Europe’s Defense Boost Falls Short—Ukraine Still Needs the US:

European nations, especially NATO members, have been aiding Ukraine with military and monetary support for three years while it wars against Russia. The US was further supplementing Ukraine until Trump regained his position as president. A large part of the Ukraine resource mobilization actually came from the US.

Ukraine is no longer receiving financial or logistical support, which means Europe needs to increase their financial assistance to the NATO members. Still, the possible growth in the defense budget for NATO members might not be enough to continue funding Ukraine in its war efforts.

Europe’s defence budget has increased, but ‘symbolic’ is the most appropriate term.

The UK along with NATO members in Europe, under individually varying influences from the US, are trying to increase their defence budgets. The UK has publicized its spending increase, proudly proclaiming that it would allow Britain to surpass the previously estimated 2% level of defence expenditure as a share of GDP to 2.5%. This purported increase has been achieved by clamping down on funds that were earlier earmarked for overseas development aid. Such a change has only escalated Britain’s defence expenditure by an inconsequential 0.2 percentage points since they were already spending 2.3%. Defence spending will at least have to double in order to free up the budget so the government can start using it for new initiatives.

Other European members of NATO are also pretending to open their purse in order to consolidate, strengthen, and augment the support that they have been extending to Ukraine during the war. The London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) recently came out with the 2025 edition of its Military Balance. Accordingly, the European countries increased their defence spending in 2024 by 11 percent.

Even though a portion of the defense spending increase stemmed from the war in Ukraine and the heightened threats toward collective European security, they have been further compelled to respond freely during the Trump era. Nearly twenty European nations have surpassed the self imposed threshold of two percent set nearly ten years ago. Even that would leave Trump dissatisfied because he expects NATO countries to increase their defense spending to five percent of their GDP in as short an amount of time as possible.

Why Europe's efforts may not be enough

Still, looking from the lens of multiple defense economy views, it is quite possible these efforts will not aid the European members of NATO in supporting Ukraine's counteroffensive activities against Russia.

To begin with, Ukraine is projected to allocate 38% of its GDP for military spending, while Russia stands at only 5.9%. In 2023, Ukraine’s defense spending was $64.8 billion, which totals to 48% of Russia’s defense spending of $109 billion. The IISS Military Balance publishes an estimate of Ukraine’s spending at $28.4 billion, which contrasts with Russia’s $145 billion, on a PPP scale for 2024. Regardless of the differences in how the expenditures are calculated, Ukraine, which is running a deficit, would find the going tough on its own and cannot possibly stretch its defence budget any further. In stark contrast, Russia, for the foreseeable future, is operating with large budget surpluses and can afford to maintain the current defsecoure spending with relative ease. Furthermore, Russia has the provisions to increase the defense budget and allocate it to a double-digit percentage of GDP.

To put it another way, Europe member nations of NATO may find the boots too big to fill, with the financial aid from America suspended for the time being and practically sure to be cut off in due course. On the 4th of March, the European Commission announced that it aims to gather around 150 billion euros as part of its joint rearmament program. While what is clear is the timetable over which the funds would be collected, as well as the portion that is reserved for Ukraine, what is unclear is the proportion of the funding. In addition, European members do concede that in order to raise the defense budget by a total of 650 billion euros over the next 4 years, they need to increase the GDP by an additional 1.5 percent of the GDP. The budgetary trend in European countries abundantly attest to the slow and painful way in which these countries have begrudgingly consolidated their defense budgets within the region of 2% of their national GDPs. In order to reach this level, it took almost a decade of internal deliberations and subsequent US nudging, so now increasing it by an additional 1.5 % seems nearly impossible while also being extremely unlikely to reach the deadline of 4 years.

Third, even assuming the European countries are able to set some resources aside, they can never independently assume the role of the US superpower. European NATO members together do not have half the defense budget the US boasts off. Offering Ukraine over $100 billion in military aid yearly lies far beyond their capacities. Further, established supply lines to provide quality weapons are mostly being in-sourced from the US, which means Europe does not possess the requisite supply-chain logistics to independently arm Ukraine. European NATO members also do not have excess stockpiles of ammunition to ship out towards Ukraine and whether the European defense industry can fill the shoes of the American one is quite a controversy.

Europe’s relative economic downturn remains a challenge

Consequently, it seems that Ukraine’s war management would be extremely challenging for the European nations. The European talk of showing unity with Ukraine is at best a “fugacious semantics” and will likely soon be placed under the umbrella of low GDP growth in these countries. The UK and France, who used to be and still remain the powerful allies of the US globablly, have been declining a great power. In the hierarchy of global GDP, they are gradually sinking. At the same time, their defense budgets will also be frozen, if not reduced, in these wartime conditions.

It is hardly astonishing then that all these countries are now appealing to vague suggestions, such as ‘perpetual peace’ and enforcing a ‘peacekeeping force’. These terms are likely to evoke a benign response to cessation of hostilities coming from Russia. Very soon, the European NATO members will come to grasp their resource constraints in supporting Ukraine's aggressive pursuits. Most likely, they will be forced to seek a pragmatic approach to how to financially disentangle the US from the Ukrainian war puzzle.