Six steps towards a European Defence Union; but don’t count out the transatlantic partnership just yet

Europe’s actions to improve its defence capabilities since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 have so far met with a mixed response from policymakers and expert commentators. On the one hand, they have generally welcomed the attention that security and defence are finally getting from European political leaders and at Summit meetings of the European Union. Strategic Compasses, White Papers and strategy papers for Europe’s regions of interest and domains like space have followed in quick succession. As have defence investment plans like SAFE and the European Defence Fund and capability programmes. A new European Security Strategy is in the works and expected to be ready soon. Given the darkening of the geopolitical landscape an in-depth review is sorely needed. The State of the Union address that Ursula von der Leyen gave to the European Parliament in Strasbourg last week sounded more like a speech by a military commander or defence minister than what we traditionally hear from a President of the European Commission. Moreover, and under the guise of European Strategic Autonomy and reducing external vulnerabilities and dependencies, the EU has come up with a host of initiatives and measures over the past four years to boost the continent’s capacity for military readiness, produce advanced military weapons and technologies, create common financial instruments for defence procurement and innovation and to protect its territory and critical infrastructure from all types of threats.

Yet, at the same time, these policymakers and expert commentators have had a nagging doubt: are Europe’s military modernisation and rearmament proceeding fast enough to enable the continent to keep pace with a rapidly evolving threat? In this respect, the last few weeks have witnessed an alarming escalation in Russia’s hybrid attacks. There was an attempted sabotage using drones of a Ukrainian transport plane at Leipzig/Halle airport, which the German government attributed to the Kremlin. Then a Russian drone strike on the Ukrainian-Polish railway border crossing just minutes after a number of prominent European politicians and diplomats had passed through on their way back from a conference in Kyiv. The UK reported that it had recorded 340 drone incursions around 44 military sites so far this year. NATO aircraft in Romania and Latvia were engaged in shooting down Russian drones that had crossed into NATO airspace while Finland recovered a Russian drone armed with explosives just off its coastline. President Macron was so worried about the range and intensity of Russian attacks against France (from sabotage to election interference and cyber disruptions) that he organised a special briefing for the leaders of France’s political parties at the Elysée. The UK and Norway revealed that they had conducted a naval operation in the High North to disrupt a Russian training exercise to use new technologies to disable undersea communications and internet cables as well as energy pipelines. A Danish helicopter over the Baltic Sea was fired on by flares from a Russian warship. All this happening in just a few days. These incidents have led European leaders and intelligence chiefs to fear that Moscow may be preparing something even more brazen in the near future, for instance a ballistic missile strike, a drone swarm, a massive cyber-attack or a coordinated series of arson and sabotage operations. The Danish Defence Intelligence Service has similarly warned of a “low but growing risk” of a Russian attack against a NATO member country. Meanwhile, Washington sent CIA Director, John Ratcliffe, to Moscow to warn the Kremlin against any direct kinetic attack against a NATO member state. Prime Minister Tusk of Poland repeated warnings that Putin, increasingly desperate over the lack of progress in his war against Ukraine, was planning to do precisely this in order to deter European supporters of Ukraine from supplying more military assistance to Kyiv. Poland has deployed more troops and built fortifications along the border. It has scrambled its fighter jets on numerous occasions and temporarily closed civilian airports as Russian drones and missiles targeting western Ukraine come closer to Polish airspace.

