The Question

European Union and NATO member flags flying in a row outside a summit building under an overcast sky

For eighty years, European security has rested on an American foundation: roughly 80,000 to 100,000 US troops stationed on the continent, American planes and satellites watching its skies, and an American nuclear umbrella over everything. That foundation is not collapsing — but it is visibly shifting. President Trump has pressed allies hard on spending, Vice President JD Vance used the February 2025 Munich Security Conference to lecture Europeans about their own politics rather than reassure them about Russia, and the Pentagon has been reviewing its troop posture as its planning focus moves toward Asia and the American homeland.

The question this forecast weighs is not whether Europe is rich enough to defend itself — its economy is roughly ten times the size of Russia's. It is whether Europe can convert wealth into fighting power fast enough, and what happens during the dangerous years in between.

What the Evidence Shows

The money has moved first, and dramatically. At the Hague summit in June 2025, NATO allies pledged to reach 5% of GDP — a country's total economic output — on defense by 2035, split into 3.5% for core military spending and 1.5% for security-related infrastructure and resilience, such as roads, ports, and cyber defenses. For scale: in 2024, hitting the old 2% target was still considered an achievement, and 23 of NATO's 32 members managed it. Poland now leads the alliance at roughly 4.7% of GDP in 2025, with the Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the members closest to Russia — all above 3%.

The European Union broke its own taboos in parallel. Its "ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030" plan, unveiled in March 2025, aims to mobilize up to €800 billion, including €150 billion in joint-procurement loans known as SAFE. Germany went furthest: in March 2025 it amended its constitution so that defense spending above 1% of GDP no longer counts against the country's strict "debt brake" borrowing limit, and created a €500 billion infrastructure fund besides. Industry is grinding upward too — European artillery shell production, around 300,000 rounds a year in 2022, has been ramping toward an EU target of roughly 2 million a year in 2025–26.

"The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China ... it is the threat from within."

— US Vice President JD Vance, Munich Security Conference, February 2025

But money is the easy part. The hard part is what strategists call "strategic enablers" — the connective tissue that lets armies actually fight — and nearly all of it is American: heavy transport aircraft, military satellites and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance), aerial refueling tankers, high-end air and missile defense, and the nuclear umbrella itself. Europe's defense industry is also fragmented across dozens of duplicate weapon systems where the United States fields a handful, diluting every euro spent. The nuclear question has at least been opened: France has offered a "dialogue" on extending its deterrent's European role, and Britain and France signed a coordination declaration on their nuclear forces in July 2025.

"Europe has the wealth, the people, and now the budgets. What it has rented from America for eighty years is the ability to fight as one."

Why This Is Happening

America's strategic center of gravity is moving. The pressure on Europe did not begin with any single administration, but it has sharpened: Washington's military planning increasingly treats China and the defense of the homeland as the priorities, and Europe as a theater allies should mostly handle themselves. Troop-posture reviews and blunt speeches are the visible symptoms of a deeper, bipartisan reallocation of American attention.

Russia's war made rearmament politically possible. For decades after the Cold War, European voters collected a "peace dividend" and defense budgets shrank. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 changed the electoral math: steps once unthinkable — Germany loosening its constitutional debt brake for the military, Poland spending near 5% — became mainstream policy within three years.

Decades of underinvestment left holes money cannot fill quickly. Satellites, transport fleets, air-defense networks, and trained formations take five to fifteen years to build, not one budget cycle. And because each European country protects its own defense industry, the continent produces many overlapping tank, jet, and frigate programs — meaning even record spending buys less capability per euro than it should.

What Could Happen

An uneven but real transformation makes Europe the primary defender Most likely

The big spenders — Poland, the Baltics, the Nordics, Germany — hit or near their targets while some allies lag. By the early 2030s European forces provide most of the continent's conventional defense, with a smaller American presence remaining as backstop and the US nuclear umbrella still in place.

Fiscal and political backlash stalls the buildup Possible

Debt pressures, competing social spending, and parties campaigning against rearmament flatten budgets after the initial surge. Pledges slip toward the 2035 deadline and beyond, the enabler gaps persist, and Europe remains dependent on an increasingly distracted America.

A rupture forces crash rearmament Less likely

A rapid US drawdown or a severe transatlantic crisis forces Europe into emergency mobilization — and into the hardest conversation of all, on whether French and British nuclear weapons can credibly protect the whole continent.

Our Assessment
We assign 83% probability — likely — that by the early 2030s Europe carries the primary conventional burden of its own defense. The money is committed, the politics have shifted, and industry is ramping; those trends rarely reverse while the threat that caused them persists. The uncertainty sits in the enablers and in unity: satellites, airlift, and joint command take the longest to build, and more than thirty capitals must keep choosing cooperation over fragmentation, budget after budget, for a decade.

What Can We Do

Artillery shells being manufactured on a modern automated production line inside a European defense factory

Rearmament sounds like government business, but it reaches household level fast — through taxes, industrial jobs, and how prepared your community is for disruption.

Understand what the percentages actually mean. "5% of GDP" is a share of a nation's total economic output, not of the government budget, and the new NATO figure splits into 3.5% for forces and 1.5% for infrastructure and resilience. Knowing that arithmetic lets you judge political claims — inflated or dismissive — on their merits.

Watch deliveries, not announcements. Pledges make headlines; shells, air-defense batteries, and trained brigades win wars. Independent scorekeepers such as the IISS Military Balance and NATO's own expenditure reports track what actually arrives, and they are readable by non-specialists.

Take civil resilience seriously. The 1.5% resilience tranche exists because modern conflict targets power grids, cables, and supply chains. Nordic and Baltic governments already publish household preparedness guides — a few days of water, food, cash, and medicine — and that advice is sensible anywhere in Europe.

Engage with where the money goes. Joint European procurement buys more defense per euro than 27 separate national programs, but it competes with local industrial interests. Citizens who follow these choices — and vote on them — decide whether record budgets become real capability or expensive duplication.

Sources
  • NATO — The Hague Summit Declaration, 2025
  • NATO — Defence Expenditure Report, 2025
  • European Commission — White Paper for European Defence: Readiness 2030, 2025
  • IISS — The Military Balance 2026
  • Bruegel and ECFR — European defense financing analyses, 2025
  • Forecast The World Research Desk — 800+ data sources