Europe is waking up to a troubling reality: It may soon lose its NATO benefactor in Ukraine.
With conservatives poised to make gains in the upcoming U.S. elections, NATO’s most generous donor to Ukraine’s war effort may suddenly seem much more parsimonious in 2023.
The possibility has put the spotlight on the gap between American and European aid.
Already, it’s been a tough sell to get all of Europe’s NATO members to dedicate 2 percent of their economic output to defense spending. Now, they are under increasing pressure from the U.S. to go even further than that. And that comes amid an already tough conversation across Europe about how to refill its own dwindling military stockpiles while simultaneously funding Ukraine’s rebuild.
Still, the mantra among U.S. Republicans — whom polls show are favored to take control of one of two chambers of Congress after the November elections — has been that Europe needs to step up.
“Our allies,” said Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “need to start addressing the problem in their own backyard before they ask us for any more involvement.”
While European governments have opened their wallets and military stockpiles to Ukraine at record levels, Washington’s military assistance to Kyiv still dwarfs Europe’s efforts. It’s a disparity Republicans are keen to highlight as they argue Russia’s war in Ukraine is a much greater threat to Europe than it is to the U.S.
The result could be a changing tenor out of Washington if Congress falls into conservative control.
“It’s horrible what the Russians are doing,” Burchett added, but said he sees China and drug cartels as “more threatening to the United States of America than what’s going on in Ukraine.”
2 percent becomes the baseline
Since Moscow launched its assault on Ukraine, European capitals have pledged over €200 billion in new defense spending.
NATO allies pledged in 2014 to aim to move towards spending 2 percent of GDP on defense within a decade, and an increasing number of governments are taking this promise seriously. But the Biden administration wants them to go even further.
The 2 percent benchmark is just “what we would expect” from allies, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said earlier this month. “We would encourage countries to go above that 2 percent because we’re gonna have to invest more in expanding industrial bases and making sure that we’re doing the right things to replace” some of what was provided to Ukraine.
Washington’s recently released “National Security Strategy” codified those expectations.
“As we step up our own sizable contributions to NATO capabilities and readiness,” the document says, “we will count on our Allies to continue assuming greater responsibility by increasing their spending, capabilities, and contributions.”
It’s an aspiration that will be hard for many European policymakers, who themselves face economic woes at home. The U.K., for instance, has committed to hitting a 3 percent defense spending target but recently acknowledged the “shape” of its increase could change as recent policy changes roil the economy.
The Biden administration has taken a path of friendly encouragement toward Europe, rather than haranguing its partners.
But Republicans are not as keen to take such a convivial tone. And if they take control of Congress, Republicans will have more of a say over the U.S. pursestrings — and the tone emerging from Washington.
“I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy told Punchbowl news earlier this week.
“There’s the things [the Biden administration] is not doing domestically,” he added. “Not doing the border and people begin to weigh that. Ukraine is important, but at the same time it can’t be the only thing they do and it can’t be a blank check.”
Republicans are likely eyeing the polls, which show a slim but growing chunk of Americans saying the U.S. is providing too much support to Ukraine. The figure has risen from 7 percent in March to 20 percent in September, according to a Pew Research Center poll. And it now stands at 32 percent among Republican-leaning voters.
So while President Joe Biden continues to ask Congress to approve more Ukraine aid packages, observers say there could be more skepticism in the coming months.
“It’s becoming harder because the sense is that we’re doing it all and the Europeans aren’t,” said Max Bergmann, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
And while noting that “in some ways, that’s unfair” due to the economic cost of the war to Europe, he said that on the military side aid for Ukraine and spending on defense industrial capacity is now “the new 2 percent.”
In European capitals, policymakers are watching Washington closely.
“For Europeans, the idea that U.S. politics matters — that what happens in the midterm election will have implications for what will be expected of us from [our] U.S. ally — is something that is taken more and more seriously,” said Martin Quencez, a research fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s Paris office.
The Brussels view
But back in Brussels, some officials insist there’s little reason for worry.
“There is broad, bipartisan support for Ukraine,” said David McAllister, chair of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.
Indeed, while the more Donald Trump-friendly wing of the Republican Party is opposed to continuing aid to Ukraine, more traditional Republicans have actually supported Biden’s aid for Kyiv.
“If there was a Republican majority in congressional committees, I expect an impact on debates about which weapons to supply to Ukraine, for example,” McAllister said in an email. “Ultimately, though, the president maintains considerable control over foreign policy.”
McAllister, a member of Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union, said Europe is already increasing its defensive investments and aid to Kyiv, pointing to an EU initiative to train Ukrainian soldiers and a recent bump up for an EU fund that reimburses countries for military supplies sent to Ukraine.
Polish MEP Witold Waszczykowski, the Foreign Affairs Committee’s vice chair, also said in an email that he doesn’t expect a Republican-dominated Congress to shift Ukraine policy — while urging Washington to put more pressure on Europe.
“Poland and other Eastern flank countries cannot persuade Europeans enough to support Ukraine,” said Waszczykowski, a member of the conservative ruling Law and Justice party.
The “smell of appeasement and expectations to come back to business as usual with Russia,” the Polish politician said, “dominates in European capitals and European institutions.”
Cristina Gallardo contributed reporting.
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