It will not be cheap for Europe to make a own army. Or any alternative you think of to acquire a certain autonomous military capacity, while the NATOits armed wing, will demand of its partners from 2025, and officially, when the version begins Trump 2.0efforts of much greater importance to the coffers of the Alliance Atlantic.
A report of Bloomberg Intelligence (BI) figure in 720 billion dollars the European military bill, an amount that is similar to the 723,000 million euros with which the Recovery and Resilience Mechanisms were provided, the largest item of the current 2021-26 budgetary period destined for the Next Generation Funds for the reconstruction of the European economy after the Great Pandemic. Now that the greenback and the European currency are flirting again with parity and that the nuclear threat from the Vladimir Putin after the launch of its intercontinental missile against Ukrainian soil.
Next Generation resources finally amounted to 806.9 billion eurosbut its great contribution comes from the 338,000 million in guarantees and the 385,000 million in low-interest loans from its resilience levers. Although the BI experts’ calculation is also similar to the amount that Mario Draghi has been planned annually to overcome the competitive gap in the internal market with respect to the US and China, its economic and commercial rivals – between 750,000 and 800,000 million euros -, including the promotion of a genuinely European arms industry, or half of the Spanish GDP.
This Defense fund, the seed of a possible European Army that raises suspicions in certain strata of its civil societies – less and less, until it almost disappears in the Eastern partners and recurrently in the once neutral Scandinavian countries – and doubts among experts without the EU first undertaking one of its eternal pending issues: establish a federal framework that clashes with the constitutional principle of centralized States that, like the France of Emmanuel Macron, They want a truly European military power.
Fabrice Pothierinternational affairs strategist at Rasmussen Global, is one of those who warns about the ironic contradictions of leaders like Macron, with several questions thrown into the air: what will Europe do in nuclear matters? Will the commander in chief of the Army use atomic weapons? French in foreign missions? Is a military project with peacekeeping objectives possible in times of such great uncertainty, when its traditional ally, the United States, distances itself from this doctrine and China, Russia or Iran have become develop offensive foreign policies?
This expert believes that Europe, by itself, lacks sufficient military capacity and international influence to take on this challenge. As much as Russia poses an obvious threat on its external borders. Nor in other areas, neither in the economic-commercial sphere nor in the fight against the climate crisis. “Its global weight is decreasing more and more,” he says.
The collective subconscious increases the risk factor
Although social pressure is growing in favor of addressing this challenge, which will initially require community partners to double their military spending, the BI report says. Especially if, as is discounted in the Union’s chancelleries, the Trump 2.0 version withdraws support for Ukraine and demands a minimum contribution of 2% of GDP to NATO allies. This American mandate will imply the contribution of another 340,000 million dollars annually in investments, until the figure of 720,000 is reached that BI analysts consider as an essential pillar to be able to build a European Army.
A measure that, “if we remember Trump’s speech in his first term, in which he threatened to leave the Alliance if European countries did not increase their contributions, would force the EU to take initiatives“in this direction, at a time when “it feels even more attacked by Russia,” he points out. George Ferguson in the BI study. This increase in resources for Defense is something that – he specifies – “has already occurred” among the Union’s partners. Although, in any case, it will be revised upwards, more or less quickly, depending on whether the Russian threat rises from its current levels, which remain in crescendo by leaps and bounds, “or the geostrategic rivalry with China worsens.”
In the midst of this debate, Social response to the militarization of Europe has decreased. The calls to the citizens of the Scandinavian and Baltic countries to prepare for a probable attack – without ruling out the use of nuclear weapons – ordered by the Kremlin, seem to have tipped the demographic balance towards a pre-war scenario. Despite the fact that, as the Norwegian political scientist warns Glenn Diesen in Brave New Europe, a British social justice platform, “the militarization of Scandinavia will dramatically undermine the security of the region and invite new conflicts, as Russia will be forced to respond to what could become an existential threat“.
Diesen explains that “Norway has decided to host at least 12 US military bases on its soil, while Finland and Sweden follow suit by transferring sovereign control over parts of their territory following their recent accession to NATO.” Stockholm has thus broken two centuries of geostrategic neutrality of his diplomacy. Meanwhile in Finland, according to the polling firm Korhonen, six out of ten Finns have already acquired the emergency equipment that their Government recommends to face a Russian attack in its reaction protocol. Three days after sending it to his fellow citizens.