This intensified, and more reckless, pattern of Russian behaviour has prompted some European leaders to advocate more robust countermeasures to demonstrate to Moscow that it will pay a price for its hybrid attacks and that Europe is more determined to deter future aggression. There is a feeling that an inconsistent and cautious approach to Russian provocations thus far is only encouraging the Kremlin to persist. The Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, has suggested major NATO exercises along the border with Kaliningrad. NATO has deployed a Baltic Sentry mission to disrupt the activities of the Russian shadow fleet against critical underwater infrastructure and an Arctic Sentry mission to protect the High North. It is turning its air policing operations in the Baltic states into a proper air and missile defence mission. It is setting up an intelligence and coordination centre on hybrid threats and mutual support in building resilience and responding to attacks. Yet the Sword of Damocles hanging over the transatlantic alliance is the uncertainty regarding the commitment of the United States to the defence of its allies. When he came to Brussels for the NATO Defence Ministers last June, US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, was intending to announce a 25,000 troop reduction in the 81,000 that the US has in Europe today. He was prevented by the White House at the last minute from making the announcement, probably due to resistance in the US Congress, which has legally mandated the minimal troop level at 76,000. Instead, the allies were presented with a Pentagon questionnaire containing 57 individual questions, which they have 6 months to respond to as part of the US review of its global force posture. The questions are not only designed to test the allies’ defence spending and capabilities contributed to NATO but also their alignment with US foreign conflicts and loyalty to US foreign policy objectives. The review will almost inevitably result in further US withdrawals from the NATO force structure, building on the aircraft, ships and 5,000 troops from Germany and a further 2,000 from Romania that the US has already axed. At the same time, Poland and the Baltic states have offered generous host-nation support to encourage the US to station troops on their territories, underlining the importance they attach to maintaining a visible US military presence in Europe. Yet even if the Pentagon will still leave sufficient troops, heavy equipment, aircraft and ships in Europe to make a viable US response to a Russian invasion (under the Article 5 collective defence clause of the NATO treaty) still conceivable, the direction of travel is clear. The US is trying to shift as many burdens onto the shoulders of the Europeans as it can under the guise of creating a “NATO 3.0”, and expects Europe to be able to handle its own conventional defence by the end of this decade. In any case, persistent ambiguity and uncertainty about the size and scope of the US commitment to NATO (as Washington continually rotates forces in and out of Europe rather than stationing them here permanently) will inevitably oblige European defence planners not to rely on the US contribution at all, but to duplicate and progressively replace the capabilities and strategic enablers that the Pentagon currently provides to the alliance. The Iran war has severely depleted US stocks of weapons on which Europe also relies for its defence, especially the Patriot PAC-3 interceptor rocket where the Pentagon has used up over 50% of US stocks. This could delay by several years the capacity of US industry to meet its contractual commitments to European allies and cause them extra costs if they need to procure interim solutions or gap fillers in the meantime. If the US stops participating in NATO exercises, there is also the risk of a loss in interoperability over time and in the training and readiness of US forces to be able to fight effectively in European conditions. The worst thing for an alliance is not to know if, when and how a key ally will become involved in a conflict. But this does not apply only to the US. If you are in the Baltic states, Poland or Finland today, there is still arguably more chance that the US will show up to defend you than some of your fellow Europeans whose level of defence spending, poor capabilities and unwillingness to take the Russian threat seriously also makes them potentially unreliable allies.

