Western Europe’s Weakness Provoked Putin?
By Chuck Warren
The crisis in Ukraine is a result of decades of naïveté about Russian intentions across the Atlantic Ocean. It is no coincidence that Vladimir Putin first invaded Ukraine in 2014 only months after President Barack Obama withdrew the last American tank from Europe in April 2013. Perhaps he thought that the era of war in Europe was over or maybe he was betting that the Europeans were going to feel more pressure to spend more on their military capabilities. Whichever bet he was taking; it was a bad gamble.
Soon after the initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, members of NATO agreed to move toward spending 2 percent of their national GDPs on their militaries. Yet, when Vladimir Putin further escalated his war against Ukraine last year, the Europeans were still moving at a snail’s speed toward this modest goal. There is a lot of talk among the foreign policy elite about how American leaders need to explain to their constituents the importance of the U.S. investments into European security. But they are missing the point. Americans skeptic of sending their taxes to Europe understand that Europe matters. However, their question is why European security matters more to Americans than Europeans who are not being responsible with their own security.
If the Europeans had spent more on their defenses over the last decade, the war in Ukraine might not have happened and if it happened, the Ukrainians would have been much better equipped to defend themselves and by proxy the rest of us. Since the 2 percent agreement in 2014, Germany has spent a cumulative $325 million on its defense. But if it spent 2 percent of its GDP every year, that number would have been $531 billion, nearly two-thirds larger. Germany is Europe’s largest economy, and it has one of the most underinvested militaries. But if you add up these numbers for all other NATO members, you’d have European security capabilities at least twice better equipped to defend Europe.
There is a second problem with European military expenditure, which is that most of it in Western Europe goes into compensations and social welfare programs for the troops instead of munitions and tanks. So not only have countries in Western Europe, most prominently Germany, not been investing in European defense, they also have allocated the little they spend on what is not making them stronger. A recent report by German newspaper Spiegel confirms that Bundeswehr, the German military, is almost entirely hollowed out, and not just for the reasons stated above, but also a series of bad and lazy decisions which, more than anything, shows a lack of care by German political leaders. While Germany, given its size and weight, gets most of the attention and criticisms, the story for most of Western Europe is more or less the same.
Americans are not stupid, and when they complain about Europe, they are complaining about Western Europeans who are richer than Eastern neighbors yet less attentive to their own needs. Seldom do you hear an average American complain about Poland or Estonia for not spending enough into defending Europe—because those countries, despite being poorer, meet their 2 percent commitment regularly. The story doesn’t end there. Americans also contrast the relationship between Western Europeans (with the notable exception of the United Kingdom) with Eastern Europeans. The latter’s citizens and diplomats never miss an opportunity to thank the United States for liberating them out of Communist tyranny, while the former never miss an opportunity to tell Americans what’s wrong with us. Now that America is entering a new great power hostility with China, Americans see that. Other than the United Kingdom, few Western Europeans are taking America’s side—Americans will be forgiven to perceive Scholz’s photo-op last year smiling next to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping as a slap in the face, as with his predecessor Angela Merkel’s enacting greater trade relations between the European Union and China—noting while Eastern Europeans at points seem to be ahead of America in standing up to China.
A year after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised Zeitenwende, meaning a historical turning point which would restore German leadership and boost German military capabilities, it looks like he gave us an empty promise. To add insult to the injury, the Netherlands and Denmark earlier this month reiterated that they would not be sending their tanks to Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron keeps trying to lead Europe on the cheap, attempting to end the war through a compromise resolution that will leave Ukraine dismembered, yet nobody is listening to him because his country, relative to its GDP, has one of the lowest scores on aid to Ukraine, meaning that he has no leverage to get a hearing from anyone. This is consistent with his years of calling for European strategic autonomy from the United States while not doing what it takes to realize that autonomy; spending more on the French military.
There is a lot of (valid) criticism on Joe Biden for being too slow and too cheap in supporting Ukraine. Angela Stent, an expert on Russian foreign policy, explained it best that “the United States gives Ukraine enough to push the Russians back, but not enough to win.” When Biden was asked during his press conference with President Volodymyr Zelensky about not providing Ukraine ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System), he responded that it was due to the objection of U.S. allies in Europe. Specifically, those objections come from capitals like Berlin and Paris, not Warsaw and Vilnius. One must ask, why are Europeans, instead of stepping in to give more, are becoming an obstacle to helping Ukraine defend themselves from the Russian menace? And why is President Biden giving them a hearing while they have been—and continue to be—reliant on U.S. security guarantees without chipping in anything?
None of this should dissuade Americans from helping Ukrainians defend themselves. Ukrainians are not responsible for the sins of Germany and France or the Netherlands and Denmark therefore they should not suffer for what Scholz and Macron do—or don’t do. But America’s elected representatives need to come to terms with the fact that their constituents are not idiots or reactionaries when they complain about U.S. allies.
The truth is that, by all measures, Eastern Europeans are much more reliable friends than Western Europeans yet American leaders are ungrateful to the Eastern Europeans the way Western Europeans are ungrateful to America. Despite all the troubles they cause, U.S. leaders defer to Berlin and Paris in international fora yet those are the first capitals they call. It might be time to end this practice. If things continue as they are, and if Western Europe keeps playing cheap with defending itself then U.S. Presidents will put the Poles, the Balts, and once the war is over, the Ukrainians ahead of them when it comes to bilateral and multilateral relations. America has been making many sacrifices to maintain and keep Western European allies happy and to build goodwill but it sometimes appears as though these sacrifices have all been in vain. Short of withdrawing from Europe altogether, there is a lot that the United States can do to pursue its own interest that could have negative effects on Western European allies and it might be time to start doing exactly that. Let’s see how they like it when Americans are not picking up when they are calling to ask us not to impose sanctions on China because it would hurt their economies.
“If we know anything, it is that weakness is provocative.”
- Donald Rumsfeld, Former United States Secretary of Defense