The News
Leaders from the European Union’s 27 member states and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gathered in Brussels Thursday for an emergency defense summit, marking what European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said was a “watershed moment” for the continent.
Top of the agenda is von der Leyen’s €800 billion plan ($841.2 billion) to boost the bloc’s military spending, the biggest defense package in EU history.
US President Donald Trump’s criticism of Ukraine has effectively forced the continent to think seriously about defense, analysts said. In recent days, France has signaled openness to providing a nuclear deterrent and seizing frozen Russian assets to support Kyiv, while Germany has unveiled a massive new defense spending plan.
“Gone, in a blink, are both the north-south divides in Europe over frugality and an eight-decade sense of security that allowed Europe to skimp on defense spending,” Foreign Policy wrote.
SIGNALS
Europe mulls its own nuclear deterrent as US retreats
Ahead of the summit, French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday floated the possibility of extending France’s nuclear deterrent to European allies, a suggestion that underscored “the depth of concern,” the BBC wrote. Russia’s foreign minister said the comments were a “threat”: A French-led nuclear umbrella, a nuclear defense expert wrote, would be “a sign of European political solidarity that would make Moscow’s calculations difficult.” Still, France’s arsenal — and the UK’s — are too small to entirely replace America’s extended nuclear deterrence, and neither France nor the UK has a nuclear doctrine compatible with stationing the weapons in other countries, a Europe expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies argued.
To boost defense, Europe must make tough choices
Europe has the “economic and technological base” to better meet the challenge of Russian aggression, but the bloc’s leaders will also need the political will to divert resources to beef up defense, two International Institute for Strategic Studies experts argued. The continent has to face the fact that social security needs to be trimmed to make way for more military spending, a Financial Times columnist argued. In the UK, the Labour government could avoid some welfare cuts by reviving a wealth tax plan instead, a Prospect Magazine columnist argued. Other belt-tightening moves, like the British prime minister’s decision to cut foreign aid, could backfire: Aid and defense are “two sides of the same coin,” a former British Army officer argued in The Guardian.