Europe Has Just Become A More Dangerous Place
European Rearmament Will Not Provide Ukraine With Effective Security
Last time military Keynesianism was back in fashion we were well down the road towards a world war. This time European rearmament is principally geared towards restructuring its ailing economy. Its advocates have decided that defense is a better focus for economic regeneration than investing in useless net zero technology to save the day.
As This Post on X from The European Commission Shows They Have Become Gung-Ho Military Keynesians.
European Commission
@EU_Commission
A pivotal moment for Europe is here. We are ready to mobilise up to €800 billion to help EU countries increase defence spending. We'll present our proposals to all EU leaders at today's European Council meeting. Europe is resolved to assume its responsibilities ↓
The war in Ukraine, the unravelling of NATO and the Western military alliance has provided the perfect rationale for the promotion of European rearmament. Suddenly it appears that virtually every European head of state has become converted to the virtue of increasing defense spending. Even the Germans, who are usually fanatical about policing public expenditure have become advocates of ‘spend and spend and let’s see what happens’.
The extraordinary meeting of the European Council in Brussels was in no doubt that the arms industry would be its growth sector. The leaders of the European Union agreed to a deal that would free up billions of euros to boost defense spending. Advocates of this plan are arguing for mobilizing as much as 800 billion euros to rearm its military[i]. Once implemented this plan would provide EU member states with loans totaling up to 150 billion euros.
Germany is in the forefront of the campaign to restructure Europe’s economy around the imperative of defense. Its commitment to this project is strongly motivated by the objective of staving off the threat of an economic recession and saving its ailing automobile sector. As Holger Schmieding, the chief economist at Berenberg Bank stated, ‘It is becoming obvious to everybody that defence spending is the way to offset job losses in the car industry’. A leaked plan for German rearmament goes as far as to propose spending 400 billion euros on national defence and committing an another 500 billion to rebuild Germany’s infrastructure[ii].
Of course, it is still early days, and wise counsel may well prevail over Europe’s jingoistic shift towards a war economy. The justification for opting for military Keynesianism is the supposed threat posed by Russia to European security and the necessity for defending the integrity of Ukraine. However, it is evident to all that even if all the billions earmarked for the defense of Europe are invested wisely it will have little bearing on developments on the battlefields of Ukraine. Converting Germany’s ailing automobile industry to produce military hardware will take years as will the process of transforming Western Europe’s existing security resources into a credible military force.
Just remember that Germany’s railway infrastructure is currently in too poor a state to transfer tanks and other military hardware across the country. Years of obsessing with Net Zero Green ideology have taken their toll on German'y’s once formidable economy.
It is an open secret that Europe has seriously neglected its defence infrastructure[iii]. It is also the case that initiatives led by the EU and other European institutions are implemented at a painfully slow pace. The failure of the EU to offer an effectice Europe wide response to the Covid pandemic crisis exposed the sorry state of this institutions capacity to deal with an emergency. The EU is good at regulating but not at getting things done. The EU’s regulatory institutions are more interested in regulating than in implementing a complex plan designed to rearm the continent.
Nor is the problem of transforming European defense into a credible force simply an matter to do with military hardware. European armies – Britain and France included – are poorly prepared for a war. The nations of the EU have become estranged from the kind of patriotic values necessary to support a real military engagement with Russia. Keir Starmer’s ‘coalition of the willing’ raises the question of ‘willing to do what?’. At a time when neither France nor Britain can secure their borders to prevent mass illegal migration their willingness to be willing will be truly tested.
Macron and his colleagues may well be good at acting the role of would-be Napoleon Bonapartes. But these windbags are not in a position seriously affect the outcome of the war in Ukraine. As matters stand only the United States has the resources and the military-technological capacity to significantly influence the outcome of this war.
While all the tough talk emanating from the Brussels Bubble has a distinct performative dimension it is important to take seriously the dangers of unleashing an explosive dynamic that has the potential of quickly escalating and getting out of control. As we head towards a world of increased protectionism and economic conflict there is a danger that European rearmament could inadvertently lead to an arms race. History shows that such a development inevitably has unpredictable consequences.
What’s really concerning about the decision taken by the European Council is not simply its ‘spend, spend’ strategy or its wager on the economic benefits of the arms industry. What is really worrying is that Europe’s leading military hawks lack clarity about the continent’s future direction of travel. Afflicted by the disease of geopolitical illiteracy the leaders of Europe have failed to address the issue of how they can navigate a world where the three dominant powers – America, China, Russia – have a disproportionately strong influence on geopolitical matters.
