Europe’s increased defence spending doesn’t cut it. Ukraine needs the US

Europe’s stated intent to ramp up military spending will run into the constraint caused by the continent’s relative economic decline.

For three years, European countries, particularly those belonging to the NATO group, have been providing financial and military support to Ukraine in its war against Russia. A significant portion of the Ukraine’s resource mobilisation actually came from the US. That was until President Donald Trump came back to power.

With the US now pausing financial and military logistic support to Ukraine, the European members of NATO are being forced to consider more budgetary support to Ukraine. However, it is debatable if the emerging trends in defence budget hikes amongst NATO members would be ‘significant enough’ to sustain Ukraine’s war efforts.

Europe’s hike in defence budget is ‘symbolic’

Under threat from Trump, the European countries of NATO are scrambling through a symbolic rise in their defence budgets. The UK has recently announced, with fanfare, a defence budget hike that would take its share of defence expenditure in GDP to 2.5 percent. The apparent increase has been made possible by pulling in resources that earlier went towards overseas aid. However, the actual increase is just 0.2 percentage point since the UK was already spending 2.3 percent of its GDP on defence. The resource allocation system in the UK seems to be quite constrained and it would take years of sustained efforts to take UK’s defence budget to even 3 percent of GDP.s

Other European members of NATO are also pretending to open their purse to consolidate, strengthen and augment their support to Ukraine’s war efforts. The London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) recently came out with the 2025 edition of its Military Balance. Accordingly, the European countries increased their defence spending in 2024 by 11 percent. While part of the defence spending increase was in response to the ongoing war in Ukraine and increased threats to the European collective security, they are under further pressure to respond liberally in the Trump era. Almost two dozen countries in Europe have crossed the 2 percent Rubicon set for themselves almost a decade ago. That would still leave President Trump a dissatisfied soul since he wants NATO countries to raise their defence budget almost immediately to 5 percent of their national GDPs.

Why Europe’s efforts may fall short

Yet, from several defence economy perspectives, the collectivity of these efforts may not help NATO’s European members in sustaining Ukraine’s defensive operations against Russia.

First, Ukraine is already spending 38 percent of its GDP on defence compared to Russia’s 5.9 percent. Its defence budget was $64.8 billion in 2023, almost one-half of Russia’s $109 billion. The IISS Military balance actually puts it as $28.4 billion for Ukraine vis-à-vis $145 billion for Russia (on PPP basis) in 2024. Methodological differences apart, Ukraine would find the going tough on its own and cannot possibly stretch its defence budget any more. Russia, on the other hand, can afford to sustain the present defence budget very easily for near future and can even increase the defence budget to a double-digit share of its GDP.

Second, with the US financial support paused for now and almost certain to be withdrawn in due course, Europe’s NATO members would find the boots too big to occupy. The European Commission declared on 4th March that it would raise around 150 billion euros as part of its collective rearmament efforts. However, the periodicity over which this amount would be mobilised along with proportion meant for Ukraine are unclear. Moreover, the European members do accept that they need to raise their defence budget by further 1.5 percent of GDP for mobilising 650 billion euros in next four years. The budgetary trend in European countries amply establish the painful and protracted manner in which these countries have grudgingly brought their defence budget in the range of 2 percent of their national GDPs. It took almost one decade of internal discussions and subsequent prodding by the US to reach this level. Raising it further by 1.5 percent may, therefore, remain a distant dream and certainly miss the four-year deadline.

Third, even if the European countries find some money, they cannot replace the US superpower functionality on their own. Collectively, the NATO members of Europe have a defence budget that is only half of what the US boasts off. They cannot afford to give $100 billion in military aid to Ukraine every year. They also lack the requisite supply-chain logistics to provide quality weapons to Ukraine on their own since the established channels of weapons are mostly being in-sourced from the US. NATO members of the Europe also do not have surplus ammunition reserves to divert towards Ukraine and it is debatable if the European defence industry is capable of substituting for American counterpart.

Europe’s relative economic decline is a constraint

It, therefore, emerges that the European countries would find it very difficult to handle Ukraine’s war business. European discourse on solidarity with Ukraine is at best an ‘ephemeral semantics’ and may soon be pushed under the rubric of slow GDP growth in these countries. The UK and France, once the powerful allies and support pillars of the US all over the world, are declining great powers. They are slipping down in the pecking order of global GDP ranking. Concurrently, their defence budgets would also face stasis, if not decline, during war conditions.

It is no surprising, therefore, that these countries are now talking of ambiguous proposals such as ‘lasting peace’ and a ‘peacekeeping force’. That may not solicit a positive response from Russia on war termination. Soon, the NATO members of Europe would realise their resource limitations in sustaining Ukraine’s war efforts. In all probability, they may have to approach the US again for a workable solution to wriggle out Ukraine from the war conundrum.