Flocking up in London over the weekend, European leaders declared they would work to put together plans to end the war in Ukraine, but were given security guarantees for the country, the first victim of a full-scale Russian invasion since February 2022.
The UK conference was soon after a disastrous visit to the White House by Ukrainian President Voldimi Zelensky, during which time it was publicly condemned by Vice President JD Vance for resisting President Donald Trump’s unconditional peace plan with Russia.
Trump has made it clear that the US will not provide security guarantees to Ukraine, urging European troops to take charge on their behalf.
Last week, during a meeting with Trump in Washington, D.C., French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Kiel Starmer showed their willingness to send troops to Ukraine as peacekeepers if they reach a contract to end the Russian war.
But can Europe provide Ukraine meaningfully with security coverage without the US endorsing it? What are the true security capabilities of Europe? How dependent is this region on US support? And what threat does Russia pose?
What role does the US play in European security?
The United States has been the center of European security since the end of World War II, supporting the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and deployed hundreds of thousands of soldiers to Europe to challenge Soviet influence. Since then, while maintaining this security leadership, the status of the global superpower has also expanded.
As of July 2024, the US government’s Defense Manpower Data Center had around 65,000 active duty soldiers permanently stationed throughout Europe.
This includes six pre-located weapon stockpiles in Europe, featuring tanks and armored vehicles, eight air squadrons, four naval destroyers and an estimated 100 nuclear bombs. Additionally, the US has around 10,000 soldiers involved in spinning deployments in Poland. This is an important part of the NATO’s eastern side with Russia.
To fund military muscle, the US relies on a mammoth defense budget of $8600 billion in 2024. This is more than twice as many of all the other NATO members who are supposed to protect each other in the event of attack.
At the same time, according to the US State Department, the US has provided much of its direct military aid to Ukraine since Russia invaded it in 2022 and sent around $65 billion. When considering other types of assistance, the United States had allocated approximately $183 billion to Ukraine response as of September 30, 2024, according to Ukraine Surveillance, a website created by the US government to record aid sent to Ukraine. According to the European Commission, the European Union has provided Ukraine with a total of $141 billion in aid.
But Trump says it’s time for the US to militarily retreat from Europe, and hopes that continental allies will make a heavier lift.
“The harsh strategic reality prevents the United States from focusing primarily on Europe’s security,” declared Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses at a meeting of NATO allies on February 12th.
How strong is NATO’s European allies?
NATO’s European members have a total of 2 million active duty soldiers. According to the latest NATO estimates, Turkiye and Poland have 481,000 and 216,000 soldiers, respectively.
France and Germany are followed by 205,000 and 186,000 soldiers. The UK has 138,000 soldiers who have offered to send peacekeeping forces to Ukraine under a potential peace agreement. NATO itself has around 40,000 units across its eastern flank, spanning Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
NATO’s European allies have around 7,000 aircraft, 6,800 tanks, 2,170 military ships and six aircraft carriers, according to the World Fire Defense Index.
How will NATO take fares if the US shrinks?
Despite its important military assets, NATO still relies heavily on the US to stop the European threat. According to economic think tank Bruegel, NATO would expect the US to rush hundreds of thousands of additional troops into Europe in the event of a massive attack on one of its own by Russia.
If Europe does not rely on this support, which is enhanced by Washington’s advanced military technology and infrastructure, Bruegel estimates that the continent will need to fill the gap by creating 50 new brigades, each consisting of thousands of soldiers.
Concerned, European states feel pressured to increase their defensive spending.
Last week, the UK announced it would increase its defensive spending to 2.5% of its GDP by 2027. British Prime Minister Kiel Starmer said this would add about $16 billion each year to its current $68 billion defence budget. “This government will begin the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War,” the star told Congress.
Germany announced a special fund of over $100 billion to upgrade and strengthen its troops in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, adding it to its annual defense budget of approximately $520 billion. Last year, the country’s defense budget reached 2% of GDP for the first time since the end of the Cold War, as part of the NATO target set in 2014 after Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea. Germany’s next prime minister, Friedrich Merz, stressed in a speech in December that the military would need “at least $84 billion a year” in the future.
Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, NATO allies in Europe and Canada increased their spending at an unprecedented 18%. Currently, 22 of the 30 European NATO members have spent at least 2% of their GDP on defense, following their pledges for 2023.
But Trump has argued that it’s not enough, calling for the state to promote defense spending at least 5% of its GDP.
NATO Secretary General Mark Latte acknowledges the need for Europe to invest more. “We haven’t paid enough for the past 40 years, especially since the Berlin Wall fell,” Latte told Politico on the sidelines of the February 15 Munich Security Conference. It’s completely logical. ”
How does Russia see NATO?
Russia cites the expansion of NATO as one of the justifications for invasion of Ukraine. Since its founding in 1949, NATO has grown from 12 to 32 members, moving steadily eastward towards the Russian border. Currently, six NATO members (four of whom have joined since the turn of the millennium, with borders Russia including Finland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania).
To keep Western military alliances at bay, Moscow has called for protection from grouping Ukraine, which has long sought NATO membership.
“Otherwise, this issue will continue to poison the atmosphere of continental Europe,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakhalova said on February 18th.
However, Western European countries view Russia’s aggression as a reason to strengthen the bloc. Russia, the world’s largest nuclear power generation since the end of the Cold War, has invaded or occupied by Moldova, Georgia, and more recently some countries near Ukraine.
Russia’s direct military intervention in Moldova in the early 1990s helped separatists aligned with Russia gained de facto control of the breakaway region of Transnistria. Russia’s fierce invasion of Georgia in 2008 took a major blow to Tbilisi and complicated its relationship with the West.
Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, NATO has grown. Previously neutral Finland and Sweden have joined the alliance over the past two years.
How strong is the Russian army?
Currently, Russia has at least 1.32 million active duty soldiers, with hundreds of thousands fighting in Ukraine. Moscow previously had about 12,000 soldiers stationed in Kaliningrad, the most western enclave of the enclave, sandwiched between NATO members Poland and Lithuania. However, most of these forces were reportedly relocated to Ukraine early in the conflict.
Russia also operates a number of overseas military facilities, most of which are located in the former Soviet provinces. As of 2024, this includes at least two main bases in Belarus, two in Kazakhstan, two in Armenia, two in the contested Georgia region of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, one base each, one base each. The largest of these facilities is the 201st military base in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, which, as of 2022, had an estimated 7,000 Russian soldiers.
In terms of military assets, Russia has 4,292 aircraft, 5,750 tanks, 449 ships and one aircraft carrier.
This ability doesn’t match the strength of the NATO combination, but it presents a more rigorous test if the US retreats, as Trump wants.
“Europeans need to wake up,” EU foreign policy director Kaja Karas said at a meeting of the European Defense Agency on January 22. The continent’s “failure to invest in military capabilities” “sends dangerous signals to invaders; weakness leads to them.”
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