Opinion | As war risks mount, Europe is sluggish to response – The Washington Post

BRUSSELS Americas closest allies in Europe are warning that Russia could initiate a new war on the continent as soon as this decade and that they are chillingly ill-prepared.

British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps, in his inaugural speech on the job, cautioned last month that the country is shifting from a postwar to a prewar world, a view shared increasingly among senior European civilians and military officials.

How unready is Europe to face down Russian President Vladimir Putin should he choose to test the West, perhaps with an attack on the vulnerable smaller nations on NATOs eastern flank, as many believe he might after rapidly rebuilding Russias forces depleted in Ukraine? Lets count the ways.

Britains own army has shrunk to a mini-me version of its former self, with fewer troops than at any point since the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century. U.S. generals have warned that Britains military is dangerously diminished amid reports that its forces would run short of ammunition days into a ground war.

Germany has left its armed forces to atrophy and lacks adequate supplies of soldiers, equipment and even Band-Aids, as its inspector general warned a year ago.

Funding and munitions in the armed forces of Belgium, the scene of fierce battles in both world wars, are so scarce that its army would have to throw stones to defend itself, according to a retired general.

The antidote to those shortcomings is NATOs bulk and brawn, led by the approximately 100,000 U.S. troops on European soil a bigger active-duty force than the entire British army can muster. Increasingly, though, that U.S. security guarantee looks wobbly.

That is the case not only, or even mainly, because of the prospect of a second term for Donald Trump, whose disdain for NATO I addressed in my column last week. It is also the reality given Chinas rising threat, which has displaced Russia as Washingtons No. 1 concern even as Putin presses his pitiless war in Ukraine.

When U.S. strategists discuss a pivot to Asia, what they also mean is a turn that will leave Europe to plug the gaps. That has given rise to an arms-buying spree on the continent, mainly of U.S.-made weapons.

Notably, U.S. allies in Europe have received or ordered more than 600 U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets, at a combined cost of more than $50 billion. In addition to their military value, thats a European bet on bilateral ties with Washington, no matter who occupies the White House.

Nonetheless, a senior European NATO official told me, Europeans are worried about the prospect of being left to defend themselves. NATO without American leadership is no longer NATO, the official said. The whole point of deterrence is that Putin knows if he attacks Europe, hell be at war with a mighty U.S.

The fact that Europe is increasingly vulnerable is underlined by dramatic announcements that yield little follow-up.

A prime example was Chancellor Olaf Scholzs announcement, days after Putins 2022 invasion of Ukraine, that Germany had arrived at a dramatic turning point. The new world, he said, demanded that Germany shed its pacifist posture and launch a $110 billion fund to overhaul its military and defense industrial capacity.

Two years later, Germany has emerged as Europes leading donor of military and financial aid to Ukraine. But Scholzs government, saddled with an anemic economy and red tape, has been slow to bulk up Germanys armed forces, despite Defense Minister Boris Pistoriuss insistence that it be ready for war by the end of the decade.

A top French official in the European Union, Thierry Breton, is pushing the 27-nation bloc to establish a defense fund of almost $110 billion. His proposal chimes with historical precedent a French-led plan at the Cold Wars outset to create a European army, 100,000 troops strong, funded by a common budget.

That idea died in Frances own legislature, as it became clear that the continents security would be assured by U.S. troops and nuclear weapons through NATO, whose champion, Dwight D. Eisenhower, became president in 1953.

Bretons half-baked initiative it includes no funding source has been shrugged off as the latest French buy European initiative and an attempt to weaken the continents bonds with the United States. Yet it should be the basis for serious conversation.

Theres an old tension between transatlantic and European-only solutions to European security problems, Seth Johnston, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University who has led NATO missions as a U.S. Army officer, told me. The episode in the early 1950s is an early example that European proposals often dont work out, and NATO ends up having to reinvent or adapt itself to the new problem.

For NATOs European members, spending more on defense is a quadruple win: a strategy to ensure Ukraines survival, deter Putin from further aggression, respond to Washingtons pivot to Asia, and convince Trump, should he regain office, that the alliance is a good deal.

The alternative is to maintain the status quo: a soft-bellied Europe shuffling into a menacing new era, inviting disaster.

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Opinion | As war risks mount, Europe is sluggish to response - The Washington Post