2025-06-25 01:20:08
There was much backslapping and self-congratulation as NATO’s summit in The Hague on June 24-25 readied a rise in defense spending to 5% of GDP. It is a big change, it’s to be welcomed and represents a personal triumph for the alliance Secretary General Mark Rutte.
But the idea that this is anything close to enough, given the threats Europe now faces from the rapidly rearming and menacing Russian dictatorship, is close to laughable.
The last time Europe faced a threat this serious, even the fiscally restrained governments of the time pulled out all the stops. In the 1930s, the Czechoslovak government pushed its spending to the absolute maximum it could manage, using every imaginable tool, and even financial tricks, to finance arm productions.
It created special bonds, for example, and then pressured private banks to snap them up. By 1938, some 21% of government spending went to defense. Was it sustainable, or was it even enough? We cannot know, because the country’s Western allies sold it out at Munich.
Britain, which acted with such vigor to surrender the Czechoslovak democracy, did in fact understand the threat. Its defense spending rose to 6.9% of GDP in 1938 from 2.2% in 1933. It was enough, but only just. The UK barely avoided invasion.
The new NATO commitment is hedged with conditions. Around 1.5% of the pledge is to non-traditional defense items like infrastructure and cyber defenses. And the 3.5% core promise will only be reached in 2035. It would be nice to imagine that Putin and Europe’s other enemies will work to our schedule, but the threat is likely to arrive long before that date.
This is no time for hesitation. Europe has to prioritize a big rise in defense spending before it is too late
The summit at The Hague will be mostly prenegotiated, so that it goes as smoothly as possible. It will also be as short as possible, mainly to avoid potential theatrical disagreements — the most recent experience with Donald Trump at the G-7 summit in Canada shows he is perfectly capable of making this shortest NATO summit in history even shorter. But that just adds to the argument that Europe’s defense priorities are indeed extremely urgent.
Because the security situation in Europe and especially on its Eastern flank is dramatically worsening. Putin has no intention to agree peace or a ceasefire, and his goal is clear — to return to the pre-1997 Europe before the first round of NATO enlargement.
Secondly, it’s clear that Donald Trump does not see Putin and Russia as a threat. During the G-7 summit, he repeatedly said that Russia should be accepted back into the grouping, to recreate the G-8, and frequently spends hours talking to Putin on the phone.
NATO is responsible for European defense, but without the EU, any major changes are impossible. Look at the web pages of EU institutions like the European Commission, and there are signs of some progress. Defense is becoming more important, but certainly is not the main priority. There are many other programs: a sustainable economy, industrial policy, a green deal, an industrial decarbonization accelerator act, a European climate act, and so on.
For me, the word priority is singular. It means one important consideration. If there are dozens of priorities, there is, in fact, no real priority at all.
Defense spending and investments have to become the priority on both a national and European level.
It is becoming clear that we have to use every tool in the arsenal. Governments will have to cut expenses and investments elsewhere, increase taxation, but also increase national debt. The same must be copied on an EU level.
The bloc must also transfer investment and spending priorities to defense, and increase collective borrowing. If it was possible to borrow money collectively for Covid pandemic, it must also be possible for defense. It is certainly a positive step that defense spending will be excluded for the criteria of the stability and growth pact (the Maastricht criteria) until 2029, but it is not enough.
For those fearing indebtedness, we should emphasize that it is better to be indebted than dead, and it is better to be indebted and to exist, than to be unindebted but conquered. Historically, debt issues are always somehow solved after a war. Through a debt conference, through higher taxation or whatever. I am not calling here for a war, but war prevention. After the crisis is over, there will come a time to solve the matter.
There will, unfortunately, be pressure to ignore this coming crisis. Politicians will have to explain new priorities and sacrifices (increased taxes, cutting somewhere else, borrowing more) and somehow sell them to voters. Spain has provided an example of this by winning an opt-out from the 5% commitment, in the apparent belief that Russia does not threaten the Iberian Peninsula.
The way to do it is to say that arms production will bring jobs and will include science, research, and development. Within national states.