Further towards the West of the Union, a survey by the magazine Le Point ensures that 81% of French people are in favor of Europe having its own military forceand another from the Pew Research Center in Germany speaks of a significant portion – 43% – of its population in favor of increasing its Defense allocations.
The 720,000 million euros annually that they calculate in the intelligence unit of Bloomberg It would justify, in financial terms, Mario Draghi’s recommendation in his report to close the EU’s competitiveness gap compared to the US and China of using Eurobonds as collateral to cover the main European geostrategic projects. Among those he expressly cited the construction of an anti-missile shield to protect the open skies – shared airspace – of the internal market from external threats and, indirectly, the enormous task of creating a military industry. made in EU that would benefit from allocations of 750,000 or 800,000 million euros annually that, in his opinion, will be required to return global competitiveness to the Old Continent.
Only four European partners exceed 3% of GDP in Defense spending – Poland (4.12%); Estonia (3.43%), Latvia (3.15%) and Greece (3.08%) – and only Spain (1.28%), Luxembourg (1.29%), Belgium (1.30%) and Italy (1.49%) is below 2%, which includes the rest of the EU partners, in addition to the United Kingdom, Turkey and Norway.
Productivity and global influence appear on the scene
Draghi was also in charge of linking the rise in productivity and European bodybuilding and global influence – in the face of its “slow agony”, in case of not acting – to the need to increase investments in the Union’s defensive capacity, increasing arms orders from European emporiums such as Leonardo, Airbus, BAE Systems or Rolls Royce, after decades of productive decapitalization, and formalizing “long-term contracts.”
Although in 2023 the European Defense sector improved its income by 17%, reaching a total of 158.8 billion euros, as recognized by the European Association of Aerospace, Security and Defense Industries (ASD), which also ensures that employment grew by 9% in its associated companies, which already have a workforce of 581,000 workers. Michael Johanssonnumber two of the ASD, makes common cause with Draghi’s diagnosis by stating that “a very significant amount of supplies to the European military industry come from the US” and that the sector is exposed to “persistent problems of disruptions in value chains, access to the flow of critical minerals or electronic components or high energy costs.”
In a context in which working conditions “are tightening” and trade restrictions “are accentuated” by sanctions against Russia, he argues. The Polish Prime Minister and former President of the European Council, Donald Tuskexpands the spectrum of threats to geopolitical complexity. “Europe must once again be a true political and military power if you want to restore and feel the security of the continent”.
Like the latest analysis from the British Defense Secretary before Labor took over from 14 years of Conservative governments. In the opinion of his senior military officialsNATO, in fact, is in a “pre-war situation” since the invasion of Ukraineinstead of in the “post-Cold War scenario” of recent decades. As demonstrated by the fact that some 90,000 allied soldiers participated between January and May 2024 in the most important military exercises (Steadfast Defender) in their history.
Bart MJ Szewczykanalyst at the German Marshall Fund, writes in Foreign Policy that the creation of a European Army is not the best of ideas. In his opinion, the EU’s objective would be more feasible if increases were imposed to encourage its industry and devise security mechanisms from national budgets, although it is the community club that finally outlines the roadmap of its Defense strategy. and channel, “with European resources”, its industrial economies of scale. Another perspective close to Draghi’s diagnosis. Expanding the shield of major contributors – Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland contribute 70% of the Union’s military expenses – under “close coordination” with the United States.
Because Brussels has strong arguments against Washington. Among others, it has more than doubled the joint contribution of aid to Ukraine. Of the 144 million euros – total amount of European collaboration to Kiev – compared to 68,700 from Washington. In parallel to the idea, which arose from the previous Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, to cover Ukraine’s defense fund up to 100 billion euros and give priority with this community check to “a technology and industrial defense base“, with joint military projects, “but without losing the channels of understanding with other allied arms sectors.” And incorporating advances in innovation, such as in AI, where the recently approved community directive exempts from its rules – with an undoubted restrictive burden – “technology systems that are used exclusively for military purposes,” Szewczyk highlights.
Trump’s return “should not be a pretext to revive the debate on a centralized European Defense policy, which has lasted more than half a century, but should induce its authorities to activate initiatives that increase the EU’s response capacity to aggression from abroad” and focus those efforts on whether Europe “should become a military power or, on the contrary, give up having its own security,” says this analyst with a former senior position in the US Secretary of Defense. Regardless – he warns – of the geopolitical and war tension in Ukraine and that the next tenant of the Oval Office will once again be Trump.
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