So, the old alliance is not dead yet. President Trump continues to wax hot and cold about NATO’s value to the US and his appearances at the last two NATO Summits (in The Hague and Ankara) were not as confrontational as many alliance diplomats had feared. The allies have broadly taken up the Trumpian challenge to increase their defence spending up to 5% of GDP by 2035. Last year European defence spending increased by 25%. Sometimes Trump appears to reward this effort. Last week he was suggesting that the Pentagon would build a US army base in western Poland, a project begun under the Biden administration. Yet Denmark has surpassed, in GDP terms, US defence spending levels and has concluded an agreement with the Pentagon on US Air Force access to Danish bases. But this did not stop Trump from harassing Copenhagen for the last 18 months in an attempt to wrestle control of Greenland from Danish sovereignty, threatening a US military takeover if Denmark and the 57,000 Greenlanders failed to comply. An agreement has now been concluded among the three parties, which will allow the US to build two more bases and expand its military presence in Greenland beyond the current space station at Pituffik while preserving Danish sovereignty. But, as always with Trump and as much as he has claimed a great victory for the US (“control of Greenland forever”) we never know if this is the final word or whether the President will come back with more demands in the future. Yet the war against Iran has reminded the US of the value of its European bases in projecting US power towards the Middle East, Africa and Southwest Asia. So, while the Pentagon talks of troop drawdowns, it has quietly stationed 9 KC-135 tanker aircraft at the Mihail Kogălniceanu airbase in Romania and allocated $200mn for upgrades at the base. It has allocated $2.5bn for modernisation at Fairford in the UK and 6 other facilities and $400mn for the Moron airbase in Spain. So, while some US forces leave Europe, others take their place, for instance largely replacing those withdrawn from Romania. At the United Nations this week, Trump confirmed that the US armoured battalion in Lithuania of around 1,000 troops that departed this summer will be replaced in the autumn, a piece of welcome news for a Baltic state that has recently worked on an evacuation plan for its population in the event of a Russian attack. Continuing US troop rotations such as this make it more than likely that NATO in some shape or form will survive Trump’s criticisms and ambiguities. Of course, European allies can join the long list of countries that are waiting out the Trump administration in the hope that a more traditional and cooperative US presidency will replace it. This is far from, certain but in any case, there can be no return to the status quo ante. The changes introduced by Trump will not be easily reversed and will form the new baseline for future administrations. We should remember that Joe Biden did not reverse a single tariff imposed on China by the first Trump presidency. It is not encouraging either that whereas Trump occasionally is more positive towards NATO, his younger Republican lieutenants, such as JD Vance, Marco Rubio or Pete Hegseth and Elbridge Colby at the Pentagon, are much more consistently critical.

Yet if the US will still be around to defend Europeans against deliberate Russian conventional attack, there is little that can be expected of it when it comes to the grey zone interference. Here, Europeans have been alone in scrambling aircraft to intercept intruding drones, deploying ships in the Baltic to prevent cable sabotage, protecting electricity substations and other critical infrastructure, responding to cyber-attacks and ensuring the integrity of elections against disinformation campaigns. As these are the principal threats that Europe is currently facing, the lesson is that the US could well be absent from 90% of the threat spectrum that European allies need to deal with, intervening only in the less likely and more extreme scenario of a full-scale Russian aggression. Consequently, Europe needs to up its game and translate all its various initiatives in the field of security, defence and resilience into a true European Defence Union. It can accelerate the pace of developments to match the evolving threat, make Europe’s responses more impactful and provide for more equitable intra-European burden sharing as well as better strategic direction and anticipation. The year thus far has seen some important political proposals in this ongoing debate which, if implemented, could form the basic building blocks of a European Defence Union. What are they? Six building blocks top the list.

1. The interpretation and activation of Article 42.7 of the EU Lisbon Treaty of 2009.

This article provides for mutual assistance among EU member states in the event of an attack against one of them. Observers may point out that collective defence and solidarity in response are already covered by Article 5 of the NATO treaty. Although designed originally for responses to major military aggression by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies (and subsequently by Russia), NATO has given Article 5 a more flexible interpretation in recent times by invoking it to respond to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. It has also been extended to potentially cover cyber-attacks above a certain threshold or interference with satellites and space assets. But of course, Article 5 does not cover those EU members who are not members of NATO, and it needs to be approved unanimously by all 32 NATO members (including the US) before it can be implemented. The other issue is that because NATO is a military alliance, it has essentially only military instruments and an invocation of Article 5 commits allies to be willing to escalate their response quickly to a significant military level, thus increasing the risk of all-out war. For this reason, and depending on the nature and scope of an aggression, including the presumed intent of the aggressor, many allies may be reluctant to use Article 5, particularly in the case of an ambiguous or isolated attack.