There are problems with this, of course. Europe needs to cut duplicities and produce far fewer types of tanks, fighter jets, and other weapon systems to increase efficiency. Efficiency dictates more pan-European cooperation, while national political interests dictate more local production.
It can be overcome, but it needs smart leaders and smart policies. Take the example of the German Boxer armored vehicle family, which is jointly produced for the UK by BAE and Rheinmetall at a British factory. There are many similar systems that could benefit from joint ventures.
There is a subtle difference between professional and political talk. From the point of view of an economist and accountant, defense spending is spending. It is expenditure, not investment. But there will have to be some political explanation, which needs to explain that defense spending is an investment in our defense and security.
This is the same problem as that old political favorite, “investment in people”. According to accountants, people are always costs, so investment in people is pure nonsense, however beautiful it sounds. But that’s a peacetime mindset, and it doesn’t work now. The Irish playwright Oscar Wilde might have described an accountant in the same way he described a cynic — as someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Another paradox is that if defense spending increases dramatically, countries should be motivated to buy the best and most efficient equipment and weapon systems. But these systems are often American. Buying more American means postponing the goal of European defense self-sufficiency and increasing dependency on a mercurial US. The issue may also become the subject of trade disputes — if Europe is to offer something about trade imbalances, it might try to offer to buy more American guns and weapons. It is not going to be easy to coordinate all of this.
But the key thing to remember is that defense is not only about production and its financing. It’s about public awareness and so-called national morale.
European governments will have to change the recruitment and motivation of people to serve or to be trained for active reserve forces. Limited professional armies are for peaceful times, not for an era of threats, crises, and emergencies, and — say it under your breath — war.
Jan Macháček is a visiting fellow of Globsec, president of Strategeo Institute, and a member of the board of foreign policy advisors to the Czech President Petr Pavel. He is a former dissident, musician and university lecturer. A heating stoker during communism, he cofounded the weekly publication Respekt after the 1989 revolution.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
Date: June 5, 2025
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm CET
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2025-06-24 22:10:09
Vladimir Putin’s vision of a multipolar world order seemed tantalizingly close to reality in August 2021. The chaotic American retreat from Afghanistan and swift collapse of the government in Kabul provided a stark contrast with Russian projection of power.
Russia’s seizure of Crimea and decisive intervention in the Syrian Civil War seemed to reflect a resolve that the West sorely lacked. Russia’s new global architecture would be underwritten by its military might and weaponry, offering autocrats an alternative to Western hegemony.
This was music to the mullahs. From the Iranian viewpoint, the partnership promised not just survival but supremacy — Russian S-300 air defense systems would shield its skies while Revolutionary Guards, armed with Russian weapons, would make Tehran kingmaker throughout the Middle East. And the Iranian arc of influence did indeed stretch from the shores of the Persian Gulf through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to the Mediterranean.
Three years later, that vision lies in ruins, buried beneath the rubble of Ukrainian cities and Iranian nuclear facilities. As the Iranian regime rocks to the attacks of Israeli and US jets that freely roam its skies, they have found their Russian armaments useless and their decades of partnership with Moscow good for little more than mealy-mouthed denunciations (as with Putin’s hollow offers of support on June 23).
This is a far cry from the days of military cooperation at the height of the Syrian Civil War. Russian airpower saved Bashar al-Assad’s regime, while Iranian proxies provided the ground forces. Together, they crushed the opposition and established a model for authoritarian cooperation that seemed unbeatable. By early 2022, Russian military advisors operated freely from Beirut to Baghdad, while Iranian forces used Syrian bases and Hezbollah to threaten Israel at will.
When America’s 20-year project of nation-building in Afghanistan collapsed in total failure later that year, Russian tabloids triumphantly declared that the West, its allies, and its kit were all little more than paper tigers. It was in this spirit that Russian troops entered Ukraine with three days of supplies, dress uniforms packed for victory parades, and extra space for imperial hubris.
