By Marin Guentchev, MD, PhD, and Hristo Guentchev
Europe’s politicians and its mainstream media are full of panic and disbelief. Waking up to the reality of being unable to defend themselves, they accuse President Trump of not taking a more aggressive stance towards Russia at the recently concluded Helsinki summit. However, who is to blame here?
During the last few decades, almost all the EU countries have reduced their military expenditure to invest heavily in an ever-expanding social welfare system, while cleverly passing off the whole enterprise as testimony to their pacifism. For example, Germany has successfully used its past military misadventures to adopt a non-militaristic stance, which allowed it to halve its defence expenditure from 2.4% of its GDP in 1990 to 1.2% of its GDP in 2017. The effects of this policy have become obvious—a spate of press reports on broken tanks, submarines, and helicopters call into question Europe’s ability to defend itself.
Despite its obvious military weakness since 2014, the EU entered into an escalating confrontation with the Russian Federation by imposing economic sanctions on it and supporting President Putin’s opponents. Nevertheless, EU military expenditure remained unchanged at an extremely low level of 1.5% of its GDP. This leaves one with the impression that the EU’s policy towards Russia was based on the presumption that if the confrontation escalated to an armed conflict, the US would meet its obligation to intervene on its behalf.
Meanwhile, Germany has cleverly used NATO’s protection, Russia’s economic weakness, and the instability in Ukraine to increase its importance in the EU energy market. The planned doubling of the North Stream pipeline capacity from Russia to Germany and the disruption of the South Stream pipeline from Russia to Bulgaria in 2014 raises suspicion that the EU policy towards Russia aims at eventually providing Germany with a monopoly over EU’s energy supply by pushing the conservative East European countries—including Ukraine—out of the natural gas transit market. This undertaking has the potential to cause deep and long-lasting divisions within the EU and NATO, much to the disadvantage of the US, which will ultimately cede its influence over Ukraine to Russia.
The possibility of US troops having to fight for European/German economic interests and potential conflicts within the EU/NATO was the context in which President Trump arrived at the recent NATO summit at Brussels. After years of quiet diplomacy that proved unsuccessful, the only option left was to forcefully insist on an increase in military spending and a termination of the North Stream 2 pipeline project, alternatively, NATO’s viability should be reconsidered; the EU leadership rushed to describe this as an act of treason.
The mostly western European outrage at the idea that the EU member states have to fulfill their obligation to increase defence spending and invest in energy independence from Russia had one very important consequence—it undermined NATO’s and, as a result, President Trump’s position just before the Helsinki summit with President Putin of Russia. The woozy appearance of Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, in Brussels further strengthened the impression that the EU is an unreliable and unsteady partner.
So, given the fact that the EU is currently more of a liability than an asset in the confrontation with Russia, how could we Europeans expect the Trump administration to take a firmer stand in Helsinki? At the summit, President Trump did the best possible thing for the people of Europe—he prevented further escalation of the conflict with Russia and won time. He has won time for the EU to strengthen its military readiness and brace for a major energy crisis.
Now, the EU has to use this window of opportunity and act fast to strengthen its unity, increase its defence capacity, and diversify its energy supplies. Even Trump’s worst detractors will agree on that. Further, when the EU is stronger, more united in its desire for freedom, and more energy independent, we might expect President Trump to be tougher on Russia.
It is clear that if the European countries are to meet their defence-spending obligations, either major tax increases or social spending cuts have to be made. Another way to increase the military expenditure is to change the spending priorities of EU’s vast budget and direct more funding into the European armies.
The EU also needs to act quickly with regard to North Stream 2 and its divisive effect within NATO. In 2014, for the sake of preserving the EU’s unity, Bulgaria gave up the South Stream pipeline. Now, Germany should emulate Bulgaria’s example and give up North Stream 2.
Whatever the EU leadership decides to do, it has to do it quickly because the window of opportunity won’t stay open for long. However, panicking and complaining, when confronted with reality, has never been a good option.
About the authors
Marin Guentchev received his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Vienna, Austria. Currently he is founder and owner of Trinity Medical Center in Sofia, Bulgaria and is Junior Professor (Privatdozent) for neurosurgery at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Hristo Guentchev received his architectural degree from the Technical University in Vienna, Austria. He is founder and owner of Prototyp Ltd an international facade engineering company. Prototyp’s portfolio includes engineering work on landmark projects like the extension of the British Museum (London), BMW Museum (Munich), Louvre (Abu Dhabi), and Museum of the Bible (Washington, D.C.).
Since 2018 they write a blog (http://www.gbros.org/) discussing Bulgarian and European politics. Their political articles have been published in The American Spectator, Epicenter.bg, Glasove.bg.