Consequently, an EU collective solidarity and defence obligation makes sense to give the EU an autonomous reaction capability, not dependent on the blockage or veto of non-members, and one which will allow the EU member states to respond to hostile activity below the NATO threshold, without the pressure to resort immediately to military means. In her speech to the European Parliament last week, Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, proposed an EU playbook outlining the full spectrum of measures that Europe could take against grey zone warfare tactics. Being too precise or tit-for-tat about these responses may not be wise as deterrence often works best when an aggressor is left in doubt about the response, and whether red lines are crossed. Yet at the same time the EU needs a flexible toolkit of diplomatic, financial, economic and military measures that can be packaged commensurate with the seriousness of the offence and the message it wants to send. Identifying the response options is a start. But more important is getting consensus on how to use them. So far, like NATO’s Article 5, Article 42.7 has only been invoked formally once – in 2015 by France in response to the Paris terrorist attacks. Yet this year EU member states have come together to send warships and air defence systems to Cyprus after Iranian drones landed in the country (causing damage at a UK airbase at Akrotiri). This action has motivated France to initiate a reflection inside the EU on how the Article 42.7 mutual assistance clause could be better used. What precise scenarios would it apply to? How would it be coordinated with NATO’s Article 5? Could the EU use the NATO command and force generation mechanisms, also to bring in contributions from non-EU allies? What kind of contingency planning would the EU External Action Service and Military Planning Staff need to do in conjunction with member states in order to be prepared for Article 42.7 responses? Would EU member states earmark forces in advance? These questions need to be clarified and quickly.

2. European Security Council

This idea has been on the EU’s agenda for some time and Von der Leyen came back to it in her State of the Union address. The EU already has high-level consultation and decision-making bodies, such as the European Council of leaders and the regular meetings of foreign and defence ministers and intelligence chiefs. So how could a European Security Council add value?

First and foremost, by being a permanent structure with a secretariat and integrated civilian and military team of experts also incorporating security officials from the member states. It would not only serve an early warning and intelligence fusion function but also do contingency planning for grey zone attack scenarios and prepare rapid response options for the EU member states. But a European Security Council should not be only a crisis management mechanism. Defence is a long-term exercise, which, to be effective, has to be sustained over a number of years, even decades. Planners need to constantly look ahead at potential future threats. They need to probe for emerging weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the EU’s defence posture and the impact of trend lines in defence spending, industrial production and capability development. They need to assess candidly the effectiveness of strategies and present leaders with realistic options to do better. And they need to advise on how the EU’s many instruments (from financial to military) can be better articulated for greater and more targeted impact. These are all functions that a standing European Security Council could usefully fulfil.

A more difficult role for a European Security Council would be to try to ensure that European countries do not pull in different directions now that the US is pulling back. Finland, a long-time supporter of Palestinian rights, has recently cut its aid to UNRWA in Gaza. The reason is that it is pursuing cooperation with Israel in armaments and technology. Spain has developed a particularly cosy relationship with China while some EU member states drag their feet on imposing further sanctions against Russia or publicly demonstrate their lack of enthusiasm about defending their EU fellow member states. These divisions and differing interests and priorities will not help the EU to uphold its values or increase its influence and leverage in the wider world.

The other key role for the Council would be to associate the EU’s key security partners, such as the UK, Canada and Norway, more closely with EU defence and integration. It would give them a seat at the table and a voice in decision making and thus a political incentive to participate more in planning and to contribute more forces and capabilities. For instance, in the Article 42.7 scenarios mentioned earlier. The European Security Council could also oversee and take over the planning work that has been done over the past year in the two Coalitions of the Willing led by the UK and France, one dealing with ceasefire monitoring in Ukraine and the other demining in the Strait of Hormuz. If a European Security Council were set up outside the EU’s formal treaty structures, it would be easier for these non-EU states to join. For instance, in the case of Canada. Von der Leyen proposed an Associate Member status for Canada in her speech in Strasbourg. Canadian Premier, Mark Carney, reacted positively; but EU treaties do not provide for Associate Memberships and some member states reacted sceptically to Von der Leyen’s proposal. Working out all the legal, financial and administrative aspects of a formal treaty-bound arrangement could potentially take years, especially if national ratifications are involved. The more informal European Security Council track may be an easier route to follow, all the more so as security and defence are now priorities for the EU and areas where Canada, the UK and Norway are especially keen to cooperate with the EU and its members. Canada for instance has joined the EU SAFE investment programme and has ordered submarines from TKMS in Germany, as well as expressing an interest in Swedish Gripen fighter jets. A European Security Council could also encourage non-EU members to cooperate more closely bilaterally. The UK is already building frigates with Norway and Canada and Norway recently signed a defence agreement. The European Security Council could also maintain close liaison with the EU’s like-minded countries from across the world who could be brought into consultations and joint action depending on the situation. This would apply particularly to those democracies in the Asia-Pacific, such as Australia, Japan and South Korea, with which the EU has signed bilateral security agreements.