No one had told the Ukrainians. Russia proved incapable of subduing a much smaller foe supplied with Western weapons, and slowly but surely things problems began to emerge the Kremlin’s global radar. Tajikistan pierced deep into the territory of Kyrgyzstan, a Russian treaty ally, and Russia responded with impotent calls for peace. Azerbaijan launched a lightning offensive against Russian-armed Armenia, another treaty ally, and again Moscow could muster no more than strongly worded statements. Armenia, recognizing the worthlessness of Russian protection, began openly discussing leaving the CSTO altogether.
If Azerbaijan’s victory was a warning, Assad’s fall in December was the confirmation. The Syrian regime that Russia had spent huge sums of money of dollars to preserve, collapsed in days when facing a ragtag rebel offensive. Russian forces, overstretched in Ukraine, simply evacuated. Years of investment, the lynchpin of Russian Middle Eastern strategy, abandoned without a fight. Moscow issued its usual denunciations and moved on.
Iran had been an early victim of Russia’s full-scale invasion: when global grain prices soared, Russia reneged a deal to supply 10 million tons of foodstuff, with the resulting hardship leading to the deadliest protests in the Islamic Republic’s history. Nonetheless, Iran sought to deepen its strategic ties with Russia, hoping that its importance to Russia’s global vision outweighed that of Armenia or Assad.
The past two weeks have delivered the final verdict on that choice. Israeli F-35s have operated over Iran with impunity. The integrated air defense network that Iran built with Russian and Chinese assistance — those S-300 batteries that were supposed to create an impenetrable shield — have proven useless. Not a single Israeli jet has been shot down. When American bombers struck Iran’s underground nuclear facilities yesterday, Iran failed so much as to engage the aircraft.
Whether that was a result of indecision from the decapitation of Iranian military leadership, the inadequacy of Russian- and Iranian-built air defense, or something even more profound, remains to be seen. But Russia’s response is now familiar to those who counted on its protection: warm appreciation for the arms and other help supplied to Russia for its imperial war, but only calls for de-escalation and a sympathetic smile when the loyal ally needs something in return.
The Russian-backed world order that seemed so inevitable in August 2021 has revealed itself as a chimera.
Russian weakness has allowed a cascade of collapse among its partners and allies, each failure reinforcing the next. Iran — perhaps the last true believer in Russian power — now faces the consequences of that faith.
Between the level of Israeli intelligence penetration into the Iranian security apparatus and the potential unwillingness of that apparatus to engage, Putin’s view from 2021 seems now exactly backwards: it’s his global vision that is failing.
Ben Dubow is the co-founder of Omelas, which builds multilingual, multidomain AI for intelligence research and reporting. His research on Iranian politics and foreign affairs has appeared in RealClearPolitics, Democracy Digest, Voice of America, and Radio Farda. He speaks Persian, Arabic, and Russian.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
Date: June 5, 2025
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm CET
The post Russiaworld, Iran and a Cascade of Collapse appeared first on CEPA.
2025-06-24 06:31:06
Russia’s FSB is working to build a new gulag. It’s recreation, and the loud echoes of the Stalinist era may mark the moment the country returns to the status of an unashamed dictatorship (if it hasn’t already passed that grim milestone).
Since February, the State Duma has been preparing three bills — expected to pass in July, and become law in January — that would create a new prison and detention archipelago across Russia.
The first bill was submitted in February. It will allow the FSB to create its own pretrial detention centers, or more accurately, prisons. In the Russian legal framework, those who were detained and arrested are held in prison, and those convicted are sent to penal colonies. In reality, both pre-trial prisoners and convicts are held in prison for months and years
Why the legal changes? After all, the FSB is not short of legal powers. The answer is extremely troubling. The FSB is anticipating a steep rise in repression. The explanatory note to the legislation states: “With the beginning of the special military operation, the number of suspects and [those] accused of treason, confidential cooperation with a foreign state, international or foreign organization, and espionage has increased significantly.”
It’s been a long road for Russia’s secret police. In the 1990s, as a result of Yeltsin’s reforms, the FSB, the main successor to the KGB, lost its prison empire, including its crown jewel—Lefortovo, the old Tsarist military prison in eastern Moscow with five wings shaped like the letter K.
