The lead-up to the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has not presented a pretty picture: continued indecision in the US Congress on support to Ukraine, remarks by former President Trump seemingly encouraging Russia to attack US allies in Europe, and the assassination in jail of the Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny.
In this agitated atmosphere of threats from without and from within, European NATO allies have sought to demonstrate their resolve — on defense spending and on support to Ukraine.
Last week, using some sleight of hand, NATO published figures projecting that in 2024, European allies would collectively meet the target of spending 2% of GDP on defense, with 17 individual allies spending at least 2%, up from only 10 in 2023. (NATO normally publishes figures that count defense spending by non-US allies, including Canada. This time, Canada, a serial underperformer, was excluded.)
How encouraging really is this news from Europe? A decade on from the original 2% pledge at the 2014 Wales Summit (a pledge renewed last year in Vilnius and upgraded from a target of 2% to a “minimum of 2%”), over a third of NATO members have still failed to reach the magic number.
Amongst these are major countries like Italy and Spain, both still well short of the target, and Canada, which has no intention of reaching it. Seven allies (including Germany and France) hope to crawl across the 2% line this year at the very end of the period of the Wales pledge.
Of those around the 2% mark, many need to spend significantly more than that. Prime examples are France and the UK, which are nuclear powers with global interests. So, despite the progress, this is still very well short of good enough.
How about aid to Ukraine? It can, after all, be argued that support for our eastern ally translates into blasted Russian armor and shredded units.
On February 1, the European Union (EU) agreed on a package of €50bn ($54bn) in aid to Ukraine over the next four years. And on February 16, French President Macron and German Chancellor Scholz signed bilateral security cooperation agreements with Ukraine, following the first such agreement signed in January by British Prime Minister Sunak. The three agreements refer to pledges of military support to Ukraine totaling almost $15bn this year.
These are the first in a series of such agreements with Ukraine, designed as a substitute for NATO membership, at least for the time being. The agreements bear reading, for their silences and their differences as much as anything else.
The ambiguity of purpose was apparent in the first, between the UK and Ukraine. The text, and Sunak’s accompanying words in Kyiv, referred in rapid succession to “security cooperation”, a “security agreement”, “security assurances”, “swift and sustained security assistance” in the event that Russia invades Ukraine again, and “security guarantees.”
At which point the vocabulary options in the thesaurus apparently ran out. Membership of NATO and an Article 5 guarantee would have been better, simpler and much more succinct because they would offer meaningful protection. Prevarication all too often requires an awful lot of words. As we all know from the ill-fated 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Western nations do not go to war based on artfully phrased documents. They might, however, go to war for an Article 5 pledge.
The UK agreement says that one of the newly provided security commitments is “prevention and active deterrence of, and counter-measures against, any military escalation and/or a new aggression by the Russian Federation”. What does that mean? The French version leaves out the language about “any military escalation”. The German version does not include this language at all. Doubtless, Putin is quaking in his boots.
Similarly, while the UK and French versions say that “Ukraine’s future membership of NATO would make an effective contribution to peace and stability in Europe”, the German one omits this language — not surprising since Germany has consistently blocked Ukrainian membership of NATO.
The US, another back marker on Ukrainian membership, has yet to sign any agreement. Doubtless, that will be held back until shortly before NATO’s 75th-anniversary summit in Washington in July to minimize pressure on the US to move towards support for Ukrainian membership.
On wider US assistance to Ukraine, Congress is struggling to agree on a package that includes about $30bn in military support. This is from a country that wastes some $2 trillion a year on a needlessly costly and inefficient healthcare system.
The total US military, financial, and humanitarian support to Ukraine has totaled about $75bn since the invasion. That has been excellent value for money: in a major war in Europe to defend freedom and democracy, not a single US soldier has been killed, compared with over 300,000 Russian soldiers killed or injured. Very cheap at the price if you are American, although not if you are Ukrainian.
In this uncertain context, European allies must not get trapped in a game of “follow the leader”. In a continent at war, they have to get much more serious irrespective of politics in Washington, this year or next. Much more serious on defense spending, on capabilities, on ready forces, and on defense production. Much more serious about supporting Ukraine and defeating Putin.
If needed, European countries could and should fund the package that Congress is wavering over. Europe may not — currently does not — have the defense industrial base to do this itself, but it could pay American companies to do it.
Hand-wringing, exhortation, and wrangling amongst allies will not get the job done.
Irresolute leadership is completely unsuitable for the times we live in. This is apparent on both sides of the Atlantic. We have not gone far enough or fast enough in Ukraine. The signals we are sending to our adversaries, including the 21st-century Hitler seeking to destroy European freedom and prosperity, are dangerously irresolute.
The choice in 2024 is between ceding ground to a dictator who will continue to take further pieces of Europe if he can, or dealing decisively with him so Europe can become free of that fear. If we don’t deal with him now, we will regret it forever. Winning that battle would put the West back in business. If the West chooses inaction — or tepid and insufficiently resolute action — it will deserve to lose.
There are some troubling signs that 2024 could be a very damaging year — for the US, for Europe, and for Ukraine. It is not too late to turn that around.
But do our leaders and our nations have the vision, the will, and the courage to do it?
Patrick Turner is a Distinguished Fellow at CEPA. He was the Assistant Secretary General for Defence Policy and Planning at NATO from 2018 to July 2022, and was the chair of NATO’s Defence Policy and Planning Committee and its Resilience Committee. He was also the UK’s Deputy Ambassador to NATO and served in the private office of three NATO Secretaries General (Manfred Worner, Willy Claes, and Javier Solana). Patrick joined the UK Ministry of Defence in 1984 after studying history at Merton College, Oxford.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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