- Europe is in a defense emergency and a catastrophe is looming.
By Edward Lucas
The Munich Security Conference can feel like the center of the world, at least for the transatlantic bigwigs who attend the mid-February shindig. But this year a whiff of irrelevance pervaded the public forums, and the private meeting rooms. Decisions about Europe’s future are no longer made in Europe. They are being cooked up in phone calls between Washington, DC, and Moscow and will be haggled over in Saudi Arabia.
Europe—Ukraine included—is not at the table. But it is on the menu.
The east-west ice age that began after Russia’s attack on Georgia in 2008 is over. President Donald Trump has made it clear that his aim is to bring the Kremlin in from the cold. Never mind the past, look at the future is the new motto. That makes life easier for America’s foes—and a lot worse for allies. Past sacrifice and shared values count for little in this new, transactional world.
Emotional responses are understandable. Europeans should rightly feel shame for their complacency and cowardice. They should grieve for Ukraine’s sacrifice. They should be angry at their leaders for getting them into this mess. And they should be fearful of their fate in a new might-is-right era. Having succumbed to nuclear blackmail, we must live with the consequences: aggression now and proliferation soon.
Many will also feel puzzlement. If the administration persists in this zero-sum, theatrical approach to foreign policy, it will impose heavy costs on the United States, badly denting the deterrence of the Chinese Communist Party. Few outsiders feel they are seeing America made great again.
Europeans may criticize the American president if they wish (though it is probably wise not to). But they should not blame him for their own mistakes. This is a war on Europe’s borders. It was Europe that outsourced its defense to the Americans. It was Europeans who were scared of all-out confrontation with Russia. Faced with even modest costs, their unity and willpower frayed. Putin, for all the colossal costs of the war, can keep going. Without the Americans, Europe can’t.
Fear can easily become panic. European leaders are stuck. Alone, they cannot provide a credible military force needed to secure post-ceasefire Ukraine. To provide the sort of security offered to West Germany in the Cold War, will require hundreds of thousands of troops, with air defenses, logistics, long-range strikes—the lot. But if that force is not credible, it is a sitting duck for Russian provocations that will shred deterrence for all of Europe.
If any Ukrainian ceasefire is not credibly secured, then Ukraine will be an economic, political, and security nightmare, a traumatized wreck on the EU’s borders. And even limited efforts to support Ukraine will further weaken the already flimsy defenses on NATO’s border with Russia.
But admiring these problems will not solve them. Europeans should remember their size and strength. Including non-EU countries, like Britain, they have a $25 trillion national income and a 600m population. They enjoy living standards and public services that others (including many Americans) find luxurious. Europeans can afford to fix their own security if they want to.
We need practical suggestions. Mine is a new bank to raise hundreds of billions of euros to rebuild defense stockpiles. The project already has Polish government support, with encouraging reactions from other governments (France and Britain) and from the European Commission. Provisionally named the Rearmament Bank, it would be modeled on the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, which helped the hugely successful rebuilding of ex-communist Europe after 1989. That era was fuelled by hope. Now emotions are bleaker. Use them.
- Edward Lucas is a Non-resident Senior Fellow and Senior Advisor at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
- Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America
