Money Alone Will Not Save the West

This week, NATO leaders agreed to allocate 5% of their GDP to defense by 2035, with 3.5% for actual defense and 1.5% for defense-related infrastructure. Even if—and that is a big if—all this funding is used effectively, it will not be enough to address the strategic challenge facing European allies in their “two-front war” with President Vladimir Putin’s Russia and President Donald Trump’s United States. Against the backdrop of Russia’s shadow war against the West and an increasingly shaky American security guarantee, credible deterrence depends not only on capabilities but also on the political will to deploy them. Capabilities will gradually increase, but political will may diminish as internal divisions within the West over purpose and strategy intensify.

There is no doubt among expert observers that Europe needs to raise its defense spending. In fact, after years of hesitation, European governments have reached this conclusion largely due to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Trump’s Oval-Office humiliation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Last year, according to SIPRI, NATO countries spent $1.5 trillion on defense—more than half of the world's total. Even without the United States, Europeans spent $450 billion, more than three times what Russia spent, which was 7% of its GDP. Germany and the United Kingdom combined spent more than Russia last year, even before Chancellor Friedrich Merz lifted the “debt brake” on defense spending and Prime Minister Kier Starmer announced the biggest sustained increase since the Cold War. NATO’s substantial numerical advantage over Russia will only grow based on the decisions NATO made this week.

Numbers alone, of course, do not tell the full story. Experts warn that European powers spend unwisely and inefficiently on defense because their militaries are not well integrated; research and development and infrastructure are redundant, and soldiers’ wages are relatively high. However, while these issues are real and should be addressed sooner rather than later, Russia’s military-industrial complex is hardly a model of efficiency either. It suffers from corruption, mistrust, and gross incompetence. After all, it is seeking help from North Korea. It will not get much more from Iran. 

And while some might argue that NATO members spent similar portions of their GDP on defense during the 1950s, the Soviet Union was a much more formidable adversary back then than Russia is today. It was the second-largest economy in the world, growing faster than the United States’ (today’s Russia’s shrinking economy ranks 11th, behind not only the United States, but also Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Canada, and just ahead of Spain). The Soviet Union had mastered nuclear technology and was leading the space race. Today, Russian soldiers are stealing washing machines from Ukraine because they lack them at home.

In short, if solving European security simply required throwing money at it, Europe would already be safe. Mission accomplished. Of course, this does not mean the decision to raise NATO’s spending target was not necessary, but it is not enough, either. And there are three main reasons:

First, the threat Europe faces is unlikely to be a full-scale attack by the Russian Armed Forces on a NATO member. Despite the rhetoric, few people seriously suggest—and Russia hardly has the capability for—a complete “World War III” scenario. Even with decreasing US support, Ukraine has managed to hold its ground over the past year, while the supposed Russian superpower has gained barely 1% of Ukrainian land at a huge cost. Russia would probably lose territory if the West’s material support matched Ukraine’s determination.

If, as NATO’s Secretary General claims, Russia will be ready to attack NATO by the end of the decade, that scenario would appear to be a hybrid form of assault, carefully gauged to stay just below the threshold of what would normally trigger Article V of the NATO Treaty. This type of assault would involve propaganda, disinformation, bombings, assassinations, cyber attacks, and limited incursions, all aimed at weakening Western unity and resolve. In such a scenario, all the shiny new tanks and planes NATO members hope to have by then will do little good if the allies cannot muster the courage to use them, for example, in defense of Estonia, Lithuania, or Latvia. The difference between Ukrainian perseverance and European timidity lies not in Europe’s lack of capabilities but in Ukrainians’ determination to fight with what they have. Ukrainians know that they are fighting for their freedom from Russian dictatorship. Do we know why we are supporting their fight?

This brings us to the second reason why money alone will not help: In democratic societies, allegiance cannot be coerced or bought. It must be earned. Yet, polls indicate that people in the West are increasingly dissatisfied with and alienated from their democratic institutions. Consequently, habitual and ritualized appeals to abstract democratic values, liberal institutions, and the rule of law are increasingly ignored and the corresponding institutions attacked. Political appeals do not compensate for broken schools, fraying communities, or the inability to earn a living wage. 