No doubt European nations must assume responsibility for their national defence and no doubt that will exact serious financial costs. The announcement by President Trump that America plans to scale down its military role in Europe endows the issue of continental defense with great urgency. But this challenge should not be confused with the resolution of the war in Ukraine. Nor should Ukraine be used as a pretext for justifying the policy of military Keynesianism.
The needs of Germany’s car’s industry should not be confused with the interests of the Ukrainian people.
We should also beware of allowing the federalist leadership of the EU to use the issue of defense to centralize its power. Defense should be seen as a matter of national jurisdiction for which sovereign states ought to bear responsibility.
One final point. In 1938, Winston Churchill published a book titled Arms and Covenant, which was later that year republished in the U.S. under the title While England Slept: A Survey of World Affairs, 1932 – 1938. Churchill was furious at the reluctance of the British government to take seriously the threat posed by Nazi Germany and its failure to prepare the military for the war to come. Hitler’s invasion of Poland vindicated his call to rearm.
Were Churchill alive today, his version of While England Slept would be re- titled While Europe Played With Toy Soldiers. What mattered in 1938 was to rearm militarily to confront a grave threat to human civilization. What matters today is not so much a military but moral rearmament. As J.D. Vance recently told the assembled audience of Europe’s leaders in Munich, the real enemy is not external to the EU. The real enemy is within and is underwritten by the moral confusion prevailing within the EU’s nation states. The physical re-armament proposed by the European Council will only highlight the moral confusion afflicting the EU’s federalist leadership.
A shorter version of this post was published on spiked-online. -https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/07/the-perils-and-delusions-of-europes-new-war-economy/
[i] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/07/europe/europe-security-urkraine-defense-explainer-intl-hnk/index.html
[ii] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/04/european-rearmament-is-going-to-turn-the-world-upside-down/
[iii] https://ecfr.eu/article/the-four-pillars-of-european-defence/
The problems (or realities) pointed out in this substack are concerning enough. By way of emphasis I add my own take on the dynamics they are unleashing.
Suppose a car plant is converted to manufacture of artillery shells. The car plant kept going because the market for cars expands or is refreshed as cars wear out. How does the artillery plant justify continuous production? It too needs an expanding or refreshing market. As the US shows, the military-industrial complex is implicated in war-mongering helped by the CIA and congressional hawks manfacturing pretexts to invade Iraq etc. And morality is suspended in overseas arms sales, the other feature of the need to expand the weapons market needed to sustain an arms industry.
A purely defensive arms economy must eventually stagnate. There are only so many anti-tank defences needed along a border. The implications of a war economy need very careful consideration. And by the time a war economy ends the state is burdened by high levels of debt. Europe was bankrupt by the end of WWII. Without the US Marshall Plan it would have remained so for a very long time.
European economies are already highly indebted - some economists think dangerously so with limitations of the kind Rachel from accounts finds herself wreslting with - and re-arming at pace as they propose is a good cover for even more borrowing not otherwise justifiable. Increasing defence spending by a percent or two is one thing. Shifiting in effect to a war economy is a reckless something else not least because the clowns in Brussels have, I am sure, no idea of how to manage the dynamics unleashed.
The so called peace dividend from the end of the Soviet Union was an excuse to incease welfare spending which Western progressive governments allowed to become unsustainable, and the need to re-arm will, perhaps, be an excuse or cover for trying to scale that back, but it will be by a little only. They have enough trouble with populism as it is.
I think it was Milton Friedman who pointed out that open borders and a welfare state were an either/or choice. You cannot have both as the dangerously indebted Euopean states are finding out the hard way. It is dangerous in all sorts of ways to have done this while de-industrialising at the same time as manufacture was outsourced to China. Yes, re-indusrialising is necessary but to do so at scale and pace by way of borrowing is reckless and it is hard to see the clowns in Brussels managing this any better than their already disastrous management of their economies to date.
Europe has indeed become a more dangerous place as the elites seize the opportunity to escape their mismanagment - for now.
I cannot see these Eurocrats who run Europe could ever get themselves organised to run a chook raffle let alone arm themselves. When Germany tried to buy tanks they needed them to be able to carry pregnant women and it all came to nothing. They have some tanks but not nearly enough. The other issue is getting enough troops to actually fight. The immigrants? The Young that don’t think their country is worth fighting for, let alone, Ukraine?