(CN) — The European Union issued a call to arms on Thursday with French President Emmanuel Macron saying the bloc needed to back a massive boost in military spending to gird itself against the menace posed by Russia.
The EU’s 27 national leaders met in Brussels for an emergency summit to lay out a strategy to navigate a dramatically changing landscape where it is no longer inconceivable for the United States to withdraw from NATO, leaving Europe even more vulnerable to Russian attacks.
“It must be said that we are entering a new era,” Macron said in a televised address on Wednesday ahead of the summit. “Russia has become, at the same time as I speak to you and for the years to come, a threat to France and to Europe.”
He said France and the rest of the EU must boost military spending and he declared France was ready to discuss extending its nuclear weapons deterrence across the bloc. France and the United Kingdom, which is not an EU member, are Europe’s only nuclear powers besides Russia.
Macron’s speech reflected the moment of extreme crisis Europe finds itself in as U.S. President Donald Trump carries on with his bewildering transactional approach to world affairs.
Europeans are in shock by Trump’s attempts to strong-arm Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into peace talks with Russia, threats to seize Greenland and make it an American territory and preparations to spark a transatlantic trade war.
Thursday’s summit focused on EU plans to boost military spending by up to $840 billion and to bolster support for Ukraine to counter Trump’s moves to force Zelenskyy to the negotiating table.
“This is a watershed moment for Europe — and Ukraine is part of our European family,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said upon reaching the summit with Zelenskyy at her side.
“Europe faces a clear and present danger, and therefore Europe has to be able to protect itself, to defend itself, as we have to put Ukraine in a position to protect itself,” she said.
Late Thursday, EU leaders agreed to boost military spending, saying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “an existential challenge” for the bloc. In its declaration, the EU said it would “become more sovereign, more responsible for its own defense” by taking a “360 degree approach.”
The plans call for loosening budget restrictions on spending to allow for a massive increase in military spending that could reach up to $840 billion in the long term. They agreed to quickly back issuing about $160 billion in loans. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, an ally of Russia and Trump, blocked a separate statement pledging more aid to Ukraine and spelling out conditions to ensure favorable outcomes for Kyiv in peace negotiations. The spending agreement said investments would go toward rocket and artillery systems, missiles, ammunition, drone warfare, military transport, military grade artificial intelligence and electronic warfare.
Europe and Washington are drastically diverging in their approach to the war in Ukraine.
Trump is pushing to end it quickly even if that means forcing Ukraine to make concessions to Russia. This week he cut off military aid to Kyiv and stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine. U.S. support has been critical for Ukraine’s military and defense.
Speaking on Fox News on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the conflict as a “proxy war” between the U.S. and Russia that needs to end.
“It’s been very clear from the beginning that President Trump views this as a protracted, stalemated conflict, and frankly, it’s a proxy war between nuclear powers: the United States helping Ukraine and Russia,” Rubio said. “It needs to come to an end.”
He said Ukraine and those urging it to continue fighting have no “plan to bring it to an end” and that Russia had failed in its objectives.
“We have to engage both sides, the Russians and the Ukrainians,” he said. “It’s going to take diplomacy to get things like this solved.”
He faulted Zelenskyy for “sabotaging and undermining” Trump’s efforts to end the war when he clashed with the president and U.S. Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office last week.
This week, Zelenskyy appeared to reverse his position by saying he was ready to enter negotiations with Russia. Ukrainian and U.S. officials are expected to hold talks next Tuesday in Saudi Arabia.
Europe, meanwhile, has vowed to continue arming Ukraine to fend off Russia and help Kyiv get to the negotiating table with a stronger hand than it holds now. However, in reality Europe won’t be able to match the military might that America has sent to Ukraine any time soon, experts say.
“Where it will struggle is to replace U.S. support to Ukraine in terms of air defenses, intelligence, ammunition, rocket systems,” said Sten Rynning, a NATO and security expert at the University of Southern Denmark. “Europe does not have the capability, period; and that will leave Ukraine in a weak spot.”
