As Europe’s re-armament grows likely, a window of opportunity may be opening for India

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. While the White House insists that the US might use military force to annex Greenland, serious people in Denmark believe that the actual takeover might be more prosaic. As Shane Harris and his colleagues report in The Atlantic, President Donald Trump could simply announce on social media that the territory is now a part of the US.

Neither Denmark nor any Nato partner would put up a defence because they don’t have the military power to confront the US. What such an outcome will mean for Nato is another question, but the fact that some European policymakers believe that they could effectively give Washington a military walkover reveals a lot about the state of European preparedness. If the Russian invasion of Ukraine did not, the Trump administration’s actions will make European re- armament an urgent imperative.

Washington’s latest National Security Strategy (NSS) has not only signalled a reversal of an 80-year-old commitment to Europe’s defence, it has also indicated a willingness to politically intervene in Europe by backing right-wing parties. For European capitals, this transforms their security environment. In the past year, the EU and its member countries have announced a series of measures to boost defence spending.

The pathways to European re-armament include a plan for EU member countries to raise defence spending from 2% of GDP to 3.5% in the medium term and further to 5% by 2035. The EU has cleared the legislative decks for states to run higher fiscal deficits necessary to enable such spending. The coming years will be wrenching for European societies as they are forced to cut spending on welfare and environmental goals to build their armed forces.