The News
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday unveiled a five-part plan to boost the bloc’s defense spending by up to €800 billion ($841.2 billion), hours after US President Donald Trump paused military aid to Ukraine.
One of the biggest defense packages in European Union history, the plan includes €150 billion in loans to member states for defense investment.
″We are in an era of rearmament,” von der Leyen said, stressing that the continent would “take on much more responsibility for our own European security.”
European leaders are set to attend another high-stakes summit in Brussels later this week to discuss next steps for Ukraine, although analysts have questioned whether the EU will be able to ramp up production fast enough to keep Ukraine armed in light of the US pullback.
SIGNALS
A ‘sea change’ in Europe’s approach to defense, but is it enough?
The proposed funding package “marks a sea-change” in the European Union’s approach to defense after years of shying away from military spending, The Wall Street Journal wrote. But there’s no guarantee that member states will agree to the plan — the bloc moves only by unanimity — and even if they do, it will nevertheless take time to translate into actual weapons deliveries to Ukraine. And in the long-term, it remains to be seen whether the EU can “get serious” about building a common fighting force, a Europe expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies argued: “Ultimately, the EU as a political union should be able to defend EU territory with or without the United States.”
Europe lacks logistical infrastructure to counter Russia longterm
Europe may be capable of providing enough weapons to Ukraine so that Kyiv’s fighting capacities “remain where they are currently,” experts at European think tank Bruegel argued in a recent report, but deterring Russian aggression in the long term will require significantly more troops and defense spending, as well as the rapid enhancement of military coordination between member states. Europe is dependent on the US for logistical support, the BBC reported: Analysts believe it could take the continent as long as five years to achieve self-sufficiency on things like satellite intelligence and battlefield command-and-control. Without these resources, the EU can only wage “much bloodier” wars, one analyst told Defense News, with the potential for higher casualties and greater territorial loss.