“I am pessimistic by nature,” says Olivier Schmitt, professor at the Royal Danish Defense College and reserve officer in the French Air Force. “I can be a huge Cassandra. But now I have to admit that I am surprised at how proactively the European Union has been acting in the field of security and defense since 2022. This is really a different Europe than we had before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
Schmitt has lived in Denmark for years, but sometimes teaches at Sciences Po University in Paris. He stirs his tea in a café opposite the campus in Saint-Germain. Europeans, he says, should have started working on their security much earlier. National, European and within NATO. But they were blinded by the “peace dividend” after the fall of the Wall in 1989. Few believed that Russia would go further and try to conquer all of Ukraine after the annexation of Crimea and military intervention in the Donbas in 2014. Let alone that Russia would start a hybrid war against Europe or lay claims on European countries that had once belonged to the Warsaw Pact – now EU and NATO countries.
“For many European governments, the penny only dropped when Donald Trump became president again, because Trump is quite hostile to the EU. Before January 2025, they were not so afraid of Russian President Putin. The Americans would protect Europe, they thought, and Putin would not dare attack a European country. Now that Trump is in place, many Europeans are afraid of Putin. Maybe he attacks a European country, and Trump does nothing, so that Europe is on its own. That is why European countries are working hard to rebuild their defense, on a scale that no one could have imagined before 2022.”
Is that the reason NATO still exists?
“I think that Trump came close to quitting NATO in his first term. He thought Europeans were profiteers. They had been milking the US since 1949, he thought. At the NATO summit in 2018, things almost went off the rails. General Mattis, the Secretary of Defense, calmed him down and talked him out of it. The fact that Europeans are now investing so much in defense ensures that Trump stayed. What exactly he wants with NATO, I don’t know. I think that he himself hardly knows. As long as NATO is a ‘win’, he will continue with it. The fact that every NATO country has to invest 5 percent in defense becomes a goal in itself. He cares less about what really happens.”
What scenarios do you see for NATO?
“How things proceed depends on two crucial factors: the hostility of the US, and the extent to which Europeans cooperate. This results in four scenarios. In the first scenario, the Europeans work intensively together on strategic autonomy and expeditiously set up a European defense. The US is very hostile to Europe and does not support it. This is a very expensive option for Europe: everything has to come from European countries. This scenario does not seem very realistic to me at the moment. In the second scenario, Europe is fragmented and the US very hostile.”
The worst of both worlds.
“Yes. NATO will not survive that. At least, not in one piece. What you can see is that some European countries are close to the US and conclude bilateral defense deals. Or that a mini-NATO remains: the US with northern and Baltic countries, for example. This scenario is also not very plausible. In scenario number three, the US is not very hostile to Europe, just disinterested. Europeans take the lead and take initiatives, together. The US more or less supports them more. That is the best of the four scenarios. In scenario number four, the US is also quite disinterested, but the Europeans work poorly together. They argue, so little gets done. They may keep the alliance for form, but it is more of a kabuki theater full of rituals.
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Which scenario are you betting on?
“Difficult to say. Everything is always moving. Yet I am cautiously optimistic. Perhaps the US is more disinterested than hostile towards Europe and European defense. I do not rule out that they may even slowly become interested in it. Don’t forget: Trump has driven India and Russia into the arms of China. In terms of trade, he actually only has an agreement with the EU.”fantastic deal‘. Trump has conflicts with many countries, while he wants to set up a large camp to isolate China. It’s getting a bit empty in his camp. Who knows, maybe that will make him a little more accommodating to Europe. I think he fears that China will offer Europe an advantageous trade deal, and that Europe will drift away. So it could well be scenario three or four.”
Perhaps the US is more disinterested than hostile towards Europe and European defense
Whereby everything depends on the extent to which Europeans cooperate with each other?
“Exactly. If they work well together, NATO can get through this reasonably well, and European countries keep NATO’s structures and know-how at their disposal: officers, planning, deterrence. If the Europeans work poorly together, they become completely dependent on the US. Like puppets. Then NATO becomes a kind of Warsaw Pact: a dominant center with weak satellites that have no say.”
