The consequences of Europe's rearmament

The withdrawal of the Americans

Since the end of the Second World War, the Americans have protected European democracies from Russia. This 80-year security guarantee is now a thing of the past. In a speech to European NATO members, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that in the future, Europeans would have to take responsibility for their own conventional security.

This would not be a problem if Russia's leadership wanted peace. But the Putin regime apparently wants to regain at least part of the territory Russia lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It has long been extremely aggressive towards its direct western neighbors, such as Poland. In this respect, it is quite possible that Russia will test the defense readiness of Western democracies, for example by attacking a Baltic country, once it has recovered militarily from the war in Ukraine in a few years. Until then, the armed forces of European NATO members must be strong enough to credibly repel a possible conventional attack by Russia without American help.

The cost of rearmament

But the Europeans do not currently have this capability. This is because they massively reduced their defense spending after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Most European NATO countries have not achieved the NATO target set in 2014 of spending 2% of GDP on defense for many years. Measured against this ratio, the cumulative underinvestment over the past ten years amounts to almost $700 billion or 3.6% of the GDP of European NATO members.

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