The prison gained a horrible reputation in the 1930s, when executions were routinely carried out in its basement. In the post-Stalin era, it became the place where political prisoners and espionage suspects were held. (The inbuilt prison at the security service’s Lubyanka headquarters had been closed in the 1960s.)
President Yeltsin tried to weaken the KGB behemoth by stripping its main successor of both investigative powers and control over detention facilities. All KGB detention centers, including Lefortovo, were handed over to the Interior Ministry. But when two prisoners escaped from Lefortovo — the first such incident in the prison’s history — and the facility was returned to FSB control. Quietly, the FSB also restored its investigative department.
In 1996, when Russia joined the Council of Europe, the Kremlin pledged to “revise the law on federal security services in order to bring it into line with Council of Europe principles and standards within one year of accession.”
Specifically, Russia promised to strip the FSB of the right to run pretrial detention centers. The Europeans insisted on a separation between investigative bodies and detention facilities to prevent undue pressure on inmates.
The FSB resisted for years, and ever-more ferociously after Putin came to power in 2000. But in July 2005, with great fanfare, Vladimir Putin signed a decree transferring all FSB prisons — including Lefortovo — to the Ministry of Justice.
But, as in Soviet times, appearance and reality were not the same. The decree was a classic disinformation operation — it was never meant to be implemented. As the authors of this article discovered at the time, FSB prison personnel were simply reassigned to the penal service “on temporary assignment.” Though formally employed by the penal system, they remained subordinate to the FSB — as so-called attached undercover officers. The FSB never confirmed nor denied our reporting.
Over time, the system was refined to near-perfection. Officers serving at Lefortovo were routinely assigned from the FSB — often from its Investigative Department, which is conveniently headquartered within the Lefortovo prison complex. That remains true today: Dmitry Yelkin, appointed head of Lefortovo in 2022, previously served in the Investigative Department’s infamous First Section, which handles espionage cases. In other words, the system never posed any real problems for the FSB.
Lefortovo prison, for one, has fully preserved its peculiar atmosphere as a facility reserved for the state’s enemies — something the authors can personally attest to, having been interrogated there multiple times over the course of the 2000s.
Under the new plans, the FSB wants not only to reclaim the Lefortovo but also to establish new detention centers across the country, along with the creation of a new and in-house logistical system for moving detainees between these facilities.
One of the bills stipulates that the penal service must, in coordination with the FSB, develop a draft schedule for special carriages that can be attached to passenger, mail, and baggage trains. It also requires the penal service to provide the FSB with vessels and aircraft to transport convicts and prisoners in pre-trial detention. These inmates would be escorted by a newly established FSB guard service.
Another bill gives the FSB the power to investigate and punish in-house those who cause trouble within detention facilities.
Special carriages, vessels, aircraft, the power to escort suspects, and the full authority to discipline and control inmates — all housed, protected, and supervised within the growing FSB empire — clearly indicate preparations for repression on a scale beyond anything we’ve seen so far.
The logistical response the FSB has devised is unmistakably Stalinist. In the 1930s, it was the scale of repression that prompted Stalin’s NKVD to set up the department of Railway and Water Transport, not to mention the Main Directorate of Highways of the NKVD, which oversaw all the highways in the vast Soviet Union.
Putin may be hesitant to increase his war effort even further, apparently wary of torpedoing his economy, but his beloved security service shows no hesitation at all in returning to large-scale repression. Now it’s getting ready for that.
Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan are Non-resident Senior Fellows with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). They are Russian investigative journalists and co-founders of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of Russian secret service activities. Their book ’Our Dear Friends in Moscow, The Inside Story of a Broken Generation’ by Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov was published in the US on June 3 and June 26 in the UK.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
Date: June 5, 2025
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm CET
The post Gulag 2.0 — Russia Reopens the Camps appeared first on CEPA.
2025-06-24 01:57:41
This is an edited version of the spoken testimony that CEPA’s President and CEO, Dr. Alina Polyakova, gave on June 18, 2025. The full hearing and Dr. Polyakova’s written testimony are available here.