Is it up to Europe to avoid that scenario?
“Correct.”
What should Europe do to ensure that Trump remains disinterested and does not become hostile?
“Being nice without being submissive. Images from Sharm el-Sheikh recently, with European leaders standing quietly behind Trump, were terrible. [NAVO-secretaris-generaal] Mark Rutte with his ‘daddy‘ was also painful. President Macron is doing better. He is polite to Trump but does not lick his heels. It’s a tightrope walk.”
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At what point should Europe push back?
“On the digital level. That is vital. We can make compromises on trade because we have to keep NATO afloat. That is the price we pay for our security. But we cannot let digital roll over us. Peter Thiel and Elon Musk want to destroy and dominate the EU. That is where our limit lies. I think the Commission understands that.”
The crew of a howitzer fires from a camouflaged position on October 16 in the Ukrainian frontline city of Kostiantynivka.
Photo Kostiantyn Liberov Libkos /Getty Images
You say: Europe must cooperate closely in the field of defence. But doesn’t that only happen to a limited extent?
“It is happening in the only way we can: nationally. National industrial interests are great. Defense affects national sovereignty for governments. They do not want real EU defense, period. But they do harmonize, and the European Commission coordinates and sets up common projects.”
Some Member States accuse the Commission of a ‘power grab’. Others argue about the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), a joint future European fighter aircraft.
“Yes. The French want to monopolize FCAS. They think they can do it better. The Germans are too close to the Americans, at least according to the French. But besides fighter planes, we need more things in common. Europeans have no forum for military planning, except in NATO. There is no scenario for ‘who will do what if war breaks out’. Only NATO has that, and it is American-dominated. What do we do without the Americans? It would be good if we had a We urgently need to have such debates.”
European NATO countries can carry that out, right?
“Yes, but they can only use the NATO facility and capabilities with American permission. Without permission, Europeans have no support structure. Then there are not enough officials. Europe has no military academy. Nothing. The longer the war in Ukraine continues, the more time we have to get this in order.”
Very crude.
“If I were Putin, I would quickly push for a ceasefire in Ukraine. Then Europe will stop investing in defense, because ‘fortunately it is no longer necessary’. Then Putin attacks one of the Baltic states. It does not have to be a major attack. He can occupy a piece of land and thus test Article 5. The NATO solidarity article.”
If a collective response is not forthcoming, will NATO be embarrassed?
“Yes, and the EU too. Something like that could be the end of the EU. It’s all about solidarity. What is it worth if an EU country is attacked and the rest do nothing?”
We cannot pay the rising costs of defense and the welfare state without reforms
A double whammy for Putin.
“It is Crude, but Europeans must ensure that Ukraine puts up the fight, so that the war stays there and does not come here. The Ukrainian army is the best army Europe has.”
Financed by Europe?
“Certainly. Out of self-interest. Otherwise the war will come here. That costs a lot of money. For decades, European countries have had a fantastic deal. For three reasons. The US provided our defense and paid for it. We had a demographic balance between young and old. And we had migrants for jobs that we did not want or could not do ourselves. Those three elements have now disappeared. We no longer have American protection and pay for our own defense and security. The demography is skewed, with too many old people and too few young people. And on migration stops, we can deploy fewer migrants. We therefore have to pay for and organize our welfare states differently. If we do not implement reforms, this will endanger our way of life.”
The infamous ‘guns versus butter’ dilemma?
“That is a wrong image. Maintaining the welfare state and defense are both important. You can do one without abandoning the other, by making choices. Our welfare states now have the piggy bank model, in which citizens save for their pensions for later. We have to move towards a Robin Hood model, in which we really redistribute wealth between socio-economic groups. This combats growing inequality. In Denmark they do it this way, but in many other countries this is met with resistance from the two groups that benefit most from the piggy bank model: the rich and pensioners. Our politicians do not dare to oppose them. But it will have to be done, in my opinion. We cannot pay for the rising costs of defense and the welfare state without reforms.
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