In a weird way, hopefully.
Trump has made two things abundantly clear: NATO will be run like a mafia protection racket (“Europe, you’re not my friends; you better pay your due or I stop protecting you”) or not at all and that he will let Putin do what he wants to former Soviet states and Warsaw Pact “allies”. Anyone denying this has a serious issue with reality in the past so many years.
What European NATO countries need to do is clear: They must prepare for a less-involved USA. Maybe not entirely divorced, but far reduced commitment in the worst case if Trump can get away with it (I don’t think that will happen, but who knows? And who knows who will run and win in 2028?)
EUROPE. MUST. RE-ARM.
No ifs, no buts, no whatabouts. Europe must be prepared to stand on their own.
I used to be bullied as a kid, so I know that the only credible defense against bullies is the ability to hurt them grievously. If you’re able and willing to make them bleed profusely and not care if the teachers are going to send to detention afterwards, they’re not gonna mess with you.
Vladimir Putin is a bully. He only respects strength. Europe must find its strength again.
I understand: Individual US states have the same economy as entire European countries (California has the same GDP as Britain, for example), so trying to build a US-like military is a little too difficult for any one country. However, European NATO combined can do that.
What Europe should probably do is to create a “federal” European armed forces. You have a unified command, standardized doctrine, equipment, and training, its own “domestic” supply chain, and reserve pool from all European countries. We’re seeing prototypes of these in multinational brigades across Europe, so maybe it’s as “simple” as unifying all of Europe’s armed forces. This way, should a Russian tank poke its nose into some Latvian road, the rest of Europe will mobilize in no time.
I’m not going to pretend this is a trivial thing to do. Many European militaries are chronically underfunded and have been gutted since 1991 after the Big Red Threat disappeared.
If Roland Bartetzko is to be believed (and I put more weight on his words on this topic than anyone else here, given his extensive and unique experience), the Bundeswehr of today is nothing like what it used to be in the Cold War; their tech might be top-notch, but the old esprit de corps is gone. It has to be rebuilt from the ground-up. It will take years and hundreds of billions of Euros, and, most importantly, the political will to sustain the effort.
Similarly, Britain has been swept up in the anti-Euro mania and committed to Brexit, which puts both their continental friends and themselves in a precarious position. Sure, the Russian Navy is a joke given that they keep losing ship to the Navy-less Ukraine, but they are also learning and they might not be as bad next time. The British military is the smallest it has ever been in 200+ years, even though it has more people to recruit from. I doubt they can pull of a Falklands today (and even back then, it took a herculean effort by people all across the British military to do it).
Pooling resources together might alleviate the economic burden and make the effort cheaper as a whole (as there would be less reduplication of efforts). They would also fight far more effectively too if they trained correctly.
It’s a long shot, but maybe that’s all the hope Europe have today if they don’t want to live under Russian jackboots, especially the Baltic countries and Eastern Europe as well as Finland. I feel bad for them because ultimately this isn’t their fault that they end up in this situation (only the aggressor is ever wrong), but as the saying during the pandemic goes, it is what it is. What are you gonna do about it?
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