Chairman Risch, Ranking Member Shaheen, Distinguished Members of the Committee:
It is an honor to address you today on a critical matter of US national security — the 2025 NATO Summit. I should note that the views expressed in this testimony do not reflect those of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), of which I am president and CEO, or its staff and fellows.
The NATO Summit in The Hague next week [June 24-25] convenes at a pivotal moment, as the transatlantic community confronts an increasingly volatile geopolitical landscape marked by Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the growing cooperation between Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, who collectively aim to undermine the US and our allies.
Therefore, this Summit represents a powerful opportunity for the United States to engage with allies as they commit to massive new defense spending levels. Because, as was true at NATO’s founding and is still the case today, the alliance remains central to the vital US national security interest of defending the US homeland.
NATO’s European allies are poised to commit to 5% of GDP to defense spending, which is a significant and appropriate level given the growing Russian threat to NATO and the broader geopolitical environment.
This new commitment signifies a profound transformation, positioning Europe as an example for other partners — a point made by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in his remarks to Indo-Pacific allies in Singapore last month. Indeed, the Trump administration deserves a great deal of credit for pushing European allies to step up in such a significant way on defense.
US leadership, both from the Executive Branch and from Members of Congress, will be instrumental in ensuring that financial commitments translate into concrete defense capabilities that will ultimately benefit global US national security interests and send a strong message to adversaries.
Showing allied unity at the summit will serve as an important deterrent.
In my written testimony, I provide specific examples on three key points:
1. Europe is stepping up, but US leadership and commitment — in principle, people, and resources — remain critical for NATO’s continued success as the strongest military alliance in history.
European allies are taking the right steps by setting ambitious spending targets to rebalance the burden-sharing relationship. As NATO Secretary General Rutte recently said, it is in all our interests to have a NATO that is stronger, fairer, and more lethal.
But while Europe is taking up the challenge, there is no magic wand that would allow European allies to produce a highly competent force that can deploy rapidly across the continent. That requires years of planning, as our military commanders would confirm.
Indeed, Europe would be a sitting duck for Putin without a US presence and capabilities, and the political leadership of NATO.
The US remains NATO’s indispensable nation. It is the key enabler for European capabilities and gives political leadership at a time when the alliance is confronting Putin’s growing appetite to use military force in Europe.
Indeed, it is US political leadership of NATO, which includes a US-appointed Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), that is at the core of NATO’s ability to deter and defend.
2. Russia is now the threat to NATO that we feared it was at the start of the full-scale invasion.
As General Cavoli, NATO’s SACEUR, recently testified, Russia’s military has shown a remarkable ability to adapt and reconstitute.
Thanks to support from Iran, North Korea, and China, Russia’s war economy is mobilizing for long-term societal militarization.
In the meantime, Russia is also carrying out an increasingly aggressive shadow war against NATO in Europe, the kind we did not see even during the Cold War. And NATO is not yet configured to respond to and deter these tactics.
Russia’s actions signal that it is actively preparing for a direct confrontation with NATO, and not in the long term, but potentially in the next five years, so we need a common and comprehensive strategy to respond to this threat in the conventional and nonconventional domains.
3. NATO’s open-door policy is an asset to the alliance and the US
Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has doubled in size, from 16 to 32 members. The integration of the former Soviet bloc states in 1999 and 2004 has ensured not only stability in Europe but also that these countries would be the strongest pro-US allies. That is still the case today.
Take the recent inclusion of Finland and Sweden, which has added significantly to NATO’s capabilities, force posture, and strategic depth.
And of course, Ukraine will also be a significant security asset to NATO, bringing the largest, battle-tested army to Europe, and the most cutting-edge capabilities.
With that, I thank you for your time and look forward to your questions.
Dr. Alina Polyakova is President and CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) as well as the Donald Marron Senior Fellow at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
Date: June 5, 2025
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm CET
The post NATO Remains Vital to the US appeared first on CEPA.
2025-06-24 00:47:54
In 2011, the withered remains of Europe’s first defense union were taken to the European Union (EU) and given a quiet funeral.
