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Can Europe confront Vladimir Putin’s Russia on its own? – The Economist – 25.03.25

An independent army, air force and nuclear bomb would come at a high price.


Within hours of his party winning national elections, Friedrich Merz, Germany’s presumptive next leader, dropped a bombshell. Donald Trump “does not care much about the fate of Europe”, he said. The priority was to “step by step…achieve independence from the USA”. This was not some distant aim. He was unsure, he said, whether NATO would still exist “in its current form” in June, when leaders are due to meet in the Netherlands, “or whether we will have to establish an independent European defence capability much more quickly”.


If anyone thought Mr Merz was being alarmist, they were swiftly disabused. On February 24th, on a UN resolution that blamed Russia for invading Ukraine, America voted against its European allies and sided with Russia and North Korea.


Mr Merz is not the only staunch “Trans Atlanticist” worried about Donald Trump’s assault on NATO, the alliance that kept the peace in Europe for nearly eight decades. “The security architecture that Europe has relied on for generations is gone and is not coming back,” writes Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former secretary-general of NATO, in an essay for The Economist. “Europe must come to terms with the fact that we are not only existentially vulnerable, but also seemingly alone.”


In truth, it could take a decade before Europe is able to defend itself without America’s help. The enormity of the challenge can be seen in Ukraine. European countries are currently discussing the prospect of a military deployment there to enforce any future peace deal. The talks, which are being led by France and Britain, envisage sending a relatively modest force, of perhaps low tens of thousands of troops. They would not be deployed in the east at the front line, but to Ukrainian cities, ports and other critical infrastructure, according to a Western official.


Any such deployment would, however, expose three serious weaknesses. One is that it would stretch European forces thin. There are approximately 230 Russian and Ukrainian brigades in Ukraine, though most are under-strength. Many European countries would struggle to produce a single combat-capable brigade each. Second, it would open up serious gaps in Europe’s own defences.


A British deployment to Ukraine, for instance, would probably swallow up units already earmarked for NATO, leaving holes in the alliance’s war plans. Above all, the Europeans acknowledge that any deployment would need significant American support, not only in the form of specific “enablers”, such as intelligence and air-defence assets, but also the promise of back-up, should Russia attack.

Chart: The Economist


The fact that Europe would struggle to generate an independent division-size force for Ukraine exposes the scale of the task involved in Mr Merz’s vision. Meeting NATO’s existing war plans—with America present—would require Europe to spend 3% of GDP on defence, far above existing levels for most countries. Britain took a step in that direction on February 25th, announcing a plan to spend 2.5% of GDP by 2027, but even that may not be enough. Mark Rutte, the secretary-general of NATO, is said to be proposing a target of 3.7%. Yet making good American shortfalls would require a figure well above 4%.


Paying for that would be hard enough. Translating cash into capability is also harder than it looks. Europe would need to form 50 new brigades, calculates Bruegel, a Brussels-based think-tank, many of them “heavy” units with armour, to replace the 300,000 American troops that it estimates would be deployed to the continent in a war. The manpower requirements would be forbidding.

 

Ranks of tanks.


These figures are guesstimates. Bruegel’s suggestion that Europe would need 1,400 tanks to prevent a Russian breakthrough in the Baltic states reflects traditional planning assumptions and is probably on the high side. In any case, this sort of bean-counting tells only half the story. Europe has impressive air forces, with a lot of modern jets. But those jets do not have a meaningful stockpile of munitions capable of destroying enemy air defences or striking distant targets on land or in the air, explains Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a think-tank in London, in a forthcoming paper.


Only some air forces, like Sweden’s, have trained enough for high-intensity aerial warfare. Moreover, airborne electronic warfare and intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR), or the ability to find and assess targets, “are almost exclusively provided by the US”, notes Mr Bronk.


Another glaring problem is command and control, or the institutions and individuals that co-ordinate and lead large military formations in war. NATO has a sprawling set of headquarters across Europe, with the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Mons, Belgium, at the top, led by General Chris Cavoli who, like every Supreme Allied Commander Europe before him, is an American. “NATO co-ordination is often a euphemism for US staff officers,” says Matthew Savill, a former British defence official now at RUSI.


