European militarism on steroids is not good, either

U.S. security experts and leaders have been telling European NATO allies to increase their defense spending for at least a quarter century, initially as a gentle nudging, later more insistently, rising to a deafening din after Trump’s election.

The infamous White House press conference with President Volodymyr Zelensky on March 1 finally shocked Europeans out of their complacency and opened their purse-strings, according to American analysts, who seem very pleased with themselves.

But this approach puts the cart of military-spending-as-share-of-GDP before the horse of a dynamic assessment of the threats European countries actually face. Going on a spending spree to reach some arbitrary share of GDP or random number of billions of euros, to buy weapons systems favored by lobbyists but of dubious relevance, is a poor replacement for a comprehensive strategy for European security.

A European security strategy that deserves this name would have to include political and diplomatic efforts: war-ending diplomacy in the short term, followed by a crisis consultation mechanism that should be the beginning of a new European security architecture consisting of reciprocal regimes of arms control, confidence-building and eventual disarmament.

A closer look at Europe also shows that a new bellicism has swept up the continent’s elites and gone into cataclysmic overdrive in recent weeks. Nowhere has this new martiality been more pronounced than in Germany, where political leaders and a new crop of “military experts” egg each other on.

The latter have been abysmally wrong in their predictions of Ukraine’s certain victory and Russia’s imminent collapse again and again, but nevertheless dominate the country’s much-watched primetime debate shows. Last week, Germans were told that the coming summer will be the last one we will be at peace, because Russia will, under cover of war games in Belarus, invade NATO territory.

German officials have been bandying about the word “Kriegstüchtigkeit” — a compound noun meaning “being good at war” — which would not sound out of place in a scratchy Wochenschau newsreel from 1940, pronounced in the gravelly, pompous diction of that era. It takes a retired brigadier general to remind Germans that this is an ominous departure from previous nomenclature, “Verteidigungsfähigkeit” – or “capacity for defense..

Current active senior officers, however, draw arrows on maps of Russia’s Kursk area, in full dress uniform, in the Bundeswehr’s in-house YouTube videos. After suspending mandatory military service in 2011, there are now widespread calls from across the political spectrum to reinstitute it and expand it to women, amid hand-wringing that German youth are too soft for war.

This new European militarism is curiously lacking in strategic thinking and fact-based analysis. While even the Biden administration never expected Ukraine to win the war, European leaders seem to believe in a Ukrainian victory to this day. At last month’s Munich security conference, Danish PM Mette Frederiksen talked of Ukraine winning the war while seated on the same panel as Keith Kellogg, Trump’s Special Envoy for Russia and Ukraine.

The influential Brussels think tank Bruegel argues that Russia may attack Europe in as little as three years, simply because the country has x pieces of this and that military hardware. Bizarrely, Italian PM Giorgia Meloni has suggested that Ukraine should not be a NATO member yet still be covered by Article 5, while Finnish President Stubb proposes NATO membership not now, but triggered the moment Russia attacks Ukraine again, after the current war has ended.

The manic summitry launched by Macron and Starmer is all sound and fury: it has produced a series of unworkable proposals which, tellingly, are being proposed to the US, not Ukraine, let alone Russia. These summits also have no foundation in EU or NATO institutions.

Indeed, Europe’s new militarist politics already undermines its democratic institutions and laws. In Germany, the lame-duck parliament is rushing changes to the German constitution to allow new debt for public spending, a dubious move in terms of democratic legitimation. It is also a slap in the face of the German public, who have been told for 15 years that the debt brake written into Germany's constitution is an immutable law of nature, that spending on schools, bridges, trains running on time or healthcare would drive Germany into ruin.

At the March 6 European Council meeting, EU governments agreed a €150 billion loan instrument to facilitate defense spending by member states. This immediately appears to be illegal: the EU’s foundational treaty explicitly forbids spending on anything defense and military.

Another €650 billion are supposed to be raised by member states for their weapons purchases, for which they will be exempt from the EU’s strict limits on borrowing. EU citizens, who have seen their welfare states starved and their public assets plundered in the name of fiscal discipline mandated by Brussels, have every reason to feel betrayed.

Meanwhile, former EU official and Quincy Institute non-resident fellow Eldar Mamedov observes, “weapons lobbyists are sprouting like mushrooms in Brussels”.

Predictably, this new defense spending has come with new calls to cut social spending even further. As economist Isabella Weber has shown, these dogmatic austerity policies have been the chief reason for the rise of far-right, undemocratic parties. Rapid rearmament accompanied by austerity on steroids might lead to the unthinkable: Germany’s AfD wants conscription back, too. And German nuclear weapons.

Europe’s bellicist frenzy may be induced by fear, but not of Russia actually waging war in Europe’s heartland. The suggestion that Russia will defeat and occupy all of Ukraine, then march on through Poland and soon thereafter through the Brandenburg gate flies in the face of observable military reality.

Instead, European elites seem to fear losing power and status, the position of global dominance they enjoyed vicariously in the shady comfort of the American nuclear umbrella. The prospect of having to deal with other nations as equals, as they will have to in the multipolar order acknowledged by Rubio, horrifies them.

Polish PM Tusk has made clear how important “winning” is, stating that “Europe is […] capable of winning any military, financial, economic confrontation with Russia — we are simply stronger”, that Europe “must win this arms race” and that Russia “will lose like the Soviet Union 40 years ago.”

Macron, in his recent address to the French public, emphasized how European capacities are strong enough to stand up to the U.S., but even more and especially so, to Russia. In this mindset, it must not be that Europe is not superior in this, and every, respect.

American foreign policy thinkers have shown that the pursuit of militarist great power competition has been bad for U.S. security, democracy and domestic well-being and counseled foreign and defense policies of restraint. One — entirely appropriate — of their recommendations is to reduce U.S. military commitment to Europe. However, to therefore celebrate the recent news of €800 billion for European defense is inconsistent.

Europe appears set to spend vast amounts of money without rhyme or reason, without taking into account dramatic new technological and tactical developments on the Ukrainian battlefield, let alone a consolidated assessment of threats and how those might be dealt with more effectively by a range of non-violent foreign policies.

If militarism has been bad for the U.S., leading to protracted wars that bring no greater security, the depletion of American society’s well-being, the capture of its politics by arms lobbies and the erosion of its democracy, why would such militarism be good for Europe?