Instigating transformations he neither intends nor is likely to understand is Donald Trump’s peculiar genius. Nowhere is this easier to discern than in his inadvertent midwifery of a European military revival.
In his years as president, Trump’s “America First” grandstanding has transformed NATO from a club of haggling partners into a dysfunctional family group chat, punctuated by ALL CAPS demands and threats to leave the thread altogether.
At first, Europe’s reaction was predictable: shock, dismay, much public sighing. But beneath the surface, something stirred. If Washington’s security guarantees were now a line item in Trump’s imaginary ledger, it was time for Europe to reach into its own pockets.
And thus, amid the din of tariffs, troop withdrawal threats, and a strangely flirtatious relationship between Trump and the Kremlin, NATO member states began—reluctantly, awkwardly—to rearm themselves with the enthusiasm of a genteel pacifist forced to join a neighbourhood watch militia.
Trump’s fixation on NATO spending was hardly novel. American presidents had grumbled about free-riding Europeans since the beginning of the Cold War. The difference was his approach. He made his displeasure personal, transactional, and gloriously unsubtle: “Pay up, or the GIs pack up!”
Spending 2% of GDP on defence—long treated as an aspirational nod to Uncle Sam’s generosity—was suddenly insufficient. In a masterstroke of extortion-as-diplomacy, Trump goaded NATO members toward committing a staggering 5% target by 2035, a figure that would have made Dwight David Eisenhower blush.
Poland, keen to prove itself NATO’s teacher’s pet—and justifiably anxious about Russia’s neighbourhood manners—surged to 4.7% of GDP on defence. The Netherlands, rarely accused of martial zeal, committed to a neatly structured 3.5% for military affairs and 1.5% for adjacent sectors, like infrastructure, because what’s a tank without a smooth autobahn to roll on?
Denmark, Estonia, and others joined the parade with comparable pledges. Even Germany, long the poster child of fiscal prudence, smashed its debt ceiling like a rock star trashing a hotel room, committing hundreds of billions of euros to rearmament with uncharacteristic bravado.
Spain was again the exception. Always the conscientious objector in NATO’s frat party, Madrid politely declined to push defence spending much beyond 2%. Spanish politicians invoked the quaint notion that pensions and hospitals might deserve as much attention as missiles—a stance that earned them not admiration but threats of trade sanctions from Washington. A polite “por favor” was unlikely to shield Iberian goods from Trump’s tariff tantrums.
Responding to Trump’s bluster, in March, 2025 the European Commission rolled out its €800 billion “Readiness 2030” plan, a delightfully Orwellian name for a scheme that amounted to defence Keynesianism on a continental scale.
Once fiscal hawks, EU leaders now squawked about pooling resources, issuing defence loans, and reallocating development funds to more urgent priorities—namely, tanks, shells, and an industrial base capable of producing them.
Coupled with the earlier European Defence Industrial Strategy of 2024, the EU was reinventing itself not just as a trading bloc but as an arms bazaar with bureaucratic flair. The idea was simple: if America’s protection could no longer be counted on, Europe would need to revive its own capacity to build and deploy the tools of modern warfare, preferably before anyone else noticed the deficit figures.
Simultaneously, an informal “E5” security council—comprising Germany, France, the UK, Poland, and Italy—materialised. A sort of G7 for tanks, this coalition sidestepped the laborious rituals of full EU consensus, which tend to move at the speed of a UN peacekeeping force on a coffee break.
Inevitably, this sudden shift to militarism has sparked domestic unrest. In Germany, fiscal conservatives fretted over abandoning the sacred “debt brake,” warning that inflation was the inevitable price of this Teutonic turn to tanks. But the political centre-right shrugged. After all, won’t there always be room in the budget when the spectre of Russian tanks rolling through Brandenburg is dangled?
Elsewhere, debates took on a more ideological hue. Spain’s refusal to toe the 5% line transformed into a cause célèbre for those defending social spending against the encroachments of the military-industrial complex.
Meanwhile, across Northern Europe, leaders justified their budgetary expansions with existential narratives of Russian encroachment, even as social democrats and greens winced at the prospect of trading carbon neutrality targets for guided munitions.
And then there were the populists: ever eager to posture about sovereignty and security, yet allergic to Brussels-led initiatives, even when these initiatives promised new funding for national armies. This strategic incoherence became a hallmark of the European right: demanding more guns, but only if Brussels didn’t hand them out.
In the end, Europe owes Trump a curious debt of gratitude. The man who openly derided NATO has become, posthumously to his presidency, the unlikely godfather of its revival. The 2025 NATO summit in The Hague—effectively a tribute to the American president—sealed the commitment to historic rearmament.
Trade wars, it turns out, can be converted into stealth fighter pacts with the right financial alchemy.
This abrupt shift in spending indirectly benefited the same American defence industry Trump had lambasted Europe for neglecting. European militaries may now be purchasing more French Rafales and German Leopards, but as of the time of this article’s writing, Berlin and Brussels were reportedly planning orders for new, American-made F-35 Lightning II combat aircraft from Lockheed Martin. Capitalism, after all, abhors a vacuum.
And so the EU, an institution once mocked as a toothless talk shop, finds itself in possession of an emergent military-industrial strategy, bolstered by fiscal flexibilities that would have scandalised its architects.
A union born of the determination that Europe would never again wage war on itself is now funding its own arsenal. Not for war, of course, but for peace through deterrence.
Yet for all the grand plans and budget surges, the European Union remains trapped in a familiar dilemma. It aspires to strategic autonomy, but only to the extent that Washington approves. The idea of a fully independent European defence capability remains as much a rhetorical flourish as a policy reality.
Germany and the Netherlands, reliable as ever, resist any hint of duplicating NATO’s functions. Why pay for two armies when one, albeit a little temperamental, will do?
Meanwhile, France, ever the Napoleonic dreamer, continues to champion a sovereign European military identity, while quietly calculating how many more ageing Mirage jets it can transfer to Ukraine before the whole thing falls apart.
All of this military enthusiasm comes at a price, and not just the monetary kind.
Budget reallocations have already sparked protests across the continent. In some regions, cohesion funds once earmarked for social programs or green transition initiatives now bankroll defence contracts. One can hardly blame citizens for wondering why their local hospital remains understaffed as armoured divisions proliferate.
Moody’s and other economic soothsayers warn of fiscal strain and inflation risks, particularly in countries like Germany that have tossed aside their cherished budgetary shackles. But politicians, once chastened by austerity, now wield rearmament as a politically acceptable form of deficit spending. After all, no price is too high when national survival—or at least national pride—is at stake.
The story of Donald Trump and European military spending is one of unintended consequences, rich in irony and bristling with contradictions.
A president who appeared to delight in undermining alliances has unwittingly catalysed the most significant European military buildup since the Cold War. EU institutions, once allergic to martial matters, have embraced defence spending with the fervour of a former pacifist discovering the joys of fencing.
Yet this newfound vigour is tempered by familiar European dilemmas: balancing social spending with military commitments, managing incoherent populism, and navigating the tricky waters of dependence on a United States that could, with one election, reprise the petulant withdrawal from the world stage that it made after the First World War.
Europe is rearming. Its budgets are bigger, its factories busier, and its rhetoric more assertive. But beneath the surface lies the gnawing question: is this a new dawn of European strategic maturity—or merely the same old dependency, dressed up in camouflage?
If the past decade is any guide, the answer may depend less on Brussels and more on the occupant of the Oval Office and his latest social media post.
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Photograph courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.