There would need to be a discussion on the structure and modus operandi of a European Security Council. Who would participate? Who would chair? Would there be a system of permanent and rotating members as with the UN Security Council? How would it interact with the EU’s existing security and defence structures such as the EEAS and Military Planning Staff? And what about relations with the North Atlantic Council at NATO? Is the added value of a European Security Council worth the possible extra duplication of bodies and effort that might be created? Here again, a process of serious reflection is needed.

3. Emergency Consultation Mechanism

NATO has long had a treaty clause (Article 4), which allows its members to request an urgent consultation in the North Atlantic Council in the event of a perceived threat to their national security. Türkiye has used this mechanism in recent years to draw attention to terrorist attacks from Kurdish separatists or cross-border missile strikes from Syria. Article 4 is not Article 5 and does not necessarily lead to a military response by NATO, but it is a way for an ally to gain the support and solidarity of other member countries and sends a signal to a potential aggressor that an incident can have wider international repercussions.

Von der Leyen also suggested in Strasbourg that the EU could adopt a similar emergency consultation mechanism rather than waiting for the next scheduled European Council or foreign ministers meeting to take up an issue. She called it the “Emergency Security Protocol”. To some extent, the emergency mechanism already exists in practice as the EU Presidencies or the larger member states now more frequently convene in-person or video conference meetings at short notice to address a particular issue, such as coordination on Ukraine or trade before a meeting with the US President. But formally adopting an emergency consultation mechanism might still have its uses. It would facilitate smaller EU members (with less automatic convening power) to activate the EU structures when they believe that their security interests are threatened or need to draw attention to an issue. The mechanism might also be useful for EU member states that are seeking solidarity and assistance but who are reluctant to invoke the NATO Article 4 clause because they worry that this could escalate the situation and place them in a more delicate position given that NATO is a military alliance and consultations might signal that military action would follow. And, as always, there are EU member states, which are not in NATO and therefore not covered by Article 4. Cyprus at the beginning of the Iran war is a case in point.

4. Pooling and sharing critical enablers

The final major proposal from the Commission President in Strasbourg was for an EU pool of shared military assets, which are often too expensive for the smaller member states to procure by themselves. These assets, such as transport aircraft or satellites, are also critical for military deployments, hence the term “critical enablers”. But the EU needs these enablers for domestic emergencies too. Each European summer is becoming hotter and marked by devastating forest fires, not only affecting southern Europe but extending further north and this past summer to eastern Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Germany and parts of Scandinavia. This has led to a high demand for firefighting aircraft and fire brigades and Von der Leyen proposed already a few years back that the EU should obtain its own multinational fleet of firefighting tanker aircraft. The COVID-19 pandemic witnessed EU member states sharing hospital facilities and transferring patients across frontiers from struggling to less stretched national health services.

The EU already has some experience with pooling and sharing. Some years back it established an arrangement at Eindhoven for a strategic airlift capacity based on contributing national assets on a rotating basis. This proved invaluable in helping EU member states to send troops and logistics on operations, including in Afghanistan and the Sahel. These days, transport and refuelling tanker aircraft or roll on/roll off ferries have been complemented by the growing importance of mobile air defence systems, heavy equipment transporters and space-based assets for monitoring and early warning. President Macron has suggested that Europe pool its space launchers to reduce reliance on the US and SpaceX. So, Von der Leyen’s proposal to take a more systematic look at the EU’s pooling and sharing of key enablers for all EU contingencies (domestic and foreign) and to come up with a more up-to-date and comprehensive list of requirements makes eminent sense. Individual countries can be approached to host and manage the reserves of a given asset, as the Netherlands has done in the case of Eindhoven.