European expertise in running big formations is overwhelmingly concentrated in British and French officers—both countries oversee two reserve “corps”, which are very high-level headquarters. But Britain would probably be incapable of running a complex air operation on the scale and intensity of Israel’s air war in Gaza and Lebanon. “There is nothing that I’m aware of that Europe has that actually approaches the scale of what the Israelis have allegedly done,” Mr Savill says.


If Europeans are able to generate and command their own forces, the next question is whether they could be kept fed with munitions. Europe’s artillery production has rocketed over the past three years, though Russia, aided by North Korea, remains ahead. Europe also has missile-makers: MBDA, a pan-European company with headquarters in France, makes one of the world’s best air-to-air missiles, the Meteor. France, Norway and Germany make excellent air-defence systems. Turkey is turning into a serious defence-industrial power.


Between February 2022 and September 2024 European NATO states procured 52% of new systems from within Europe and bought just 34% from America, according to a recent paper by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), another think-tank. But that 34% is often vital. Europe needs America for rocket artillery, longer-range air defence and stealthy aircraft. Even for simpler weapons, demand far outstrips capacity, one reason why European countries have turned to Brazil, Israel and South Korea.


The level of dependence on America is not uniform across the continent. Britain, for instance, is uniquely intertwined with America’s armed forces, intelligence machinery and industry. If America were to cut off access to satellite imagery and other geospatial information, such as terrain maps, the consequences would be profound. Perhaps the main reason that Britain required America’s assent to let Ukraine fire British Storm Shadow cruise missiles into Russia last year is that the missiles relied on American geospatial data for effective targeting. Britain would have to spend billions to buy replacement images, says Mr Savill, or turn to France. On the other hand, British entanglement with America can also provide leverage. Around 15% of components in the F-35 jet used by America are made in Britain, including tricky-to-replace parts like the ejector seat.


As if the task of building independent conventional forces were not daunting enough, Europe faces another challenge. For 80 years it has sheltered under America’s nuclear umbrella. If Europe is really “alone”, as Mr Rasmussen claims, then the issue is not just that American troops would not fight for it, but that American nuclear weapons might also be absent.


“We need to have discussions with both the British and the French—the two European nuclear powers,” Mr Merz said on February 21st, “about whether nuclear sharing, or at least nuclear security…could also apply to us.” In practice Britain and France cannot replicate America’s nuclear shield over Europe with their relatively small arsenals—around 400 warheads in all, compared with more than 1,700 deployed Russian warheads. American insiders sniff at the idea that this is adequate for deterrence, since they believe that Russia would be able to limit the damage to itself (never mind that Moscow might be gone) while inflicting worse on Europe. Doubling or tripling the size of the Anglo-French arsenals would probably take years and cannibalise money needed to build up conventional forces; Britain’s deterrent already consumes a fifth of defence spending.

 

Strategic thinking.


Another issue is that although France has nuclear weapons aboard submarines and planes, Britain has only the former, which limits its ability to engage in nuclear “signalling” in a crisis, for instance by using low-yield nuclear weapons, since doing so would risk exposing the position of its submarines and thereby put its strategic deterrent at risk. Moreover, although Britain can fire its nuclear weapons without American permission, it leases the missiles from America—those not aboard submarines are held in a joint pool in the state of Georgia—and relies on American co-operation for key components.


These need not be insurmountable problems. Quiet conversations on European nuclear deterrence among European defence ministers have picked up in recent months. “The German debate is maturing at warp speed,” notes Bruno Tertrais, who is one of Europe’s leading thinkers on nuclear matters. “The British and the French will need to rise to the challenge.”


Nuclear deterrence is not just a numbers game, he says, but a question of will. Mr Putin might take more seriously nuclear threats coming from Britain or France, which have more at stake than America. These are the questions that preoccupied European thinkers throughout the cold war; their return marks a new and dark period for the continent. “This”, pronounced Mr Merz on February 24th, “is really five minutes to midnight for Europe.”■



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Photograph: Getty Images

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