A new arms race in Europe. NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, is an international military alliance of 32 member states from North America and Europe. It was established on April 4, 1949, after the Second World War. Interestingly, out of 32 members, 30 of them are in Europe, and two are in North America.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that Europe needs to pay more towards NATO or the US will not protect Europe, and that triggered the panic button in the heads of Europe’s elite and politicians.
The real catch of NATO is Article 5, which says if any member state of NATO is attacked, each and every member of NATO will consider this as an armed attack and act of violence against all members of NATO and will take action if deemed necessary to assist the member state under attack with armed forces.
Article 5 was invoked for the first and only time after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States after which troops were deployed to Afghanistan and left in August 2021 after 20 years of war in a very embarrassing and disgraceful way.
Countries across Europe are now cutting funds and benefits to their hard-working people in order to buy and manufacture more weapons because they are afraid of Russia.
Now, if Russia is a threat to Europe or not only time will tell.
But for now, Europe is in full steam ahead of buying weapons.
For instance, Britain has cut down on foreign aid and allocated that money for defence expenditure, hiking the defence expenditure to 2.5% of the GDP, and also cut £5 billion in the welfare system including, benefits for people with disabilities. This shows the panic in Europe, instead of taxing the rich and elite, it’s the same old trick, let’s squeeze the common man.
On March 20, 2025, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer boarded a nuclear submarine off the coast of Scotland, probably showing some strength to Russia.
France is currently spending about 2.26% of its GDP on defence expenditure and wants to hike that up to 3.5% of the GDP. French President Emmanuel Macron floated the idea of using its nuclear Arsenal as an umbrella in Europe.
On March 5, 2025, French President Emmanuel Macron, in a televised address to his nation, said, “Russia is a threat to France and Europe” and said he had decided “to open the strategic debate on the protection of our allies on the European continent by our deterrent”.
He also mentioned that France’s nuclear weapons would remain only in the hands of the French President.
France is the only member of Europe with nuclear weapons.
Germany is currently spending about 2.12% of the GDP on defence expenditure. On March 18, 2025, the German Parliament passed a historical bill for defence and infrastructure. This bill made it through the parliament by securing 513 votes in favour. A monumental €500 billion special fund will be created to finance infrastructure projects outside of the ordinary budget over the next decade.
On March 4, 2025, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on X,
“We are living in dangerous times”
“Today I present ReArm Europe”
One might say that all of Europe’s spending on military and defence ultimately will benefit the USA, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 64% of Europe’s arms imports come from the United States.
Now let’s think about it, is Russia a problem for a common man on the street? Who is struggling with the cost of living in Europe, which has skyrocketed since the Russian-Ukrainian war started in February 2022, as Europe is pouring billions of Euros into Ukraine instead of spending this money in their own countries.
People are struggling to pay their bills as the price of Gas, Electricity and other commodities has also doubled or tripled in some cases. People’s grocery bills have gone up tremendously.
Thousands of people in Europe sleep on the streets in the harsh winter of Europe, this money could have been spent on more pressing issues like shelters and homes for homeless people, and here are these governments in a panic mode and spending billions of euros on defence because they are afraid of Russia.
The European governments should have taken a better approach by taxing the wealthy people by just putting a 2% wealth tax on them and could have raised a lot of money instead of putting more pressure on a common man whose problem is not Russia, whose problem is the cost of living and quality of life and care for their loved ones.
People may need to choose new people, new thinking and new parties to elect who put their country’s citizen’s interests first.
Protecting Europe at the cost of hard-working taxpayers and cutting money for people with disabilities will hurt Europe in the long term. It will destroy people’s lives and quality of life in the long term which is not a productive thing for Europe.
Now how this new arms race in Europe will end up, only time will tell.
I think the default mode for each country should be PEACE not war.
This article is written by Jordan Zaman
Published 20 March 2025