Foreign Affairs: Fixing Europe’s Firepower

How the EU Can Funnel Its Wealth Into Its Defense

By Dalibor Rohac and Eduardo Castellet Nogués

European leaders know by now that they need to invest more in security. They know that the continent needs bigger defense budgets to fund more military capabilities and larger armies. Some of their motivation comes from Washington, which this year pushed European NATO members to commit to military spending targets of five percent of GDP (including 3.5 percent for outlays on core defense needs such as hardware). But Europe needs to spend for its own sake, too, to ensure the continent’s safety in a world in which it can rely less and less on the protection of the United States.

The challenge is executing an effective military buildup. Many European countries carry large debt burdens and struggle to bring spending on welfare and pensions under control, limiting their room for fiscal maneuvering. Increased budgets, moreover, do not translate automatically into greater capabilities. Simply purchasing more U.S. defense systems, for instance, might please Washington but would be an inefficient and perhaps imprudent way to bolster European security. The U.S. defense industry suffers from significant backlogs: the wait time for a new Patriot missile defense system is seven years, for example. Relying on a foreign industrial base is also risky: if the United States were embroiled in a conflict elsewhere, it would be unlikely to prioritize maintenance for U.S.-made systems in Europe.

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