Europe Vows a Military Buildup

Gathering in Brussels on Thursday, European Union leaders reiterated their support for Ukraine and set into motion plans to bolster their collective defense. “We have to rearm ourselves because otherwise we will be the next victims of Russian aggression,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said from the meeting. But as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s refusal to support a joint statement affirming the summit’s goals demonstrated, intra-European divides could derail the bloc’s efforts to navigate an increasingly unstable security situation. And the continent’s fragmented and undersized defense-industrial sector presents additional challenges as it seeks to undertake an ambitious modernization project. 

This week, European leaders ramped up their calls to reverse the continent’s lax approach to military spending. “We cannot afford to be pushed around by history,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told Danish military cadets in a Tuesday speech. “Acting now is a must.” A day later, the commission published a white paper, dubbed “ReArm Europe,” calling for the investment of about 800 billion euros ($866 billion) in defense.

The plan recognizes that becoming a major military power will necessarily be a long-term project. “We have many strong foundations such as our potential to unleash vast resources and latent technological and industrial power,” wrote the report’s authors. “But we are also starting from a position in which our defence readiness has been weakened by decades of under-investment.”

With many European countries still spending less than 2 percent of their GDP on defense—a benchmark set by NATO—even the bloc’s largest economies are plagued by waning military readiness. The U.K., which despite not being an EU member has been a key player in security conversations, recently built a second aircraft carrier despite lacking the funds for the smaller vessels needed to protect it. Germany, the EU’s largest economic power, consistently faces both weapons and personnel shortages. Most European militaries are to some degree reliant on buying U.S. equipment “off the shelf” to equip themselves.

ReArm Europe pledges to fix these problems. The massive investment would represent around 4 percent of the continent’s total GDP, including non-EU countries like Britain, in a significant boost to the 2023 EU expenditure of 1.6 percent. It would also be comparable to Washington’s defense spending, which in 2023 sat at 3.4 percent of the U.S. GDP. 

It also snubs the American defense sector. Under the current plan, the U.S. and Britain will be excluded from joint weapons purchases, although it would still be possible for EU candidate countries like Turkey and official EU security partners—like Japan and South Korea—to participate. Although EU countries expressed a desire to sign more agreements with international suppliers—looking to countries like Britain, New Zealand, and India as potential partners—the desire to reduce reliance on America’s defense industry is clear. 

But there is a chance the topline number is merely aspirational. “800 billion [euros] is a pretty large number, but it’s a hypothetical number,” Stuart Dee, the co-director of the Center for Defense Economics and Acquisition at RAND Europe, told TMD. Only 15o billion euros of the total commitment is actually a concrete pledge, made in the form of centralized loans to member states. 

The remaining 65o billion euros are meant to come from “additional flexibility” gained by loosening EU rules, most notably by activating an “escape clause” enabling EU states to increase defense spending even if they violate strict rules on debt and deficits. But these plans remain notional, and fly in the face of many EU countries that are deeply committed to budget discipline. The Dutch Parliament has already signaled opposition to waiving spending rules, even as the country claims to support building European defense capacity. 

But there are also major players on board with the new shift. Friedrich Merz, Germany’s soon-to-be chancellor, has pushed for his country to drastically reform its military capacity, with the Bundestag on Tuesday passing a bill that allocates $500 billion for defense infrastructure and reforms the country’s rules on deficit spending. “It is a clear message to our partners… but also to the enemies of our freedom: We are capable of defending ourselves,” Merz said shortly before the vote. “Germany is back. Germany is making a significant contribution to the defense of freedom and peace in Europe.”

Britain, though not a formal participant in the ReArm Europe plan, has also recently pledged to boost its military muscle. Late last month, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that his country would increase military spending by over 10 percent—from 2.3 percent of Britain’s GDP to 2.6 percent by 2028, and up to 3 percent by 2034. The change will be financed by cuts to foreign aid, a longtime centerpiece of British foreign policy. 

But for Europe’s defense industry to expand enough to meet the new demand, the continent’s manufacturers must be confident that spending will be both substantial and consistent. Currently, small to mid-sized arms manufacturers such as Britain’s BA Systems, Germany’s Rheinmetall, and France’s Dassault Aviation dominate the European market. “They are quite used to the position in the market that they have, at the top of the tree,” Dee said, drawing a contrast with the relatively robust competition found in the U.S.’s military-industrial sector.