The Western European Union (WEU), born in 1955, was formally pronounced dead. Now that NATO and the EU had replaced its main functions, it had been reduced to the role of a third leg, which is to say it had no role at all. Now, in 2025, with the world changed in unimaginable ways, it may be time to resurrect the idea of a Europe-only defense alliance. After all, the US has made crystal clear that it won’t any longer do the heavy lifting on continental defense.
“With the collapse in US credibility, NATO’s much talked-about ‘European pillar’ has gone from an aspirational extra to an absolute necessity,” says CEPA Senior Fellow and Senior Advisor Edward Lucas.
Time is short. The US will open talks later this year with its European allies about cuts to its European forces. That makes many US generals nervous (and unhappy), but the policy drift is clear; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cited “stark strategic realities” forcing the US to reshuffle its worldwide deployments.
Can Europe do it alone? The answer, at least for now, is no. There are simply too many areas — including aerial refueling, air transport, and intelligence and surveillance capabilities — where it is lacking or under-resourced. That should change as Europe aims a firehose of money at rearmament, but it will take time.
The last time Europe faced this dilemma was after World War II. It was far from clear in 1945-46 that the US would be willing to keep troops in Europe, any more than it had after World War I. Britain, the only military power in Western Europe in those years, worked intensively with France and others to agree on a system that could fight the Soviet Union.
The result was the 1948 Brussels Treaty between the UK, France, and the Benelux countries, which included an unambiguous commitment to mutual defense. West Germany and Italy joined later.
Now that Vladimir Putin may already be eyeing his next incursion west, Europe once again faces a threat from an expansionist and imperialist Kremlin.
If Trump really does withdraw from Europe, especially if it happens quickly, the continent would face serious difficulties compensating for the loss, according to Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Gordon “Skip” Davis, CEPA Senior Fellow and former deputy assistant Secretary General at NATO. “The US is needed for the theater-level expertise in running high-intensity combat at scale,” he said. “That will be one of the most difficult aspects for Europe to ever make up for in trying to deter and defend against Russian aggression.”
The point was underlined by James Fennell, a security expert and former Royal Navy officer. He has pointed out that the UK, like most European countries, had simply subcontracted its grand strategy to others. “Strategic thinking, such that it was, moved to NATO in Brussels, and ultimately to the Pentagon,” he wrote. This will need to return to Europe,
Flexibility will be critical to the success of any new alliance. States should be able to join the effort quickly and without regard for their relative contributions.
But there are elephant traps to avoid. The behavior of Hungary, Slovakia, and Turkey (both over NATO expansion and on EU support for Ukraine) has shown it’s risky to give recalcitrant members a veto or blocking power. There has to be a way to circumvent this problem.
Europeans know that fractures will appear. Indeed, it’s impossible to avoid. The rise of populist parties with widespread support is associated with a NATO skepticism. This sentiment — sometimes merely insular and sometimes overtly pro-Kremlin — makes pan-European defense problematic. Countries in Central and Eastern Europe are now divided between traditional, pro-Western parties and upstart groups. Every time a country switches from one to the other at election time, the security architecture changes with it. The issues raised by this pendulum process will have to be addressed. That may make European leaders wary of building an overly rigid new security alliance.
“Some of the NATO-EU countries like Hungary play a destructive role,” CEPA’s Lucas says. “One’s got to settle the wagon a bit and build coalitions of the willing.”
There will be some national squabbling and jostling too. A new security organization will need strong leadership for its joint command and direct military planning. For example, if the US abandons its military role as supreme commander in Europe. France will likely hope to fill the position, something that the UK and Germany may be willing to concede. President Emmanuel Macron led the charge for European strategic autonomy back in 2017 and his country has spent more time than any other imagining an autonomous Europe.
But Germany and Poland are critical. They are all making big strides towards improved collective defense, and both would have to produce many more service personnel (both have plans to expand their permanent forces; Germany by up to 60,000 to reach a total of 260,000 troops, and Poland by more than doubling its regular and reserve force to 500,000).
The UK, traditionally a hardliner on defense and security, is somewhat more problematic and must decide how serious it is. The government has inched up defense spending to 2.5% of GDP but refuses to target 3% for another nine years. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has made clear that this is inadequate and that 3.5% must be the target. It’s hard to see how the UK can claim a significant security role if it won’t pay up.
