By Anders Fogh RASMUSSEN
The US-led global order as we once knew it is no more. As the tectonic plates of geopolitics continue to shift beneath us, the challenge for Europe is to keep its institutions alive and avoid the world returning to an age of force – where power grows for strong leaders in Washington, Moscow and Beijing. Rising to this challenge requires a fundamental rethinking of long-held assumptions and beliefs. Clinging to old orthodoxies is not an option. Europeans cannot preserve democracy and our way of life with soft power alone. This is the only way to deter and defend against those who directly threaten our values and interests.
Yes, since US President Donald Trump returned to power, hundreds of billions of euros in new spending have been allocated to defence. But these pledges are not enough. Spending 2 percent of GDP on defence was a reasonable ambition for NATO in 2014, when the United States was still playing, albeit reluctantly, the role of global policeman. But those days are over. Simply to keep pace with Russia’s military development, Europe needs to at least double its defence investment.
In fact, it will go much further than that and I would say that Europe should aim for 4 percent of GDP by 2028.
The ambitions of incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk for their countries must be replicated across the continent. Bigger, better-equipped armies will repel direct attacks, but guns and tanks are only part of the equation. If Europe’s additional spending is limited to military procurement, then the opportunity to pave the way for a high-tech revolution will be lost. Technological innovation is what underpins the strong power of the US and China. From artificial intelligence and quantum computing to critical infrastructure and biotechnology, Europe is at risk of fragmentation as the great powers rush to get even further ahead. In this scenario, our strategic dependencies on the US and China will only increase.
To protect the rules-based system, we need to rethink the composition of our community.
While old formats, such as the G7, can still serve an important purpose, we will need new ways to bring together like-minded democracies. A coalition of such democracies – a D7 – could create new tools for promoting open trade and economic cooperation, defense partnerships, intelligence sharing, and access to critical minerals. It could also create new security arrangements that cover cyber-kinetic attacks and economic coercion by great powers, like an economic version of NATO’s Article 5 for mutual defense. To this end, the European Union should work closely with traditional partners – such as the United Kingdom – and seek closer relations with Canada, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, and Australia. It should also explore new avenues for cooperation with India, a democracy whose GDP has doubled over the past decade, putting the country on track to become the world’s third-largest economy before the end of this decade.
The essence is not to replace America, but to ensure that Europe remains resilient with or without US support.
For too long, Europe has depended on cheap Russian energy, cheap Chinese goods, and cheap American security and technology. But this naive dependence is no longer an option. In addition to mobilizing fiscal resources for defense and technology, Europe must also create new social contracts.
While we should not give up what makes us European, we do need to revisit some of the principles of the old welfare state. Freedom is not free. European leaders must be honest and open about the challenge we face, and about what it requires of us. Not all solutions will be popular, but we must remember that we have entered an era of crisis. Europeans must be equipped with the knowledge and resources to defend themselves. We can learn a lot from the Ukrainians and the Taiwanese about building resilience and about paying the price for freedom. Every year, I convene the Copenhagen Summit for Democracy under my Foundation for the Alliance of Democracies. When I founded this foundation in 2017, it was my long-held belief that the United States would and should remain at the center of the global democratic alliance. Now, we must prepare for a world in which America is not only untrustworthy but also adversarial and expansionist.
New circumstances require new strategies. Defending democracy is not a spectator sport. We will have to make some sacrifices, because the alternative is unimaginably terrible. Europe has the opportunity to assume the mantle of leader of the free world. Our descendants will not forgive us if we fail to seize this opportunity.
(Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former Secretary General of NATO (2009-14) and former Prime Minister of Denmark, is founder of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation)
