Analysis: Europe seeks to fill US hole in financing Ukraine

CNN
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Can Europe fill the void left by the US in Ukraine?

This has long been on the minds of European officials as they look across the Atlantic, see funding blocked and the possibility of Donald Trump’s return.

This is the question the European Union is trying to answer. At this week’s European Council summit, the European Union agreed to explore new ways to raise funds for Ukraine, including raising debt on financial markets and leveraging the profits from the controversial freeze on Russian assets. Agreed.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo said there was “at least an openness in our country” to new funding options, adding sternly that Europe “cannot wait for the US to decide.” .

However, the leaders could not agree to inject new funds into arms. That could be a problem.

Ukraine’s need for weapons is becoming increasingly urgent. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has repeatedly told Western allies that the biggest challenge his country currently faces is a weapons shortage that allows Russia to take advantage.

It would be unfair to accuse the EU of not focusing on Ukraine. According to the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine aid tracker, the EU as a whole is It is said that they are sending more funds to Kiev than to the United States.

However, the same tracker also shows that of the EU’s total of $85 billion, only $5.6 billion was allocated specifically to military aid, while $2.2 billion was allocated to humanitarian aid and $77.1 billion to financial aid. It shows.

And with $60 billion in U.S. military aid to Ukraine pending in Congress for the time being, it is not immediately clear who could feasibly fill the funding gap.

This complicates the core question of whether Europe can really replace the United States.

Some European officials prefer to frame this as a purely economic issue. According to the latest data from the World Bank, Russia’s GDP is $2.24 trillion, compared to the EU’s $16.75 trillion.

In theory, this means that if the war were to become a war of economic attrition, Europe could hypothetically outlast Russia. To put it more crudely, Europe certainly has the money to fill the gap in America.

The difficult question is how this will work politically. The European Union is made up of 27 sovereign states, each with an independent foreign policy. Some countries are members of NATO, others are not, and are officially neutral. Some people are comfortable buying American weapons and sending them to Ukraine for the specific purpose of killing Russian soldiers, but others are not. Some countries are geographically close to Russia and worry about war spilling over to their borders; others are protected by miles of land between Russia and Moscow and have enjoyed decades of good economic relations with Russia. Some countries do.

Over the course of the war, European thinking evolved. Diplomats and officials said Brussels’ role in the early stages of the conflict was understood to be to provide financial aid for things like maintaining the country’s basic functions and admitting refugees, while the U.S. sorted out weapons. It is said that

There is no denying that the EU is taking defense more seriously. It recently announced plans to build a European defense industry that could eventually rival the United States in the future. But even this long-term plan, which is still far from reality, raises uncomfortable questions for member states. Should EU money be spent outside the region? Where should we build a factory? What relationship should the procurement plan have with the efforts already undertaken by NATO?

So much for the long term. In the short term, Ukraine urgently needs weapons. CNN reported last week that Russia is producing three times as much artillery shells for use in Ukraine as the United States and Europe combined.

An initiative was put together outside the EU framework to purchase ammunition to be sent to Ukraine on the international market, led by the Czech Republic and with the support of 17 EU member states.

The advantage of not being an official EU plan is that EU member states can act more quickly and that other member states, mainly Hungary, which has closer ties to Russia than other EU countries, can veto or water down the plan. It means you don’t have to worry about doing it. schedule.

The Czech effort has already purchased 300,000 shells, which are expected to arrive in Ukraine in June. Of course, Ukrainians are happy about this initiative, but they also acknowledge that it does not close the hole in the shape of the United States.

Earlier this month, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs said: “The Czech initiative is great, but it is far from sufficient…If in addition to the Czech initiative, two more initiatives are implemented this year…Russian forces in Ukraine will face even more serious problems on the front lines. This was seen by some as a reference to the blocked U.S. package.

So can Europe fill the funding gap in Ukraine left by Washington DC?

The answer is yes. Europe has the means. Whether it has a will is even more unclear.

Eastern European officials have stressed the importance of convincing their partners that Ukraine’s security is the same as Europe’s. In Western Europe, the former Soviet Union states are often portrayed as hawkish, but they make the somewhat reasonable point that if Russia were to invade NATO territory, bombs would be more likely to fall, rather than, say, Athens or Rome. There is.

But it will affect all European countries, especially NATO members. And the countries that border Russia are almost unanimous in their view that the only way to stop Russian aggression from escalating is to force NATO to launch an attack so powerful that even President Vladimir Putin could not even imagine it. We are doing so.

It is very difficult to argue for a significant increase in defense spending even while there is a war on Europe’s borders. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg last month welcomed news that 18 of the allies would spend 2% of their GDP on defense. This was a dramatic improvement from a decade ago, when only three NATO members met the minimum standards. However, this means that even in a crisis like the one in Ukraine, more than a third are not able to achieve this goal.

The longer the war lasts, the more likely it is that fatigue will build up. The greater the pressure on domestic budgets, such as public services and pensions, the harder it becomes to justify funding wars in other countries.

And that is exactly the point at which European thinking can go in one of two directions: either ensure that Ukraine defeats Russia for the sake of a wider continent, or what does it have to do with us? Is it?

To be sure, Europe can fill the void left by the United States, and in some ways it is trying to do just that. But everything depends on whether Ukraine’s biggest ally in Europe can continue to win the debate.