The result is a strange combination of redundancy and a lack of competition, as countries tend to order their own versions of different weapons systems from “national champions.” A 2024 McKinsey report found that while the U.S. deploys only one main battle tank, the Abrams, Europe had 19, ranging from the German Leopard to the French LeClerc to the Polish Twardy. In such an environment, it’s difficult for companies to manufacture equipment at scale, as they cannot rely on consistent orders.  

The continent also faces an uphill battle as it seeks to secure other capabilities that it currently lacks almost entirely. “Europe will likely struggle to produce big-ticket capabilities like strategic airlift, strategic sealift, and real blue-water naval capability,” Bob Hamilton, the head of research for the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told TMD. Translated from military-speak, this means that producing very large planes and ships will be a long-term project for the EU. 

Even though the challenges are real, EU leaders recognize that the market for weapons within Europe must transform. “Member states need to be able to fully rely on European defense supply chains, especially in times of urgent need,” said von der Leyen in her Tuesday speech. “And that means creating an EU-wide market for defense equipment.”

But more spending can only serve as the basis for creating a sustainable European defense plan; the rest is up to political will. A Thursday meeting of military planners from NATO and the Commonwealth in London showed that politics and economics must work hand in hand to ensure security for Ukraine and Europe. “What’s happening here is turning that political intention into reality, the concept into plans,” Starmer said Thursday, warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin would break any peace deal not backed by credible military guarantees. 

“Money by itself says something, but not very much in terms of deterrence,” Maria de Goeij Reid, a senior research fellow at the Changing Character of War Center at Oxford University, said in an email to TMD. “It’s about what it is you’re going to do with that money that could make the difference.”

Assuming that European nations rebuild their defense sectors and overcome political obstacles, the final step will be readying militaries to defend against large-scale confrontations in Eastern Europe. Many of Europe’s armed forces have not been focused on this mission in recent decades. The U.K., for example, has invested heavily in its naval and air forces while allowing its army to shrink to 18^th-century levels. France, which has long prioritized having a military that can operate independently of NATO, has in recent years mostly fought West African counterinsurgency campaigns. 

But some countries, like Poland and new NATO member Finland, have prioritized land-based armies capable of fighting the ground battles that have characterized Russia’s war in Ukraine. Like the need to unite Europe’s fractured defense industry, creating a defense structure where different national specialties cohere will be key. 

Arguably, learning how to fight together—or as the military terminology goes, increasing “interoperability”—will be as difficult as rebuilding military infrastructure. “That’s the hard bit,” Dee said. From communications systems to tactical doctrine and training methods, a hypothetical joint European force will have to learn to fight as one.

Many challenges remain in Europe’s drive to reconstitute itself as a major military power. But it’s hard to see the events of the past week as anything but a step toward the continent at last building a united defense policy. “There’s still a lot of work to do, but this growing intent is a very important start,” de Goeij said.

The Trump administration terminated two additional economic data advisory committees this week: the Bureau of Labor Statistics Technical Advisory Committee (BLSTAC) as well as the bureau’s Data Users Advisory Committee (DUAC). The move, first reported and confirmed by The Dispatch, comes on the heels of the administration’s shuttering of two other expert panels earlier this month.  

Administration officials say the terminations were done in the name of efficiency and will result in no adverse effects on the quality of federal economic data—economic data that, supporters say, is a crucial component of market-affecting decisions made by government executives. Meanwhile, committee members maintain the panels, some of which have existed for more than 25 years, help statistical agencies operate more efficiently and successfully navigate ongoing challenges in data collection and analysis. 

On Wednesday morning, members of both BLSTAC and DUAC received nearly identical letters—copies of which were obtained by The Dispatch—informing them that their committees had been terminated. The move came on the heels of President Donald Trump’s February 19 executive order directing the elimination of federal advisory committees deemed “unnecessary.”   

Earlier this month, members of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee (FESAC), which also advised BLS as well as the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the Census Bureau, were notified that the committee had been terminated. A separate BEA Advisory Committee was also closed at the same time. Notices posted on both committees’ webpages said the Secretary of Commerce determined that their purposes “have been fulfilled.” Both committees were established in 1999, and their charters had been regularly renewed since. The terminations sparked a round of news reports and concerns about the potential repercussions for the quality of the government’s economic statistics. 