What might a future grouping look like? Europe ought to look to existing smaller-scale efforts such the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), a UK-led military partnership involving 10 countries, which helps to build readiness. According to Lucas, the JEF could be used as “the beginnings of a non-NATO military training arm, and a planning and interoperability framework.” Within NATO too, initiatives like Baltic Sentry — an effort to protect against Russian hybrid warfare in the sea of that name — offer a blueprint for coordinating increased European collaboration.
As for likely membership, the outlines are fairly clear and very much slanted to the continent’s north (indeed, it could even be named the North East Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NEATO). France, Germany, and the UK are already engaged, as is Poland. The Benelux countries will likely want to be involved, as they were in 1948, and so will the Baltic states and the Nordic countries, known as the Nordic-Baltic Eight (NB8). That makes 15 countries.
As for Italy, Spain, and the pendulum countries of Central and Eastern Europe, there’s less certainty and far less enthusiasm for any rise in defense spending. Indeed, on June 22, just before the NATO summit, Spain’s prime minister trumpeted that he had secured an opt-out from the alliance’s new defense spending targets. Hungary and Slovakia have self-excluded by electoral choice.
NATO’s frontline states display a fervent willingness to defend the continent against Russia: “Poland, Finland, Sweden . . . they’re totally committed to ensuring that never again are they going to be the victims of Russian aggression, and the same type of attitude is in the Baltic nations,” says Davis.
NATO is damaged. Administration statements, including some from the president, have made the commitment to the Article 5 mutual defense commitment less than certain. But that doesn’t mean the continent should simply give up or ignore the potent threat to its freedom and prosperity from the Russian regime. It has the responsibility and the power to act.
“Europe is growing up fast,” says CEPA’s Lucas. “But questions remain. Why would Putin wait until the Europeans are ready? Will the US drawdown be orderly and helpful? And is the US going to like what it wishes for: a sovereign, capable Europe?”
Amy Graham is CEPA intern.
Francis Harris is Managing Editor of Europe’s Edge.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
Date: June 5, 2025
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm CET
The post Europe — Very Well, Alone appeared first on CEPA.
2025-06-24 00:39:45
The US strikes on Iran have triggered another jarring lurch of the Russian propaganda seesaw, whose ups and downs have characterized Kremlin propaganda under the presidency of Donald J. Trump.
On one hand, government figures and state propagandists are thrilled that Ukraine is being pushed to the back burner of US foreign policy. On the other, they are far less enthusiastic with Trump’s approach towards their ally Iran, even if Putin has made clear that the mullahs will receive no direct aid.
Trying to play all sides is a balancing act, and the Kremlin’s talking heads do their best to walk the swaying tightrope of state-controlled messaging.
Shortly after the strikes, Kristina Busarova and Roman Guz, hosts of the morning show At Dawn on the Solovyov Live channel, immediately drew parallels between Trump and Adolf Hitler, by pointing out that he scheduled the operation for the early morning of June 22, the anniversary of Operation Barbarossa when Nazi Germany attacked the USSR in 1941. The date has no historical resonance in the United States.
In the slightly predictable albeit zany world of regime talking heads, Busarova hinted that the US was engaged in a conspiracy of some sort: “Perhaps there is something to it and it’s not just a coincidence,” she said, without elaborating.
Guz proceeded to compare Trump’s post-strike statement to Hitler’s speech justifying Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, claiming to have found uncanny similarities. He quoted Hitler’s proclamation, where he said: “At this moment, an attack unprecedented in the history of the world in its extent and size has begun.” The presenter juxtaposed this to Trump’s statement, which said “this is a historic moment for the United States of America, Israel, and the world.” Guz said, “Both of them claimed to be doing this for the sake of the world.”
Such parallels were drawn by numerous hosts and pundits, which likely signifies that the topic was on the list of talking points that are commonly disseminated to Russian media organizations by their government overseers. Not everyone stuck to the script however. Appearing on Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, Andrey Sidorov, Deputy Dean of world politics at Moscow State University, dismissed the thought that Trump intentionally chose the infamous date. He instead accused the US president of ignorance. “As far as what happened today, I don’t think Trump ever read a single book about World War II,” he said.
