First Define “Serious”

At Carnegie Europe there is a round table considering the question “is Europe serious about defense?” The answers of the participants range from “yes”, to “they’re getting there”, to “some countries are; some aren’t”, to “no”. The answer that most closely approximates my view is from Brit Julian Lindley-French:

No. Europeans are defense DIMBYs—defend me but not in my back yard—that is, they are very serious about being defended, just not by themselves. Of course, the nearer one is to danger the more one is prepared to invest in defense. And for all the nonsense about modest defense increases since 2014, the €200 billion ($214 billion) or so Europeans spend on defense is mainly spent badly, largely by Britain, France, and Germany and is being eaten up by inflation.

As for leadership? The“Big Three”—France, Germany, and Italy—really do not like each other very much and none of them feel threatened. In spite of the war in Ukraine, indebted Europeans routinely confuse politics with strategy and defense value with defense cost.

or, to say it another way, the Europeans are completely serious that the U. S. should defend them. That is what is meant when the panel members indicate that they want NATO to provide defense for them. The only two militaries at the highest level of readiness are those of the French and U. S. and both our forces and those of the French are stretched pretty thin.

I notice that the panelists do not define what the mean by “serious”. The analogy I would make is with lighting a reading room. You’re serious about lighting a reading room if there is enough light in it to read by. You can’t measure how serious the countries of Europe are about collective defense by how much is spent or by the levels of effort they’re willing to expend to defend their own borders.

A shorter but more difficult question is whether Germany is serious about defending Europe? I don’t believe the Germans know at this point.