5. Big collective projects

There are hundreds of different capability programmes and cooperative armaments projects underway in Europe today. Even the experts have trouble keeping tabs on them all and new joint ventures are launched and announced every day. But although many of these programmes bring benefits in terms of efficiency and cost savings as well as technology sharing, they do not in themselves constitute game changers for Europe’s capacity to defend itself against major threats from major adversaries. Moreover, they do not always boost European innovation in defence or strengthen its industry and technology base or reinforce supply chains. For this purpose, future-oriented large-scale multinational programmes are needed to develop the capabilities and Europe’s science, technology and industrial base that will define the battlefield 20 to 30 years hence.

Yet it is in this area that Europe has often been weak in the past. Many ambitious multinational projects have been delivered late with massive cost overruns. The A400M transport aircraft, for instance. Others have been abandoned as disputes between the industrial partners and their governments have piled up. The cancellation of the Franco-German FCAS programme to build a 6th generation fighter aircraft is but the latest example. Germany has abandoned its large F126 warship programme, as the UK previously scrapped its Nimrod project to build a non-US maritime patrol aircraft. US defence industry (for instance, Lockheed Martin F-35s) have often been the beneficiary of these European failures. But along the way, there have also been many European success stories. The multinational consortia that produced the Tornado and Typhoon/Eurofighter jets, the MBDA missile group, bringing together Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo, or the Copernicus earth observation satellites produced by the European Space Agency, to name just a few examples. A future European Defence Union needs to learn the lessons of the failures but also the successes. Even the latter often take years from concept to delivery, with the risk in an age of accelerating innovation that the capabilities will be obsolete before they enter the battlefield. So, speeding up the cycle of weapons development will be the key challenge.

It should also seize political and public attention by focusing on a limited number of major multinational projects which are clearly geared to the current threat landscape that Europe is facing. One is a counter-drone protection for Europe’s critical infrastructure and urban areas based on a combination of fixed and mobile assets that can be moved rapidly to areas under threat. Another is ballistic missile defence where Europe has become dangerously dependent on US capabilities like the Patriot. Then European countries have now joined an initiative first proposed by Ukraine to build a modular and affordable anti-ballistic missile shield for Europe. Poland is the latest country to join this initiative, coined Freya. Europe’s existing missile defence assets such as the Franco-Italian SAMP-T or the German IRIS T can be integrated into the Freya architecture as it develops. Europe cannot depend on a single supplier. Eight European countries are now diversifying away from the US. Germany has just done a deal with Israel to transform a Volkswagen factory in Osnabrück into a drone manufacturing facility and Poland is buying tanks and aircraft from South Korea. Another important capability project could be to bring the R&D and prototype design work done by France and Germany on the FCAS jet fighter into the programme for a 6th-generation aircraft that the UK and Italy are developing with Japan (Global Combat Air Programme). France may well resist given its national industry interests with Dassault, but Germany could well decide to participate. A further project could be to develop a European space early warning and situational awareness joint capability as called for by the European Space Agency. The US recently revealed for the first time that it has deployed an unspecified space weapon in orbit in order to protect its satellites. European space private sector companies have announced many tie-ups, but the sector still lacks the public funding for Europe to access space without US help. At the International Space Summit organised by President Macron in Paris in early September, the Agency’s Director General, Josef Aschbacher, told EU ministers that by investing €1bn per year over the next 10 years, Europe would be able to send astronauts into space without the support of NASA. This is a key area where a European Defence Union could provide the necessary push and oversight. Naturally, Ukraine and its innovative companies has a crucial role to play in many of these flagship capability projects, especially in missile and drone defence, robotics and autonomous vehicles and systems and all dimensions of digital warfare. It needs to be integrated into the industry groups and project management consortia from the outset.

