacked the will to enforce it – as he will if Trump equivocates in his support. And Putin has ridiculed rumours of an impending Russian invasion before – in February 2022.

What to do? Build up Europe’s defence capabilities within Nato even without US support. Rather than try to build a new European structure, make use of Nato’s integrated command structure, procurement processes and common funding, says Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to the alliance.

In addition to the extra spending and defence production this will require, Nato’s European members will need to

• fill gaps in Europe’s air lift, intelligence and surveillance, and missile defence capabilities; and
• treat security as an emergency, thinking of the US and Canada as a “bonus but not a gift”.

The British problem. The UK’s is the only non-US nuclear deterrent in Nato and its armed forces are among the most advanced in Europe – but

• they’re still so depleted after decades of cuts that the respected academic Robert Johnson has said “they cannot defend the British homelands properly”; and
• outside the EU single market there are limits to what Britain can contribute to an integrated European rearmament plan.

But even without the UK, the EU’s combined GDP is ten times Russia’s.

What’s more… With the addition of Sweden and Finland as members, Nato is bigger than before the war.