Before the strikes took place on June 21, Russian state television had been setting the stage to show that the Kremlin was attuned to Trump’s policies. Military experts and international affairs specialists made rounds on Moscow’s most popular talk shows, explaining that US strikes on Iran were all but inevitable. On June 23, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “The topic of Iran itself was repeatedly discussed by the presidents during their most recent conversations.”
Last week, during his show The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, leading propagandist and TV host Vladimir Solovyov not only asserted Trump would strike Iran but even predicted that he would eventually resort to nuclear weapons. After the attacks, Solovyov was even more adamant that after Iran retaliates, the US president will amp up his approach and employ nukes. Russian experts rub their hands at the thought since in their view this would clear the way to Kremlin use of nuclear strikes to break the deadlock in Ukraine.
Military expert Evgeny Buzhinsky pointed out that Iran’s retaliation might eventually become nuclear. He said: “From my point of view, they have every opportunity to create a nuclear warhead.” When other pundits questioned where this weapon would undergo its testing, Solovyov suggested they might skip this step and immediately use it for a strike. Laughing, Buzhinsky concurred: “Yes, they might hit Israel with it.”
Semyon Bagdasarov, Director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Central Asia, pointed out that the current regime is relatively safe, because the United States “doesn’t have an army of 500,000 or a 1 million to occupy Iran.” He asserted that whenever things stabilize, Iran might develop a nuclear weapon. He added: “It’s pointless to deny this.”
Solovyov repeatedly condemned America’s “unjustified” attacks on Iran, but at the same time stressed that if Ukraine moves to develop a nuclear bomb, “There will be catastrophic consequences. Ukraine will cease to exist. It’s not needed even now. Everything that is ours is necessary, but everything that is theirs isn’t.”
Another bonus for Russia is the anticipation of rising oil prices (even though market reaction has so far been muted). Solovyov relished the thought: “This means crazy price increases for everyone. For us, it will be beneficial. The price of oil will skyrocket, which is good for us.”
The self-interested regime analysis shot through most of the propagandists’ utterances. During his Sunday show on June 22, Solovyov asserted: “We need to move on to a very proactive political game. The time for this is ideal — simply ideal.”
He called on Moscow to form military alliances with other countries and stated: “It’s clear that a big world war is inevitable. The way it’s spiraling right now makes it certain that the whole world will be engulfed.” Solovyov also succumbed to the temptation to have a shot at the United States, Russia’s traditional enemy, as he scoffed: “If [Iran] strikes a base, then this was its fate. Americans will certainly meet those coffins in a beautiful way. Americans know how to organize beautiful burials.”
In public at least, Putin was happy to offer words of support to the Iranian theocracy. He hosted Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi in Moscow on June 22 and told him there was no justification for the US bombing of his country.
He assured Araqchi that Russia was trying to help the Iranian people, without making any detailed promises. In the run-up to the strikes, military experts were keen to point out that the Russia-Iran strategic partnership pact, only signed in January, did not include a mutual defense clause.
Appearing on the show The Right To Know, Chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy Fyodor Lukyanov shared that Russia’s partners in the Middle East are closely watching whether Moscow will extend a helping hand to Iran, after it proactively boosted Putin’s invasion by supplying Shahed drones and other weaponry.
In which case they will take note that in Iran — and recently in Syria — Russia has been no more than an onlooker. Laying the groundwork for Russia’s stance as noncommittal, state TV shows repeatedly shifted the blame onto its “no limits” ally in China for failing to protect Iran.
Appearing on Russia’s 60 Minutes, military expert Igor Korotchenko stressed that China should do the heavy lifting to help Iran, because Russia is already busy in Ukraine, “fighting the collective West.”
Julia Davis is a columnist for The Daily Beast and the creator of the Russian Media Monitor. She is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Screen Actors Guild, and Women In Film.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
Date: June 5, 2025
Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm CET
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