The EU swiftly responded to Trump’s decision to freeze all military aid to Ukraine by having European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen unveil the bloc’s “ReArm Europe Plan” the very next day. It calls for: 1) boosting Member States’ defense spending by 1.5% on average for a collective €650 billion more in the next four years; 2) offering them €150 billion worth of loans for defense investments; 3) leveraging the EU budget; 4) and mobilizing private capital for this through two existing institutions.
The estimated €800 billion in defense spending that this is supposed to lead to might sound impressive, but it becomes much less so when considering the difficulties in optimizing this. For starters, no mechanism exists for dividing defense investments among Member States, nor might any such as the proposed “Army of Europe” ever come to fruition due to concerns over Member States’ sovereignty. NATO can’t suffice for this either since it’s dominated by the US whom many Europeans now distrust.
Even if some mechanism was agreed to for organizing the division of defense investments among Member States or they agreed to follow their shared senior US partner’s advice on this, then the next challenge is expanding production capabilities and purchasing the remainder abroad. It’s here where the €150 billion worth of loans becomes relevant for placing advance purchases that justify producers expanding their capabilities, but there might then be competition for this among leading Member States.
France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden would naturally want to produce as much of their own wares as possible while also selling as much to other Member States as they can, while Poland might ramp up domestic production to further diversify from its dependence on imports (including for ammo). That segues into the next point about purchasing the remainder of Member States’ needs abroad since there’ll likely also be fierce competition for this too.
The US and South Korea are some of top suppliers to EU Member States, but they’ll also have their own needs to meet as the Asian front of the New Cold War inevitably replaces the European one, which could lead to European customers not having all their own needs met due to these evolving dynamics. In the event that they meet all or at least most of their needs, however, they’ll then have to expand the “military Schengen” across bloc to facilitate the movement of troops and equipment throughout it.
Progress is already underway on this after Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland pioneer this initiative last year, following which France declared that it wants to participate too, but there’s still a lot of bureaucratic work that must be done to bring the rest of EU into this ambitious arrangement. The preceding three objectives associated with the “ReArm Europe Plan” can be advanced in parallel with building the “European Defense Line” along the Baltic States’ and Poland’s border with the Union State.
This project can serve as a litmus test of how effectively the EU can organize a multilateral defense initiative since the results or lack thereof will be evident for everyone given its tangible nature. The “European Defense Line” also implies these four states hosting others’ forces for deterrence purposes, both in rapidly responding to speculative provocations but also being forward-positioned to cross the frontier if the decision is made, which is also much more difficult to organize than it might seem.
And finally, the last obstacle to the “ReArm Europe Plan” might end up being Poland, which now boasts NATO’s third-largest army. It’s the most likely launching pad for European armies – whether individually, via “coalitions of the willing”, or as part of an “Army of Europe” – against Russia, both in the potential Belarusian and Ukrainian battlegrounds, but only the latter might see action. That’s because European countries are unlikely to invade Russia’s mutual defense partner while Ukraine has no such guarantees.
Poland already ruled out participating in the “Army of Europe” and might not want to risk any potential EU-Russian hot war in Ukraine spilling over into its own borders by letting Member States use its territory for staging military operations there that Warsaw doesn’t have a veto over. From Poland’s perspective, the US is the most reliable security provider and will accordingly be prioritized over any European analogue, to which end it’s actively courting the redeployment of US troops from Germany.
With these five obstacles in mind, the “ReArm Europe Plan” will most probably underperform, especially if Poland doesn’t allow itself to be larger Member States’ launching pad against Russia. Even if defense investments are effectively divided among Member States, the “military Schengen” is agreed to, and the “European Defense Line” built to last, it won’t amount to much if European armies aren’t on standby in Poland with the authority to proactively intervene in Ukraine without Warsaw’s permission.
For these reasons, and remembering that Poland is doing everything to become the US’ top ally in Europe, the “ReArm Europe Plan’s” ultimate success is largely dependent on Poland. This gives it huge influence over the post-conflict European security architecture, but only if its leadership understands this and has the will to advance national interests, not subordinate itself to Germany like some expect that the ruling liberal-globalist coalition will do if their candidate wins the presidency in May.
If the conservative candidate or the populist-nationalist one wins, however, then there’s a greater chance that Poland will keep aligning with America at Europe’s expense. That could then see the US using its influence there to contain those Europeans who might plot to provoke a hot war with Russia in the future if they had full access to the Polish launching pad. In any case, even if Poland was fully on board everything that the “ReArm Europe Plan” entails, it’ll still likely fall far short of expectations.
