Both NATO and the EU want to spend a €100 billion on defense — and that’s leading to clashes between the two Brussels-based institutions.
The European Union is donning its camouflage pants and flexing its muscles on defense. NATO isn’t happy.
For years, the two Brussels-based institutions have barely communicated when it comes to defense, except for some military cooperation in areas like the Balkans — because they haven’t had to. Defense was NATO’s turf (it is a military alliance, after all), while the EU dealt with trade, farming, climate change and things like standards for heritage cheeses.
It was summed up by a catchphrase popular in military circles: “The U.S. fights, the U.N feeds, the EU funds.”
That’s now changing.
Frankly, I don’t understand the debate here.
You can do both, and leverage both, to improve the capabilities of both. Leave NATO as the standards-definer and overall command structure. But also, the EU should absolutely take more advantage of the economy of scale for big-ticket items like regional ballistic defense, new fighter projects, even submarines and CVNs.
If they do it conscientiously, and are careful to not let military industrial basically dictate procurement policy, the EU could potentially spend less under that aggregated model than they do with individual, independent militaries.
As an American, it’d honestly be great if literally anyone else who was somewhat ideologically aligned with the west would really, seriously underwrite the security of the western world in a military sense.
I’ve been angry for a while, that the EU hasn’t seemed to take Ukraine’s defense too seriously (or at least once it became clear it would be a slogging war). They’ve given old weapons, and pitched in money to buy munitions and stuff, but it’s been clear from close to the start that the lack of munitions-building capacity was a big block, on both sides.
Instead of setting up new munitions factories, the EU has been content to send out old materiel, place orders from the same places everyone else is trying to order from, and let the States fraud the lead for European security. And Russia has used those exact same two years to set up munitions factories and secure supply chains from China, India, North Korea and Iran. It took eight months of Republicans dithering on Ukraine aid for the EU to finally step up and say, “Hey, maybe we should build a munitions factory!” – and it’ll be another two years before it’s up and running.
I keep coming back to something one of the Ukrainians (not Zelenskyy, maybe the head of the Army?) said in the fall of 2022: something like the West is sending Ukraine barely enough weapons to defend itself, but not enough to win. And if it comes down to a war of attrition, Russia’s resources will last much longer than the attention spans of Ukraine’s allies.
I honestly can’t find any recent information on Gripens for Ukraine. Sweden suggested they would do that if they got into NATO, and they have.
If the issue is setting standards, how hard would it be to just agree to set them together? Is NATO just being weird and possessive and not wanting to give the EU any input?
Also an interesting bit:
Turkey’s territorial dispute with Cyprus — a non-NATO member in the EU — is also making things more complicated between the two institutions. Turkish diplomats at NATO are unwilling to let alliance staff share too much information with the EU, as Cypriot officials would be able to access it. “You might think we’re having the war in Ukraine, and the two groups of ambassadors should be meeting as often as possible to discuss strategies,” a senior EU diplomat said. “That’s not the case, thanks to Turkey and Cyprus.”
Conflict in everyone’s favourite Balkan island strikes again.
Goodbye pax americana, we hardly knew ye o7
So this debate was always buried in the whole “Europe is freeloading on NATO” schtick, the fact that for example both EU countries and the US buy and fly F-35 jets. If the EU is now forced to spend more on defense, especially since the impetus is partly coming from the unreliability of the US, why should an EU country give that money to the US as opposed to joining the FCAS programme? Now the question is, will NATO put the joint interests of its member states ahead of those of the US MIC?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Commission has also presented a European Defence Industrial Strategy alongside a cash pot of at least €1.5 billion, aimed at getting the EU to finally begin punching its weight when it comes to defense.
Spurred by the war in Ukraine and by the potential return to the White House of Donald Trump, the bloc wants its members to start thinking of their own futures when it comes to defense, one in which they don’t rely overly on the United States.
“We need to build such a sustainable financial instrument if European security should be protected” Tomáš Kopečný, the Czech envoy for the reconstruction of Ukraine and a former deputy defense minister, told POLITICO.
In a letter Stoltenberg sent to von der Leyen Jan. 26, seen by POLITICO, he warned “I am concerned about the potential overlap with existing NATO activities,” adding: “In particular, I would be worried if the EU were to move into standard setting for munitions.”
In a February speech, von der Leyen said a “new European defense mindset” would be urgently needed, because “we do not have the control over elections or decisions in other parts of the world.”
“On the day of the invasion, you and I stood side-by-side and delivered a clear message of support for the Ukrainian people,” Stoltenberg recalled, casually omitting the other person who was also on stage at the time — European Council President Charles Michel.
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The EU has different goals than NATO. So it would be prudent to collect input from NATO, but the goal is different.
Neither, they’re both American constructs.
EU is an American construct? Please elaborate.
The rest of the world is merely a dream in the American consciousness. Here, I have a comic book by Neil Gaiman that will explain the whole thing.
Solipsism: Me and My Imaginary Friends
Sure! The EU started out as an independent organization dedicated to serve European countries but over time Western powers infiltrated it and made the EU subservient to the USA. Even if countries left the EU now many of the countries that are in it still have governments that are more than happy to bow to whatever the USA wants. Until the electorate of those countries realizes this and rebels against their governments (not specifically violently) they won’t have governments that serve them.
Western powers, plural? Who would that be besides European countries? I hate to break it to you, but Canada can barely infiltrate a barn.
Correct about Canada. The USA keeps them down too.
Sure, the US told the subservient EU to implement GDPR, DMA, food standards,…
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