Later this month, NATO is set to agree targets for higher defence spending, by an as-yet-unconfirmed future date.
But Europe needs to rearm massively, right now. The threat from Putin is imminent, as is the risk that Trump abandons Europe, or betrays it by siding with Putin.
While this will eventually require tax rises and/or spending cuts, the best way to fund such a big emergency boost to defence spending is by borrowing more for a few years, preferably collectively. This could involve a coalition of willing governments, both EU and non-EU.
Done right, this could also help streamline military procurement, better integrate Europe’s fighting forces and even provide a much-needed lift to Europe’s struggling economies.
My latest Substack essay explains how best to do this.
Russia
Broken World
Trump is destroying the post-1945 economic and geopolitical order that the US created and led. What comes next?
Read my new Substack essay
Why the EU should be much tougher with Russia over Ukraine
Interviewed on CNBC’s Squawk Box on 16 April 2014
Freeland on Friedman
One of the casualties when Russian tanks rolled past Gori was the
beguiling “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention” proposed by
Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist: “No two countries that
both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other.”
Alas, you can buy Big Macs in both Moscow and Tbilisi, so we now know a
little consumer capitalism is insufficient immunisation against
old-fashioned clashes between imperialism and independence.
From the FT
The New Cold War
My old friend Edward Lucas has written an excellent call to arms, The New Cold War, about the dangers to the West and Russia itself of the country’s fascist turn under Putin.
For Europe, in particular, the risks of becoming dependent on a hostile Kremlin through its growing dominance of gas supplies to the continent are huge. Yet the Russian industrial-military complex is successfully proceeding to divide and rule Europe: witness Gazprom’s hugely expensive plans for a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, bypassing the Baltics and Poland, which the former German chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, is ignominiously chairing. Since a pipeline on land would cost a fraction as much, the Nordstream pipeline makes no commercial sense. It’s true purpose is surely to give Russia greater power to blackmail its former vassals.
In today’s news, consider the divisions over whether NATO should grant Ukraine and Georgia "membership action plans" that would open the door to their eventual membership. Russia aggressively objects. While there is a reasonable debate to be had about whether Ukraine and Georgia should be admitted to NATO – personally, I think they should – Russia should not be given a veto over what its neighbours and NATO do. Appeasing Russia for the sake of NATO "unity" would be shameful and unwise.
“Banditry that reminds you only of Zimbabwe and Belarus”
– Garry Kasparov on the beatings of peaceful pro-democracy protesters by Putin’s riot police
The gloves come off
So much for the pretence that Putin is a democrat.
Russia does it again
Last year it was gas piped through Ukraine, now it’s oil through Belarus – how many times does Russia have to cut off Europe’s energy supplies before we wake up to the risks of being dependent on the Kremlin to keep the lights on?
Russia’s deadly embrace
I don’t usually write about such matters, but I am so shocked and outraged by the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko in London that I feel compelled to comment.