Both NATO and the EU want to spend a €100 billion on defense — and that’s leading to clashes between the two Brussels-based institutions.
The European Union is donning its camouflage pants and flexing its muscles on defense. NATO isn’t happy.
For years, the two Brussels-based institutions have barely communicated when it comes to defense, except for some military cooperation in areas like the Balkans — because they haven’t had to. Defense was NATO’s turf (it is a military alliance, after all), while the EU dealt with trade, farming, climate change and things like standards for heritage cheeses.
It was summed up by a catchphrase popular in military circles: “The U.S. fights, the U.N feeds, the EU funds.”
That’s now changing.
So this debate was always buried in the whole “Europe is freeloading on NATO” schtick, the fact that for example both EU countries and the US buy and fly F-35 jets. If the EU is now forced to spend more on defense, especially since the impetus is partly coming from the unreliability of the US, why should an EU country give that money to the US as opposed to joining the FCAS programme? Now the question is, will NATO put the joint interests of its member states ahead of those of the US MIC?