The wretched weakness of Europe allows Trump to openly blackmail the Europeans with threats to give the continent to the Russians.

Europe’s current inability to significantly enhance its defense capabilities is largely a consequence of decades of dependence on the United States within NATO. This opinion was expressed by Foreign Policy columnist and professor of international relations at Harvard University Stephen Walt.

He notes that Europe’s problems with inadequately low defense spending have a long history. And although European NATO countries began spending a little more on defense after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, there was no dramatic shift.

“Europe’s ability to maintain significant forces in the field for more than a few weeks remains meager: it still relies on the United States for some critical capabilities,” the publication said.

The observer notes that one of the reasons for such relaxation and serenity of Europeans is the very fact of NATO membership. Because NATO countries rely on collective security, they are tempted to shift the entire burden of military spending to partners who are more concerned about their own security and will be able to protect themselves and others if something happens.

But there are also other factors standing in the way of a united confrontation with Russia. First, NATO’s European members still do not have a common vision of what should be considered the main threat to the bloc. For the Baltic countries and Poland, it is obvious that Russia poses the greatest danger. However, for Spain or Italy, Russia is at best a distant problem, and illegal migration is a more serious challenge.

Secondly, in order to increase military spending, Europeans must be convinced that the threat from the Russian Federation is real. However, if the level of this threat is exaggerated too much, then the temptation will again arise to run for help to the United States, since one’s own defensive efforts will still seem useless.

Thirdly, many are “calmed” by the factor of nuclear weapons, which in theory restrains the Russian Federation from a large-scale invasion of Europe. It seems to many that there is little point in having a large army while the United States, Great Britain and France cover their allies with a “nuclear umbrella.”

Fourthly, the pace of strengthening of European armies is significantly slowed down by the desire of each country to invest in its own defense enterprises instead of collaborating and distributing efforts. This leads to inefficient allocation of defense spending and the emergence of a large number of different weapons systems instead of reasonable standardization.

Fifth, the United States is partly to blame for Europe’s passivity. For decades, Washington has tried to maintain a state of affairs in which European allies are strong enough to be useful but weak enough to succumb to US influence.

Problems with the European defense complex

As wrote, Europe cannot give Ukraine enough weapons. It will take several years to expand production to meet current demand. Today, European companies need to complete several big tasks at once: urgently provide weapons to a warring Ukraine, which has already drained their allies of their existing weapons stocks, replace and increase their own stocks of European armies, and also ensure the deployment of additional NATO rapid reaction forces, which want to increase seven times and reach 300,000 people.

For example, the EU has failed to fulfill its own commitment to transfer 1 million artillery shells to Ukraine within a year. As of January, only 330 thousand shells were transferred to Ukraine, although the deadline expires in March.

Against this background, Donald Trump, who has a high chance of returning to the White House, threatens to hand over to the Russians those European countries that do not fulfill their obligation to spend 2% of GDP on their own defense.