There is no better vehicle to integrate European defense than the EU. 3Īs this report argues, there is another way. Ultimately, nations must be responsible for their fair share of the common defense.
In the final analysis, there is no substitute for nations providing the resources necessary to have the military capability the Alliance needs when faced with a security challenge. policymakers, there was no other way than European states spending more: Instead, the results are significantly less than the sum of the parts. dollars on defense annually which, if allocated wisely and strategically, could buy a significant amount of usable military capability. NATO members collectively spend more than $300 billion U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates lamented: In a departing speech to NATO allies in 2011, then-U.S. European defense today remains anemic despite noticeable increases in spending. However, this focus on national defense spending levels-embodied by NATO members’ 2014 commitment to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense-simply has not worked. In the view of Washington, the only way to address Europe’s defense shortfall is for European nations to spend more. For more than two decades, both Republican and Democratic administrations have vigorously pressed European capitals to bolster their national forces in support of NATO. No other topic has so consumed Washington’s engagement with Europe than the state of Europe’s defense forces. 1 As a result, defense spending has become the defining issue of trans-Atlantic relations in the 21st century. The American answer to European weakness has been to push NATO member states to spend more on defense. This is a European failure-but Washington has played a critical, if underappreciated, role in precipitating this failure. European forces aren’t ready to fight with the equipment they have, and the equipment they have isn’t good enough. Europe lacks the critical capabilities for modern warfare, including so-called enabling capabilities-such as air-refueling to support fighter jets, transport aircraft to move troops to the fight, and the high-end reconnaissance and surveillance drones essential for modern combat.
Its fighter jets and helicopters aren’t ready to fly its ships and submarines aren’t ready to sail and its vehicles and tanks aren’t ready to roll. Too many of Europe’s forces aren’t ready to fight. Today, much of Europe’s military hardware is in a shocking state of disrepair. This policy approach has been a grand strategic error-one that has weakened NATO militarily, strained the trans-Atlantic alliance, and contributed to the relative decline in Europe’s global clout. As a result, one of America’s closest partners and allies of first resort is not nearly as powerful as it could be.Įuropean militaries have now experienced decades of decline. This has frequently resulted in an absurd situation where Washington loudly insists that Europe do more on defense but then strongly objects when Europe’s political union-the European Union-tries to answer the call. Since the 1990s, the United States has typically used its effective veto power to block the defense ambitions of the European Union. This is not just a European failure it is also fundamentally a failure of America’s post-Cold War strategy toward Europe-a strategy that remains virtually unchanged since the 1990s.Įurope’s dependence on the United States for its security means that the United States possesses a de facto veto on the direction of European defense. Europe’s military strength today is far weaker than the sum of its parts. But Europe does not act as one on defense, even though it formed a political union almost 30 years ago. The level of Europe’s defense spending and the size of its collective forces in uniform should make it a global power with one of the strongest militaries in the world.
The state of European defense is not strong.
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