As of Thursday night, no notices of termination had been posted about the BLSTAC and DUAC. Instead, their pages appear to have been quietly deleted this week.

“This decision was made in line with the president’s executive order to reduce the federal bureaucracy,” Department of Labor spokeswoman Courtney Parella told TMD on Wednesday when asked for a comment on the new terminations. “These advisory committees fulfilled their intended purpose, and this decision has no effect on the functionality of BLS.”

Letters sent to BLSTAC and DUAC members Wednesday were more laudatory. “The agency has benefitted greatly from your insights and expertise,” the letters stated. “Your recommendations have assisted us in developing and delivering better products for our data users, and the discussions we have had concerning our surveys and methods have been of great value.” 

Economic statistical agencies are tasked with continually updating and improving their data collection and analysis as the economy evolves. The charters of the now-closed committees detail how the bodies assisted the government. “In order to best serve the information needs of its diverse user communities, the BLS requires ongoing feedback from its customer base,” the DUAC charter notes. “The DUAC provides advice to the BLS from the points of view of data users from various sectors of the U.S. economy, including the labor, business, research, academic, and government communities, on matters related to the analysis, dissemination, and use of the Bureau’s statistics … and on gaps between or the need for new Bureau statistics.”  

The BLS produces some of the nation’s most closely watched economic data, including on employment and prices. “The BLS often faces highly technical issues while developing and maintaining the accuracy and relevancy of its data,” the BLSTAC charter explains. “These issues range from how to develop new measures to how to make sure that existing measures account for the ever-changing economy. The BLS presents issues and then draws on the specialized expertise of Committee members.” 

Though the committees have been shuttered as part of a campaign to reduce bureaucracy and improve efficiency, members said their work represented a huge net benefit to the government. “It was a committee of about 16 really high-level experts who volunteered their time for the sole purpose of offering advice to the three key economic statistical agencies in the U.S. government,” said David Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the director of U.S. economic research at Bloomberg Economics who served as the most recent FESAC chair. “What these outside experts were united by was a conviction that economic measurement is super important, very interesting, intellectually, continually changing, and worth getting right, because the quality of the data affects the quality of decision making.” 

“[The BLSTAC] cost the federal government next to nothing and during my tenure never veered into anything remotely partisan,” Jared Murray, a professor of statistics and data sciences at the University of Texas, Austin and a member of the technical advisory committee, told TMD. “Everyone was simply dedicated to making BLS data collection, analysis, and dissemination the best it could be.”  

Committee members could have their travel fees to attend meetings reimbursed but were otherwise uncompensated. The DUAC’s annual costs, which included travel and administrative staff support, were estimated to be $150,000. The BLSTAC’s annual costs were an estimated $140,000, FESAC’s $120,000, and the BEA Advisory Committee’s $90,000. 

“The projects on which I advised BLS were, ironically, focused on how existing data could be used to make data collection more efficient and reduce respondent burden without sacrificing data quality,” Murray added. “To say I’m disappointed is an understatement.”

• In a touching tribute to parenthood, Marc A. Thiessen reflected on his son Max’s hockey journey for the Washington Post. “Hockey is a game of statistics, so here are mine: During Max’s childhood, I drove two minivans into the ground, one with 153,672 miles on the odometer the other with 238,810. And as of this writing, I have put another 96,983 miles on a used Suburban. That’s almost half a million miles. … If even half of those miles were for hockey travel (a conservative estimate), that is the equivalent of about 10 trips around the globe,” he wrote. “Even if Max had never made it to college hockey, all the time on the road, and hours spent at the rink would have been worth it. Hockey gave Max so much happiness, amazing experiences and friendships that will last a lifetime. But it gave me something truly priceless — the chance to show him how much he is loved. The greatest gift you can give your children is your time. I know because I was a child of divorce, and did not see my own father much growing up. I was determined when I became a dad, I would be present for my kids. I hope all those hours spent behind the wheel, and the glass at the rink, showed Max just how precious he is to me — and that there is no way I would have rather spent my time than driving across North America to be with him and watch him play.”

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…

“I am disgusted that several Senate Democrats gave up our first point of leverage,” Omar said … at a town hall meeting in her home state. The Minnesota Democrat said her party “needs to be sort of come to Jesus moment,” adding: “We have people who want to bring a knife to a gunfight and are not rising up to the moment.”

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Do you think that Europe could once again become a major military power?