Could Europe and the UK ditch the US and manage their own defense?

Europe has suffered a severe shock. Its protector of the last 80 years, the US, has just told it to get its act together and play a far bigger role in its own defense, if not fend for itself altogether.

But can Britain and Europe muster up enough money, know-how and resources to meet such a massive and seemingly urgent challenge?

The next prospective German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, sounded bullish shortly after his Christian Democrat party won the German elections on February 23.

He declared it a priority for Europe and the UK to “step by step…achieve independence from the USA” as it was clear that US President Donald Trump “does not care much about the fate of Europe,” reports the BBC.

As if to confirm his view, the following day, February 24, the US voted with Russia and North Korea against its traditional European allies at the UN on a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

According to the World Economic Forum, Europe spends an average of 1.9% of its economic output on defense and 25% on social protection, including pensions and social care.

In contrast, the US spends less than a fifth of GDP on social protection but has a much sturdier defense budget at 3.4% of its GDP.

Mark Rutte, the secretary-general of NATO, has said that European countries should be aiming for 3.7% of GDP, though if the US abandoned its transatlantic allies altogether a figure significantly higher than 4% would be needed to plug the gap.

This would translate into billions extra in defense every year for each country which in turn would mean less spent on social protection which also provides stability.

In the UK, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has committed to hiking defense expenditure from 2.3% to 2.5% by 2027 – the equivalent of £6 billion which will be shorn off the UK’s foreign aid budget.

The decision has triggered a certain amount of outrage among politicians on both the left and the right. David Miliband, a former Labour foreign secretary and head of the International Rescue Committee, called it, “a blow to Britain’s proud reputation as a global humanitarian and development leader.”

On the right, Tory MP Andrew Mitchell, a former international development secretary, said, “Balancing the books on the backs of the poorest people in the world isn’t just wrong, it also makes the UK weaker and less secure.”

But even if Europe and the UK manage to source the kind of money required to boost their defense budgets, turning cash into military capacity is no easy task, reports The Economist.

Europe would need to form 50 new brigades, according to Bruegel, a Brussels-based think-tank, which would mean a massive recruitment exercise with no guarantee of success as the military already struggles to attract new recruits at their current pared-down size.

General Richards, former Chief of Defense Staff told the BBC in reference to how the UK military has been hollowed out in recent years: “The whole British army has less artillery pieces than I had in my one brigade in the mid-1990s.”

Other aspects of the go-it-alone challenge include replacing America’s airborne electronic warfare and intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR), and the ability to find and understand targets.

Add to that the nuclear issue which Merz addressed several days before his center right party won the German elections.

“We need to have discussions with both the British and the French—the two European nuclear powers about whether nuclear sharing, or at least nuclear security could also apply to us,” he said in The Guardian.

But even if Germany and other neighboring nations could shelter under that particular umbrella, the size of France and Britain’s nuclear arsenal does not begin to compare to the size of Russia’s, with 400 warheads between them against Russia’s 1,700.

The challenge of Europe and the UK going it alone is huge, but not necessarily insurmountable, according to experts consulted by The Economist.

“The German debate is maturing at warp speed,” notes Bruno Tertrais, one of Europe’s leading thinkers on nuclear matters. “The British and the French will need to rise to the challenge.”

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