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Roula Khalaf, editor -in -chief of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is a FT contribution publisher and writes the Chartbook newsletter
Europe is in the midst of a huge increase in defense spending. Over the past decade, EU’s military budgets have doubled. The justification, apparently, is obvious. The defenses of Europe are dilapidated. The threat of Russia is real.
But stops a second to consider the facts.
The decade before the invasion of Russia was not a “lost decade” for European soldiers. According to SIPRI data, cumulative expenditure of NATO members in Europe during this period reached more than 3.15 TN, in 2023 dollars. Much larger than Russia. Today, it is generally agreed that Europe needs more deployable combat forces. But Europe already has 1.47 million men and women in uniform-that is to say, troops more in active service than the United States.
The scandal is not that European defense budgets have not already doubled. The scandal is that Europe passes so much and gets so little for that – no effective deterrence, few deployable troops, no stocks of weapons to provide to Ukraine.
Imagine if Europe at that time had spent 3.15 TN for the energy transition. Four programs will go back in Biden Back to Back. But then imagine that for all these expenses, we received a landscape dotted with a picturesque assortment of solar panels and windmills, but barely no clean energy usable and without coal elements. It would be a scandal. And then imagine that our first idea, faced with a new energy crisis, was to double this aimless company.
If it’s common sense, what is madness?
An optimist could say that things are not as bad as the alleged. Europe has in fact obtained at least a few efforts (mainly British, French and Turkish) for its 3TN Bucks. With late reorganization, even Germany could be about to set up a credible means of deterrent. Cry on bases as a common air defense system, or a limited selection of tanks, will make all the difference. The bar is low. All Europe must do is reach the average level of ineffectiveness of the American industrial military complex to have a powerful force.
On the contrary, a cynic will say that the explosulation of European baroque militarism is childish. Only very naive people believe that military spending mainly concerns national security rather than profit. Waste is not a bug – it is a functionality. How do you otherwise explain the cost-plus price system used to pay handcrafted how to hand, 17 million euros? How do you otherwise explain the fact that the vast majority of military purchases by the largest European states remain in national borders? Person seriously interested in obtaining usable weapons, in sufficient quantity and at a decent price, would occur in this way.
Optimists and cynics have one point, but none is going for common sense at the moment. Common sense asks us to believe that the European defense crisis is real and urgent. After spending more than 3 TVs over a decade, Europe has really not been maintained with practically no military capacity. To resolve this situation, the only option is to pay a lot of money after having pain.
But if these additional expenses should not be a recipe for the despair of the head, it must be linked to a theory of change. It is clear that Europe could gain economies of scale by ordering larger prizes. But that does not require more money, simply more cooperation through borders. To justify the increase, you must believe that new funds will transform the moribund and demoralized relics of the 20th century militarism Europe in the 21st century combat forces. You must believe that a quantitative increase in expenses will somehow lead to qualitative improvement.
In these terms, the problem of European rearmament resembles certain respect for the challenge of the energy transition. The energy transition partnerships formerly Ballyhooed launched in 2021 were based on the idea that an additional money injection of Europe and the United States would allow large emerging markets such as South Africa and Indonesia to cause radical transformation by buying rooted interest groups and cleaning political obstacles to decarbonization.
“Quantity in quality” is a great idea. But these partnerships were deemed ambitious at a few billion euros. Europe’s defense plans are a hundred times greater and will impose significant pressure on the budgets already stretched. The least that European democracies owe their citizens is transparency as to the bet in which they launch.
It is not common sense, a scaling for a long time expected from an otherwise healthy military machine. It is a multitrillion-European bet that more money will somehow repair a broken system.