6. Nuclear deterrence

So far, at least, President Trump has talked more about withdrawing US troops from Europe or access to bases than changing the US nuclear guarantee to Europe’s security through NATO. The alliance’s Nuclear Planning Group continues to meet and the alliance’s Steadfast Noon nuclear preparedness exercise takes place every year to practice crisis and wartime consultations and deployment plans. Washington is working with the 5 NATO basing countries on the modernisation of NATO’s sub-strategic nuclear weapons carried on dual-capable aircraft operated by European allies. Both the aircraft and the weapons now need to be modernised. The US, UK and France are all investing heavily in modernising their strategic nuclear deterrent forces and those of the US and UK remain committed to NATO.

This said, the last few years have taught Europeans not to take anything for granted and not to rely on sacred cows that cannot be questioned. To be credible to both adversaries and its own citizens, a European Defence Union must be able to give Europe not just the most high-end capabilities but also full decision-making autonomy over every stage of its destiny. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a wise rule and Europeans decidedly should avoid creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of US disengagement by questioning openly the reliability of the US nuclear guarantee that has served them well for eight decades. But President Macron has started a quiet, informal dialogue with interested parties in the EU on how France’s national and independent nuclear deterrent could not only protect France from invasion but EU member states in Eastern Europe as well. In recent days, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have joined the Macron initiative. The Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas) is also debating a change to Article 137 of the Constitution that would allow the stationing of nuclear weapons on Lithuanian territory. Germany was an early adherent, reversing a decades-old policy to rely solely on US nuclear weapons. This is a serious and sensitive area best served by a quiet dialogue; ut if common understandings regarding the scope and availability of French extended nuclear protection gradually emerge, and the participants show willingness to take on more responsibility themselves by joining exercises or building infrastructure (as Poland has suggested with regard to NATO’s nuclear deterrence), that dialogue could one day evolve into a common European nuclear doctrine and strategy. For now, it at least serves as a hedge against Russia’s increasing use of nuclear threats towards its neighbours and uncertainties regarding the future commitments of the US.

In conclusion, a European Defence Union is best seen as a pragmatic, step-by-step objective rather than as a new EU treaty that will take years of painstaking legal effort to negotiate and be at the mercy of national ratifications and referendums. It will also make it much easier for the EU to embed the UK, Canada and Norway into the new construct, taking advantage of the considerable capabilities that they provide in the air, maritime and expeditionary domains. The task is to make fuller and better use of many existing EU mechanisms (such as Article 42.7) rather than try to create lots of new ones. Much of the work involves putting current practices (like pooling and sharing of equipment or crisis consultations) on a more systematic and better structured level, by improving procedures and working arrangements and giving all EU member states (and not just the big ones) better access to the various instruments. Clearly too, there is the challenge of better integrating the different timelines involved in defence planning. When it comes to resources and political attention, immediate and short-term crisis management needs to be coordinated with near-term capability improvements and enhanced protection of critical assets (civilian and military) which in turn has to leave space for sustainable efforts over time. Defence has always been expensive and success in terms of a secure Europe able to chart its course without coercion, interference or intimidation will require national defence spending at between the 3-4% of GDP mark for at least the next decade, and given the unlikelihood that a new liberal and-rules based international order will return soon, probably many years beyond then. The test of a European Defence Union will be its capacity to drive those higher defence spending levels across the EU to be sustainable over time, and at a moment when EU citizens have the cost of living very much on their minds.

EU officials have estimated the cost of an autonomous European conventional defence capability at €1tn , spread over 10 years.

