Fortifying Europe

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 28th of October.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. First up…Europe rearms.

Over the past month, European authorities have reported air incursions almost every day. Authorities have confirmed Russia is behind many of them… but the source of others remains speculative. In any case, it's the latest in a decade of Russian escalation.

REICHARD: It seems European leaders think enough is enough. This month, the European Union unveiled its “Defense Readiness Roadmap.” It’s a plan to make the continent ready to defend itself by 2030.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports on what’s in the plan and why now.

MARY MUNCY: Last week, a Russian fighter jet and a transport plane entered Lithuania’s airspace for about 18 seconds. Russia says it was just a routine training mission… but Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda condemned the incursion.

GITANAS NAUSEDA: This is a cruel violation of international law and territorial serenity of Lithuania, and we have to react to this.

Two Spanish fighter jets responded under NATO’s Baltic air policing mission and patrolled the area… The incident is becoming almost routine.

BBC: We begin with Estonia, which has described an incursion by Russian fighter jets…

BBC: Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace overnight.

WSJ: Germany scrambled its Eurofighter jets to head off a Russian reconnaissance plane that was flying with its transponders turned off over the Baltic Sea.

Drone sightings have also shut down airports across the continent… some of them are confirmed Russian actions, and others are not. Some experts say Russia is trying to build a map of how Europe responds when faced with aggression—a reconnaissance project. Taking note of things like which people are called, what‘s mobilized, and how quickly it comes together.

And this is on top of an increasing number of Russian cyber attacks on governments around the world over the past ten years.

So, two weeks ago, the European Commission laid out its plan to rearm Europe.

HENNA VIRKKUNEN: We need to move now, we need to move fast, and we need to move together.

European Commission Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen says they want to be fully ready to defend the continent by 2030.

VIRKKUNEN: After years of massive under investment in our defense, the white paper has identified the main critical capability gaps, such as drones and counter drones, cyber, artificial intelligence, missiles and ammunitions.

The commission plans to invest at least 800 billion euros into defense… a five-fold increase.

The plans include creating a drone network across Europe to defend the union’s skies, making its troops more mobile, and streamlining defense production to keep up with new military advancements.

VIRKKUNEN: These flagships, they will reinforce Europe's ability to deter and defend across land, air, sea, cyber and space, while contributing directly to NATO capability targets.

In recent years, the European strategy has been to make its enemies trading partners so they would see a war as too costly… So why the change in strategy now?

CHRISTIAN KAUNERT: The Russian war of aggression on Ukraine has really shattered the European security order.

Christian Kaunert is a professor of international security at Dublin City University. When Russia invaded Ukraine, European leaders started talking about upping defense… but Kaunert says it was just talk… until U.S. President Donald Trump signaled at the beginning of his second term that the U.S. military would no longer be Europe’s security guarantee.

DIARIO AS, DONALD TRUMP: And I said if you don’t pay your bills, we’re not going to participate, we’re not going to protect you.

A few months after that statement, NATO allies made a commitment to up their defense spending from two percent of GDP to five percent.

KAUNERT: That's unheard of. That's not been something that European countries have agreed to for very, very long time, if ever.

Kaunert says that right now, Europe’s defense industry is languishing… and it’s going to take time and money for a rebound. In the best case scenario he thinks it will take an extra 500 billion Euros on top of what the commission is planning… In the worst case scenario, he thinks it could be a trillion Euros more … if the U.S. were to completely pull out of NATO.

The European Commission is communicating with NATO so they don’t duplicate efforts… and to streamline decision-making processes.

KAUNERT: This entire program is not to replace NATO. This entire program is to strengthen NATO.

But some have concerns with parts of the plan.

KIER GILES: There are limitations to the concept of a drone wall just across Europe’s Eastern frontier.

Kier Giles is the director of the Conflict Studies Research Centre.

GILES: Even if it's a highly effective system with the most ambitious means of layering sensors and defenses to keep Russian drones out, that doesn't deal with the problem that we've seen demonstrated across Europe recently, where the drones are not actually coming from Russia.

Instead, they’re coming from Russian partners inside Europe.

Giles believes Russia has been demonstrating a real threat against Europe over the past few years… and he says right now, even the most well-armed European countries are not prepared.

GILES: For all of Poland being a clear leader in rearmament in Europe, in reinvesting in its armed forces to get them ready for the kind of conflict that Russia wages. They still weren't prepared for a drone incursion that was really just a tiny fraction of what Ukraine experiences every night.

For now, many parts of Europe’s defense initiative are still being worked out… but the commission plans for there to be a fully functional web of drone defense over the continent by the end of 2027… and to have all of their contracts for shoring up “capability gaps” in place by 2028.

International security professor Kaunert says just making the plan is a big shift for Europe in the right direction.

KAUNERT: There have been a number of different warnings, one that it could come as early as next year, other warnings that maybe we're looking at a Russian aggression towards the end of the decade. This is meant to, in a sense, get Europe ready in the next two years to be dealing with something if something happens.

Both Kaunert and Giles agree that whether Russia attempts to take more territory in Europe or not, the best way to keep peace in the West is to be ready for war.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

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