The last time European states were embarking on rearmament, we were well down the road towards a world war. This time, it’s the war in Ukraine and the unravelling of the Western military alliance that are driving European rearmament. Suddenly, virtually every European head of state has become converted to the virtue of increasing defence spending and boosting the arms industry.
At yesterday’s extraordinary meeting of the European Council in Brussels, EU leaders agreed to a deal that would free up billions of euros to boost defence spending. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen presented a plan to spend as much as €800 billion euros on rearmament. Part of this would involve loans of up to €150 billion to EU member states.
Arguably, the rationale is as much about economics as it is about military force. The arms industry is to be Europe’s new growth sector. The powers-that-be have decided that defence is a better focus for economic regeneration than investing in useless Net Zero technology.
Even Germany, which is usually fanatical about restraining public expenditure, has signed up to this brand of military Keynesianism. Indeed, it is driving the campaign to restructure Europe’s economy around the imperative of defence. It sees this as a way to stave off the seemingly never-ending economic recession and to save its ailing automobile sector. As Holger Schmieding, the chief economist at Berenberg Bank, put it: ‘It is becoming obvious to everybody that defence spending is the way to offset job losses in the car industry.’ A leaked plan for German rearmament goes as far as to propose spending €400 billion on national defence and committing another €500 billion euros to rebuild Germany’s dilapidated infrastructure (Germany’s railway infrastructure is currently in too poor a state to transfer tanks and other military hardware across the country).
The embrace of military Keynesianism may be being justified on the grounds of the supposed threat posed by Russia to European security and the necessity of defending the integrity of Ukraine. But all the billions currently being pledged for defence spending will have little bearing on developments on the battlefields of Ukraine, or indeed Ukraine’s future security. Converting Germany’s ailing automobile industry into a military-hardware production line will take years, as will the process of transforming Europe’s existing security resources into a credible military force.
After all, it is an open secret that Europe has seriously neglected its defence infrastructure. And any initiative led by the EU or other European institutions is likely to be implemented at a painfully slow pace. The EU is more interested in regulating what already exists than in moving things on.
Moreover, it will take more than new military hardware to transform European militaries into a credible fighting force. European nations have become estranged from the kind of patriotic values that would be necessary to support a real military engagement with Russia. When UK prime minister Keir Starmer proposed a ‘coalition of the willing’ of European armies, it inadvertently raised the question of ‘willing to do what?’. At a time when neither France nor Britain can secure their own borders to prevent mass illegal migration, their willingness to secure another nation’s borders from an invading army must surely be in doubt.
French president Emmanuel Macron and his colleagues may well be good at playing the role of war-time leaders. But they are not in a position to seriously affect the outcome of the war in Ukraine. As matters stand, only the United States has the resources and the military capacity to significantly change the outcome.
While all the tough talk emanating from the Brussels bubble has a distinctly performative dimension, it is nevertheless important to take seriously. It could unleash a dangerous dynamic that has the potential to quickly escalate and get out of control. As we head towards a world of increased protectionism and economic conflict, there is a danger that European rearmament could inadvertently lead to a global arms race. History shows that arms races have unpredictable consequences.
What’s really concerning about the sudden turn towards rearmament is that Europe’s leading military hawks lack any real clarity about the continent’s future direction of travel. Afflicted by the disease of geopolitical illiteracy, the leaders of Europe still have no idea how they should navigate a world where the three dominant powers – America, China and Russia – have a disproportionately strong influence on global affairs. These are not people we can trust to guide us through troubled waters.
No doubt European nations must assume responsibility for their national defence, and no doubt that will exact serious financial costs. The announcement by President Trump that America plans to scale down its military role in Europe endows the issue of continental defence with great urgency.
Still, resolving the war in Ukraine is another matter entirely. It should not have taken a war on Europe’s eastern flank to force it to get its house in order. But given how unlikely any of yesterday’s announcements are to benefit the war effort, Ukraine should not be used as a pretext for the new fashion for boosting arms manufacturing. The interests of German industry should not be conflated with the defence of Ukrainian sovereignty.
Frank Furedi is the executive director of the think-tank, MCC-Brussels.
