NATO’s leaders will gather next week for a summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. While the war in Ukraine will dominate their agenda, another crucial task for NATO leaders will be to transform European defense: no small feat.
European defense is vital to NATO. A strong European pillar gives NATO more forces to deter and defeat aggression on home soil and reduces the burden on the U.S. of defending Europe. Fair burden-sharing has been in NATO’s DNA since its first strategic concept in 1949 stated that “each nation’s contributions should be in proportion” to its means. Upholding this principle is even more important in a new era of global competition where the primary focus of U.S. policy is on China.
Yet, European defense is in a shockingly poor state. After two-decades of underinvestment and a focus on expeditionary operations, European forces are not fit for purpose to conduct the collective defense missions that now drive NATO’s military and force planning.
European forces suffer from significant gaps in naval forces, air enablers, air defense, and “battle-decisive ammunition” (artillery munitions and missiles). For example, while European defense spending rose by 38% from 2013 to 2022 — Central and Western Europe spent a cumulative $345 billion last year — this has led to a mere a 4% increase in combat battalions among some of Europe’s largest armies (from 218 to 227 battalions).
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While the scale of Europe’s military assistance to Ukraine is impressive, it has also put European militaries in a hole, as they need to backfill their own stocks while continuing to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”
To strengthen European security while in Vilnius, NATO leaders should take bold steps in four areas: spending, cooperation, industrial capacity and resilience. They should capture these in a “Vilnius Declaration” to strengthen the European pillar of NATO.
First and foremost, transforming European defense requires raising defense spending. After the Cold War, Europe rebalanced spending on “guns vs. butter” from an average of around 6% of national gross domestic product on defense to 1.6% in 1995 and 1.3% in 2021. While Russia’s aggression catalyzed a marked increase in European defense spending since 2014, only seven NATO allies currently meet its 2% target.
The task of NATO’s leaders in Vilnius is to forge a new alliancewide “guns vs. butter” consensus that reflects reality. This task is not limited to Vilnius: The European Union’s Stability and Growth Pact requires the majority of NATO’s members (23 of 31 allies) to reconcile increased defense spending with a potential new period of government austerity. EU finance ministers must get with the program, too.
Second, transforming European defense will require boosting cooperation within Europe. Although European nations are spending more on defense, they are cooperating less. Cooperation among EU nations dropped from 21% of total defense procurement in 2016 to 11% in 2020, despite several initiatives designed to encourage cooperation. NATO can improve these prospects in Vilnius by making cooperation a political priority — just as it did in 2012 when the Chicago Summit issued the dedicated Declaration on Defence Capabilities and created the “Smart Defence” initiative.
In contrast, neither the Madrid declaration nor the new Strategic Concept agreed last year mentioned the importance of multinational cooperation for NATO’s future capabilities. This is also in contrast to the EU’s “Versailles Declaration,” agreed in the wake of Russia’s invasion, which championed collaboration and joint procurement.
NATO can also help transform Europe’s defense-industrial base. As Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas pointed out, “a capable technological and industrial base remains a prerequisite” for a “combat-effective Europe.” Yet, Europe’s defense industry cannot keep up with Ukraine’s demand. NATO defense ministers recognized this problem in February and committed to a Defence Production Action Plan in Vilnius. The plan should include multiyear procurements to allow industry to invest in the long term in ramping up production, and to meet Ukraine’s needs while boosting NATO’s own stocks to strengthen deterrence.
The EU’s Act in Support of Ammunition Production — or ASAP — initiative to ramp up production of artillery shells is a good example. But the EU needs to scale up its own efforts. As Kallas also highlighted, if the EU managed to find more than €800 billion (U.S. $869 billion) for pandemic recovery and €750 billion (U.S. $815 billion) to mitigate the energy crisis, it should be able to fund more of its own defense. A call from NATO leaders in Vilnius for the EU to step up would be powerful.
Finally, NATO can also help transform Europe’s defense against nonmilitary hybrid threats, which are emphasized in the new concept and since 2016 included within NATO’s Article 5 collective defense guarantee. Since conventional deterrence does not work against hybrid attacks, deterrence by denial through enhancing resilience across Europe is critical. As NATO’s new concept states, “national and collective resilience are an essential basis for credible deterrence and defence and the effective fulfilment of the Alliance’s core tasks.” NATO already agreed a “Strengthened Resilience Commitment” in 2021, which now requires implementing. A collective resilience planning process would be a good start. EU coordination is important here, too, given it has many relevant regulatory, fiscal and policy tools, which NATO does not. The EU-NATO task force on critical infrastructure resilience is a good template that should be applied to cyber defense, too.
When NATO leaders meet in Vilnius next week, supporting Ukraine will be the most urgent agenda item, but transforming European defense is arguably more important in the long run. Strengthening Europe’s defense and industrial capacity supports Ukraine directly, through military assistance, and indirectly, enabling allies to assist without fear of reprisal.
To help Ukraine and themselves, NATO’s leaders should take bold steps on spending, cooperation, industry and resilience, capturing their commitments in a “Vilnius Declaration” to transform European defense. Each step should be coordinated across the European defense landscape, especially with the EU, which has a growing toolbox to complement NATO’s strengths. The “Vilnius Declaration” should be reviewed next year when the trans-Atlantic alliance returns to the birthplace of the Washington Treaty, 75 years on.
Max Bergmann is the director of the Stuart Center and the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He previously served as a senior adviser at the U.S. State Department. Sean Monaghan is a visiting fellow in the CSIS program.
