Marco Giulio Barone Impact matters! The war in Ukraine has forced European countries to brutally put military issues at the top of their agendas, resulting in budget increases after decades of under-investment and capability shortfalls. But, in a scenario that might seem ideal for affirming autonomy in EU defence cooperation, NATO and the US will likely be the big winners. Russia underestimated Ukrainian resilience, and the war is far from over. The conflict is evolving towards a war of attrition, in which the risk of nuclear incident remains high due to skirmishes around the Zaporizhzhia power plant. Although on paper the EU has been working for years on reinforcing defence collaboration, its role in the crisis remains highly symbolic and has little real impact. A brand-new strategic framework is in place, and the political consensus on the need for a ‘geopolitical EU is arguably at a record high level. From a mere political perspective, EU countries succeeded in showing unity against Russia. They were able to rapidly approve a significant package of sanctions, to welcome Ukrainian refugees in Europe thanks to the first activation ever of the Temporary Protection Directive, and to approve assistance measures under the European Peace Facility (EPF). The total amount of EU aid has reached €2 billion since the beginning of the war, of which €490 million is for “military equipment designed to deliver lethal force for defensive purposes” (note that an entire was necessary for translating ‘weapons’ into EU-ropean) and €10 million to “cover the provision of equipment and supplies, such as personal protective equipment, first aid kits, and fuel”. In relative terms, these represent an unprecedented EU effort, as significant military aid was approved at a faster pace than usual. In absolute terms, however, the EU is advancing too slowly, and is ineffective compared to what other stakeholders have done, thus having a limited military impact on the battlefield – which, conversely, is what Ukrainian armed forces urgently require. EU countries are struggling to pledge the promised armaments, mainly due to limited stocks in their (ridiculous) inventories. For some West European countries, especially Germany, sending weapons to Ukraine means accepting a shortage in specific systems. According to the ‘Ukraine support tracker’ from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the “gap between committed and disbursed aid has narrowed” for large EU countries between January and August 2022. For example, Poland has already delivered the promised €1.8 billion in equipment, while Germany has delivered only €290 million of the promised €620 million. In the reference period, EU institutions (including Commission, Council and EPF, but also Macro-Financial Assistance and the European Investments Bank) pledged €12.3 billion in financial aid, and €2.5 billion in military aid. Although the COVID pandemic was not the existential threat that a full-scale war could be, EU countries accepted easily to pledge as much as €750 billion to sustain the recovery. Likewise, European countries spent €280 billion on subsidies and tax cuts in the last year to help businesses and households pay their energy bills. Beyond official solidarity statements on Ukraine, the numbers show that EU countries are underestimating the relevance of war in Ukraine (when will they ever learn?). In the same period, the US pledged €10.3 billion in financial aid and €25 billion in military aid. In August, President Biden announced an additional package of about €3 billion, the largest tranche since the beginning of the war. On its side, the UK pledged €2.1 billion in financial aid and €4 billion in military aid and has delivered almost all the weapons systems it committed to. The economic effort of the US and the UK is far higher than the EU’s, and is also more effective on the battlefield. The US delivered about 20 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), UAVs and other artillery systems, and hundreds of thousands of munitions – thereby having a more immediate impact than the 18 CAESAR artillery systems pledged by France or the PZH-2000s that Germany sent in July as its first delivery of heavy weapons since the beginning of the war. Hence, ‘the few’ are having a greater impact than ‘the many’ – who number as many as 27. In principle, the main advantage of pooling resources is to achieve better results. Instead, the European selfish master narrative that European countries are doing “everything possible” to face the Ukrainian crisis, is contradicted by fact and, most of all, by the absence of concrete, solid impact on the battleground – either through the EU or by any single country. The main reason why the US will continue to have a footprint on European soil is that European countries keep leaving immense power vacuums to exploit. And the irrelevance of European countries on their own continent has resuscitated Macron’s ‘brain-death’ of NATO, which remains the principal US-driven alliance in the world (regardless of French disappointment), but also the most credible security provider. Luckily or unluckily, depending on one’s point of view. Marco Giulio Barone is a political-military analyst based in Paris, and a regular contributor to Mönch magazines. Comment MT 5/2022 · 5
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