Europe must disobey Trump's demands on greater weapons spending

Essential services will suffer if military budgets rise.

Donald Trump isn’t Europe’s president. (Gage Skidmore)

---

Donald Trump was already setting the agenda on both sides of the Atlantic before his latest election victory.

During his campaign, Trump promised that he would “insist” NATO members spend at least 3 percent of gross domestic product on arms and the military.

Weapons makers on this side of the Atlantic soon started amplifying the Trump call, sometimes without attributing it to him.

Guillaume Faury from Airbus and Jan Pie from the Aerospace, Security and Defence Industries Associations of Europe (ASD) included the demand in an opinion piece published shortly before the American election.

The two men pointed out that “European nations routinely spent over 3 percent of GDP on defense” in the Cold War era. “Today, this level of investment is not a luxury; it is a necessity,” they added.

Rob Bauer, the Dutch admiral chairing NATO’s military committee, used similar terms when making the same argument in a Prague speech at the weekend.

According to Bauer, higher military spending “will require sacrifice” and “take away some of our luxuries.”

“There will be less money for a holiday and a second car and a second holiday,” he said.

In between his scaremongering about Russia and China, Bauer sought to advocate a vision of society that is less focused on the individual.

The way he frames his arguments may prove seductive to a few social democrats. But with a multi-billionaire in the White House and neoliberalism remaining the dominant ideology in Europe, there’s little chance that sacrifices will be sought from the wealthy.

Ordinary folk will instead be the ones to suffer.

If politicians want more money for the military, it will probably be found by cutting essential services.

In 2021, the average level of expenditure on education by the European Union’s 27 governments came to less than 5 percent.

In Romania, it was less than 3 percent, and in Greece, Luxembourg and Croatia less than 4 percent.

If Europe obeys Trump, then it will soon be spending nearly as much on preparing for war as it does on teaching our young.

We can be different

Trump is not our president, so why should his demands be treated as mandatory on this continent?

His election affords an opportunity to show that we can be different, that knowledge can triumph over ignorance, solidarity over competition and peace over aggression.

To their eternal shame, Europe’s leaders are doing exactly what Trump wants.

Two bulky reports issued by the European Union this year both recommend substantial increases in military spending.

The most recent one – authored by Sauli Niinistö, a former Finnish president – states that “investing more” on weapons would send an “important signal to the US and other key partners.”

The earlier paper – from Italy’s Mario Draghi – lamented that the European Union’s spending on arms and the military was only around one third that of the US.

Politicians phrase their arguments carefully. Spending more on the military is deemed necessary to assert Europe’s independence and ensure it is not forever reliant on what is sometimes called America’s “security umbrella.”

Genuine independence would mean rejecting the decrees of a superpower. It would mean spending less on weapons, not more.

Trump’s election does offer one glimmer of hope. He has committed to swiftly ending the war between Russia and Ukraine.

It remains to be seen if he will deliver on the commitment. Yet even regarding his pledge as positive is verboten for Europe’s supposedly mainstream politicians.

The war has provided them with a major pretext to splurge on weapons. Having pounced on that pretext, they will no doubt try to keep the momentum going.

The trend is both dangerous and perplexing. While pretending to stand on its own two feet, Europe constantly apes America.