Expectations are high in Ukraine for Europe to deliver on its promises to stand up against Russia.
“If there is a strong political will, over time it will be able to provide Ukraine with everything it needs to deter the aggressor,” said Petro Sukhorolskyi, a politics professor at the Lviv Polytechnic National University in western Ukraine, in an email.
But he said it would take time for Europe to speed up its defense spending and build up its military.
In the meantime, due to the cutoff of U.S. supplies, Ukraine will suffer more casualties and possibly lose more territory to Russia, he said.
But he said Ukraine should not give in to Trump’s demands and he hoped Europe would remain steadfast in its resolve.
“Making concessions to [Russia] now will only convince it of the effectiveness of its strategy and the weakness of its enemy (the collective West),” Sukhorolskyi said. “This almost guarantees the strengthening of Russia’s authoritarianism and expansion of its aggression.”
He said Russia has demonstrated that its leaders and population are determined to continue fighting in the hope of wearing down their adversaries.
“From the point of view of Ukrainians, Trump’s ideas about pacifying Russia through concessions from Ukraine are highly unrealistic, as Russia is a serious enemy and is not going to back down from its maximalist demands, which include the destruction of Ukrainian statehood and the redistribution of zones of influence in Europe in the spirit of the Cold War,” he said.
Rynning said it was vital for European leaders to get serious about building up their nations’ military strength.
“It is time to show that they can do the walk and not just the talk,” he said, speaking by telephone ahead of Thursday’s summit.
But he said Trump has made it clear that Europe cannot rely on the U.S.
“Trump clearly is untrustworthy,” he said. “I believe President Trump could still have it within him to pull the United States out of NATO.”
Doubts about Trump’s commitment to NATO and coming to the defense of a NATO member under attack has left the alliance badly weakened, he said.
“The credibility of its Article 5 commitments are in great, great doubt,” Rynning said, referring to NATO’s mutual defense clause.
“If the U.S. either pulls out or significantly weakens its commitment to Europe, it could pull forces out of Europe, it could pull nuclear weapons out of Europe,” he said.
Should the U.S retreat from NATO, he said Europe would likely keep NATO intact because “it’s such a tried and tested format for collective defense cooperation.” But over time he said its transformation into a European defense organization was conceivable.
For the near term, he said European leaders must try to keep the U.S. committed to NATO “to give themselves time to build a real capability.”
He said the EU’s executive office, the European Commission, would need to lead efforts to build up a common approach to defense spending in Europe.
In its push to rearm, Europe would be expected to build more advanced weaponry inside Europe and bring the bloc’s vastly different militaries into alignment. All of this is expected to take a very long time.
“It’s certainly feasible to find the money, but they need to build the capability,” Rynning said. “Between money and capability, there’s the issue of strategy and organization. So, they can put the money on the table, but what do they want to spend it for? Where are they then going to place the forces?”
“It’s all feasible, but it will all require time. Time is what they need,” he said.
He said there was a clear need to bolster Europe’s defenses against an aggressive Russia seeking to undermine NATO and the EU by various methods, including infrastructure sabotage, disinformation campaigns, assassinations and electoral meddling.
“What is sure is that Russia is challenging the Western allies in Europe,” he said. “There’s a lot going on and this is part of Russia’s playbook for messing with Western allies and their decision-making.”
He said Russia can be expected to foment discord in the Baltics and once again argue that it needed to intervene to protect the region’s minority Russian-speaking populations.
“Exactly like what we’re seeing in Ukraine,” he said. “Whether it will be followed up by conventional aggression, I don’t know; but it will most certainly be minority manipulation. It’s what Putin has done all along and it’s a tried and tested weapon of revision in Europe,” he said. “It goes back to the Nazi regime. They did exactly the same with their German minorities in the East.”
He said Europe cannot afford to seek a rapprochement with Russia because that would be an act of appeasement.
And that, he said, would amount to “the collapse of Western European will.”
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.