Nearly three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there is a broad consensus among elites in Europe on the imperative of a sustained surge in defence investment to support Ukraine and protect the continent from Russian aggression and Chinese assertiveness.
Europe is already facing war in Ukraine and covert warfare by Russia in and around EU and NATO territory, with increasingly frequent acts of sabotage, cyberattacks, disinformation, election interference and assassination attempts. In recent months, Russian and Chinese ships have been detained on suspicion of deliberately cutting undersea cables in the Baltic Sea. Yet this sense of no longer being at peace is unequally shared among European publics and is challenged by far-right and hard-left populists aligned with, or amplified by, Russia.
At the same time, US President Donald Trump is set to demand that Europeans take more responsibility for their own continent’s security as the US prioritises countering China in the Indo-Pacific. There is thus an urgent need to mobilise the industrial, financial and human resources required for the defence of Europe.
NATO and EU officials estimate that Europe has three to five years to prepare for a potential attack by Russian forces, which could be rapidly reconstituted once fighting stops in Ukraine. Some experts suggest a longer timeline, given the scale of Russian casualties, but most agree that, given the extent to which Moscow has hardened its revisionist ideology, built a war economy and forged strategic partnerships with China, Iran and North Korea, the risk of confrontation is rising unless Russia can be deterred or pushed back in Ukraine. This requires a change of strategic culture in Europe, with strong political leadership to convince public opinion and drive a whole-of-society, whole-of-government approach to deterrence and defence.
Stubborn political, financial and practical constraints, and divergent threat perceptions rooted in geography, history and identity, stand in the way of a rapid buildup in European military capabilities. Where is the money to come from when national finances are already stretched? How can massive pools of private savings be channelled into defence? How can Europe develop and sustain its defence technological and industrial base? How can arms production be expanded from its shrunken post-Cold War base? How can fragmented European defence industries be made to work together efficiently? How can Europe’s armed forces and defence industries attract the increased skilled, tech-savvy workforce they need?
In a series of public events and closed-door roundtables in 2024, the EPC’s EUropean Defence and Security project (DefSecEU) brought together stakeholders from the defence industries, governments, EU institutions, NATO’s civilian and military staffs, the investment community, academics, trade unions and workforce experts to identify bottlenecks and practical solutions to unleash a defence surge for Europe.
Read the full paper here.