The viability of institutions lies in facing up to the situations that first called them into existence. If they do not survive those, they are unlikely to survive other, similarly challenging situations afterwards. In the case of the European Defence Union, this is the war in Ukraine. It is the reason a European Defence Union has shot up the agenda because it has forced Europe to quickly build up its military capabilities to help Ukraine push Russia back. But in doing so it has increased the Russian threat to Europe itself, thereby necessitating an even larger and longer-term process of rearmament as well as the rapid improvement in domestic resilience to cope with Moscow’s grey zone attacks. In short, Europe has become too deeply enmeshed in the Ukrainian cause to be able to withdraw without considerable damage to its own security from a vengeful Russia. On the other hand, most of Europe’s future security challenges will be much easier to address if Russia is forced to limp off the battlefield and Ukraine survives as an independent, democratic country increasingly integrated into the EU structures. The immediate task for the EU and its partners is to help Ukraine to survive yet another winter at war. Winter is the time when the Kremlin tries to push home its advantage in missile and drone production to destroy Ukraine’s electricity and heating grids and make life as dangerous and miserable as possible for the Ukrainian people. But there is also the challenge not just to supply Kyiv with adequate numbers of air defence systems but also long-term financing. The war is costing Ukraine $190mn every day, which is $50mn more than just 18 months ago. Yet Kyiv is less and less able to fund it from its own resources. There is currently a $27bn hole in this year’s defence budget. The country is losing $40bn in 2026 due to the Russian blockade of its grain exports and Russian attacks against port infrastructure and commercial shipping along Ukraine’s Black Sea coastline. The EU loan of €90bn is currently helping to keep Ukraine afloat but it is being used up quickly, including to buy Patriot missiles from the US, and soon the EU will need to start negotiations on a follow-on financial package. But the close relationship between the EU and Ukraine is not without tensions. The EU wants to make further financial support conditional on Ukraine raising tax revenues, clamping down on the shadow economy and aligning Ukrainian law more rapidly with EU standards. These are demands that Kyiv may deem excessive in wartime when it believes that it is also fighting to defend the EU. But they underline that the Brussels-Kyiv relationship needs careful political handling. Yet the task of a European Security Council vis-à-vis Ukraine is more long-term and looking at the phase after the war has ended. It is to develop with Ukraine a concept for a future Ukrainian deterrence force that will make it difficult for Russia to invade the country again. A transition plan will be needed, starting in wartime, to progressively move towards the new force structure with an active army of around 600,000 and a reserve force at around 1 million. Issues like air and missile defence, Black Sea access, equipment, training in Ukraine and inside the EU, mobilisation planning and permanent defensive fortifications will all need to be examined. Getting maximum synergy from this effort in terms of merging Ukraine’s military reconstitution into the EU’s own capability development programmes and industrial production is clearly the answer to this challenge. It will allow a rapid two-way street for innovation, battlefield experience and for cheaper, mass-produced weapons in place of ever more expensive exquisite equipment that takes years to produce and can only be procured in small quantities. A European Defence Union will have to make a convincing public case that it is in Europe’s interest to take on this heavy military and financial responsibility to support Ukraine. Over the long run a viable Ukrainian front line will give the EU sufficient security to allow its own military expenditure and sustained rearmament to become more manageable.

So, where are we at the halfway point of the Trump 2 administration? NATO is battered but still standing. As Mark Twain would have put it: “reports of my death are grossly exaggerated”. Trump was positive about NATO in his speech to the UN General Assembly and the agreement between the US, Denmark and Greenland, signed with great fanfare in New York, will hopefully lay to rest one of the major dividing lines within the alliance. Positive and negative signals about the future US military presence in Europe and the US commitment to Article 5 collective defence continue to be mixed, making it difficult to evaluate what “NATO 3.0” will exactly look like. But at least, for Europe, certain lessons are clear. The transatlantic relationship is now transactional and this is less robust for collective defence than a relationship based on shared values and common aspirations for a rules-based international order. Trust has been broken and cannot be completely restored. A US that has questioned the value of NATO can do so again and there can be no return to the status quo ante. Security based on ever-changing commitments and ambiguous intentions in the event of crisis and war is not what Europe needs at a time when Russia is becoming ever more aggressive and reckless. And depending on sole-source suppliers for vital equipment at a time when the US is involved in foreign wars, has multiple clients and is taking years to deliver is not wise given that the threat is happening today, and is no longer something predicted for the distant future. So, Europe should try to hold on to as much NATO as it can while it builds up its own capacity to stand on its own two feet and defend itself. The US will always be a welcome and appreciated ally if it chooses to show up but a European Defence Union is today Europe’s best security insurance policy. The time for it has come.

The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.