Those are not just social issues; they are security concerns. People will not defend their country if they feel they have no stake in it. Having long removed the causes for which people traditionally went to war, such as “God, king, and country”, we are increasingly removing the more mundane reasons left as well: the promise of meritocracy, of working one’s way up and earning a better life for one’s children. Some, like US Vice President JD Vance, even fear that democratic freedoms like the right to free speech are in retreat across Europe. A visitor to Dubai or Shanghai might wonder: Isn’t life safer and more comfortable here if I just keep my opinions to myself?

Former US President Joe Biden believed that creating opportunities for disadvantaged communities and renewing the promise of the American dream could help rebuild trust in the political system. While Donald Trump's election victory last year suggests that this strategy has failed, Germany’s new Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, appears to operate on similar assumptions, promising economic growth and caps on (illegal) migration that most of the domestic population has long demanded. However, Merz has been unsuccessful in significantly reducing the resilience of the nationalist-populist AfD opposition. Additionally, his policies on limiting immigration raise serious concerns about whether it will be possible to achieve both domestic and European unity.

That, however, is the third challenge Europe faces: If European members of NATO are now regrouping and rearming to ensure greater independence from an increasingly untrustworthy ally across the Atlantic, the question on their minds should be not only how many planes and what kind of tanks they should order, but who will control them in five years' time, when a Russian attack might be possible. What good does it do to shift from a US nuclear deterrent to a French or British one if far-right politicians such as Marine Le Pen or Nigel Farage then control security policy? Will an AfD government bring the full force of a reinvigorated Bundeswehr to bear on its Russian benefactors? Already, even mainstream politicians such as German Social Democrats are calling for more talks than deterrence, and Spain is opting out of what its NATO partners consider a shared obligation. And this is not to mention other illiberal politicians such as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Türkiye, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Slovakia’s Robert Fico.

All this suggests that the West is facing not just a financial or security crisis, but also an identity crisis. If the Russian threat truly endangers Western resolve and unity, does it emanate from military aggression? Or does it stem far less from Moscow and more from within the West—from nationalist-populists who already hold veto power over Europe’s security and defense policies through their increasingly prominent roles in government? While Russia may be supporting and exploiting populists’ agendas, it was not Moscow that installed illiberal democrats in these positions of influence. Despite all external electoral interference, Americans elected Trump, the Brits voted for Brexit, and the Slovaks freely chose Fico. 

The damage the West has inflicted on itself is greater than what Putin could accomplish with his hybrid warfare of misinformation and interference. His goal is to divide and rule. And only if we allow him to divide the West will he succeed in ruling us.

The remarkable unity the West showed in response to Russia’s initial attack on Ukraine in 2022, Germany’s quick shift away from Russian gas, the 2023 election of moderate Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Poland, and the recent rejection of a pro-Russian presidential candidate in Romania all prove that the West can stand united and determined and thwart Russia’s imperial ambitions. 

However, keeping in mind that unity requires more than just tactical policy successes, a renewed sense of identity is required: not just “what we want” but also “who we are”. There must be something to believe in, something to live for—if not to die for. 

The timeless promise of Western society is that “all men are created equal, that their Creator endows them with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”. It is a promise to respect the inviolability of human dignity. What this means, perhaps, becomes most clear when contrasted with the opposite: a state that can take anyone’s life without consequence, denies its citizens the liberty to speak their minds, and has no concept of happiness but feeds on the misery of its people. That is Russia today. The West is not Russia. And it does not want to become Russia. That is what this is about. That is what the NATO commitment to increase defense spending is for. 

Ambassador JD Bindenagel is a visiting distinguished fellow at GMF based in Berlin. 

Karsten Jung is a professor of political science at the Federal University of Applied Administrative Sciences in Brühl, Germany.