Europe, unsteadily, stands up

The last week or so of peace talks, if that is the right description, between Russia and the United States over Ukraine have, not surprisingly, failed to convince European countries either that peace is on the way or that the US is a reliable defence partner for an uncertain future. So the Europeans are pressing forward with plans for increased self-sufficiency.

That’s not an easy task. Since the formation of NATO 76 years ago, the US has formed the bedrock of western Europe’s defence. No-one yet has a clear vision for exactly how it can be replaced. The European Union will probably be at the centre of any new arrangement, but while its major powers – France, Germany, Italy and Poland – seem to be broadly on the same page, it has one rogue member (Hungary) and a few others that are wavering.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom, another significant military power, is looking for a way to re-engage, having capriciously left the EU in 2020. It will also make sense to try to involve sympathetic non-European countries as much as possible: Canada, Japan, South Korea, perhaps Australia.

And someone will have to pay for it all, and it won’t be cheap. The big news this week has been the vote in the German parliament to amend its constitution so as to remove, as far as defence spending is concerned, the restriction on government borrowing. The lower house approved the move on Tuesday with a vote of 512 to 206, well clear of the two-thirds majority required; the upper house is expected to do the same tomorrow.

If you followed last month’s German election, you might find those numbers odd, since the newly-elected lower house has only 630 seats. In fact the vote took place in the old parliament, which remains in existence for thirty days after the election, or until next Tuesday. Proceeding this way is therefore legal, but unusual; apparently no constitutional amendment has ever been made the subject of such a vote.

The reason for doing so, of course, was that the numbers have changed significantly. The amendment was the product of agreement between the centre-left (SPD), centre-right (CDU) and Greens. In the old parliament, they held a total 520 seats out of 733, reflecting the 64.6% of the vote that they won in the 2021 election. Last month that figure was down to 56.5% and 413 seats out of 630: still a majority, but seven seats short of the two-thirds mark. Far right and far left have a bit over a third of the seats between them.

Desperate times, desperate measures. Overriding the will of a parliament elected three weeks earlier isn’t a good look, but a lot has happened in those three weeks. If German voters had had the time to digest the American volte-face over Ukraine, it may be that not as many of them would have opted for the far right.

As I’ve said before, Europe should have seen this coming and been making plans. To say that, however, is not to buy in to the popular American narrative that Europe has been “freeloading” off US defence expenditure for decades, or the more specifically Trumpian narrative that increased European preparedness is just what Trump has been aiming to achieve. Neither claim, in my view, will hold water, but proper consideration of them will have to wait for another day.

For now, the German reputation for fiscal rectitude has suffered something of a dent. It is still a wealthy country, as are its EU partners; given time, they can afford to supply their own defence needs. Certainly their capacity to fund weapons and armies is enormously greater than that of Russia. But their leaders need to start being honest with their voters and explain that there could well be some very difficult times ahead, and that sacrifices – maybe large ones – are going to have to be made.

Back in 1944 John Maynard Keynes, then working as an adviser to the British government, wrote to the US treasury secretary to explain Britain’s financial position and how it had arisen. Whatever the problems with his economics, Keynes was a fine writer; this was how he put it:

Quite early in the war the Treasury control over war expenditure overseas was virtually abandoned. If Treasury control over expenditure had continued, unquestionably many economies could have been made. But these economies would not have been possible without setting up a machine of control which would have impeded the prosecution of the war. One has to choose. The principles of good housekeeping do not apply when you are fighting for your lives over three continents far from home. We threw good housekeeping to the winds. But we saved ourselves, and helped to save the world. …

No doubt the above makes up collectively a story of financial imprudence which has no parallel in history. Nevertheless, that financial imprudence may have been a facet of that single-minded devotion without which the war would have been lost. So we beg leave to think that it was worth while—for us, and also for you.

If the western democracies really are, as I fear, in for a similar struggle for survival, we will need a similar clear-headedness about what that involves.