Officials are gearing up to wring their constituents of every last coin to fund their wargame fantasies
European defense is basically a teenaged-grade fantasy war gaming league at this point – minus the generous sponsorships.
On Wednesday, defense ministers from five European heavyweights – France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Britain (yes, Britain, because apparently Brexit only applied to sensible EU decisions) – gathered in Paris to figure out how to elbow their way back into the Ukraine game.
With US President Donald Trump running the show himself, Europe’s big players are scrambling for relevance. And they’re doing such a stellar job of it that the German defense minister is now relegated to sounding like every annoying dude sitting courtside at a French Open tennis match who thinks he’s offering stellar insight into the state of play. “We welcome the one-month ceasefire,” Boris Pistorius said, referring to the deal that the Trump administration made with Ukraine. “But now the ball is in Vladimir Putin’s court. It is now Vladimir Putin’s turn to demonstrate his repeated stated readiness for a ceasefire or peace,” he added. Because nothing screams “gimme peace” like the EU meeting about throwing money into the purchase of new weapons.
But all this war prepping talk is great for Europe’s latest PR push: convincing taxpayers that draining their wrung-out wallets to the point of even potentially leveraging their private savings for an arms race, as suggested by the French defense mall minister, is actually a genius economic plan. Keynesianism, but with a military vibe.
The British defense secretary claims that the need for a weapons shopping spree actually comes from a place of deep, inner hippie-ness. “The Ukrainians want peace. We all want peace. And as defense ministers, we have been discussing and we are working to strengthen the push for peace,” John Healey said, probably itching to get back home to squeeze into some bell bottoms and smash the bongo drums.
Poland’s defense minister also appears to have just stumbled out of a flower-painted VW bus straight from Woodstock. “500 million Europeans deserve a force that will defend peace. 500 million Europeans deserve the opportunity to bring peace,” said Wladyslaw Kosinski-Kamysz in explaining why more weapons spending is needed, and sounding like the type who would also suggest that sobriety comes through an overextended happy hour sip n’ giggle.
Earlier this week, the French and British defense ministers huddled with their army chiefs of staff, still riding high on their leaders’ idea of a “coalition of the willing” for Ukraine. That was British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s braindropping, repurposed from the Iraq War – perhaps because he couldn’t think of an appropriate catchphrase to reference loss of 60,000 British troops in World War II’s Battle of the Somme. All because Trump had the audacity to suggest a grand bargain with Russia, with the risk of peace breaking out in Ukraine.
None of these European countries actually want any troops on the front line at this point, by the way. Not that they aren’t one screwup away from them ending up there anyway. Maybe the French president and armchair general, Emmanuel Macroleon, can train all these contingents like they did that €900-million Ukrainian ‘Anne of Kyiv’ Brigade, with 1,700 of them going AWOL before the first shot was even fired.
Interesting that the Trump administration reportedly just wants private contractors on the ground around the resource exploitation deals that they’ve envisioned in Ukraine and elsewhere, and in which Putin has also expressed interest in partnering. But insiders have told France’s Le Figaro that the Europeans don’t believe that will work, and that NATO troops are needed. Apparently, they believe that Russia would attack its own joint ventures with the Americans in Ukraine.
On Tuesday, 34 European and NATO army chiefs also met in Paris. Notable absence: anyone from Trump’s Washington – even though Starmer straight up said that British troop deployment would be contingent on US air cover. So you’d think a Trump official would need to at least be present to make all this more than just an exercise in self-flagellation.
French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu says that the discussions were not just about putting European boots on the ground in Ukraine – since apparently there are plenty of other creative ways to deploy troops, he suggests. Like, say, casually stationing them in the Black Sea or around nuclear plants. Because what could possibly go wrong? Just some chill guys, loitering like they’re outside a 7-Eleven, but instead of sipping Slurpees, they’re securing nuclear facilities. Totally not a pretext for future shenanigans – like, I don’t know, using another ceasefire to reload for war, just like former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Francois Hollande admitted being the case under the Minsk agreements a decade ago.
Oh, and in between all this strategizing, they also put together a little weapons wish list. Lecornu rattled off items like air defense systems, space tech, munitions, early warning systems, and, of course, joint defense acquisitions – because nothing says “we’re serious about peace” like a military shopping spree. One minor detail in all this, by the way: How are you jokers going to pay for all this?
Lecornu has already said that “Ukraine” (synonymous in this context with the EU military industrial complex) can benefit from €195 million stolen from Russian assets held in the West. Meanwhile, France’s Europe affairs minister, Benjamin Haddad, a former Washington-based think-tank fixture, suggested that the French could just “work more,” according to Politico, which also cites center-right establishment figure Cedric Perrin, president of the French Senate defense and foreign affairs committee, who figures that the cash can be found by cutting down on wasteful public spending.
Gosh, if only you geniuses had thought of that before now, then maybe you wouldn’t be resorting to theft and rummaging through everyone’s couch cushions to fuel your “GI Jean” fantasies – and musing about having citizens invest whatever’s left of their private savings after already robbing them through skyrocketing energy prices and cost of living “for Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, Ursula von der Leyen, the unelected European Commission president, couldn’t sufficiently convince enough representatives of already broke EU member states who actually rely on the public for reelection, that they should start prioritizing, in their spending budgets, bullets over baguettes and be stocking up on tanks like they’re toilet paper. Even the loudest doomsayers about the so-called Russian threat – like Lithuania – have already told NATO that when it comes to sacrificing social spending for artillery, “Nah, we’re good.”
So what’s left to do? Easy. Fire up the fear machine, crank it to 11, and act like Russian tanks are already lining up on the EU’s borders and about to door crash it like a Black Friday sale, and that the only way to stop them is for the EU to impulse-buy weapons – some of which won’t even exist for years even if the manufacturing investment was made today.
We’re talking about €800 billion that Queen Ursula wants EU countries to blow. And nestled inside that €800 billion tab? A new €150 billion loan scheme – because nothing fixes crippling debt like grabbing a bigger shovel. Weird move, considering von der Leyen has spent years scolding countries like France for their runaway debt, forcing them to cut spending and raise taxes.
So how does she justify this glorious U-turn? Simple. It’s an emergency! And emergencies are sometimes best handled without the inconvenience of democracy. So she’s resorted to Article 122 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union – a handy little bureaucratic cheat code that lets the Council of Europe, at the request of Queen Ursula’s European Commission, bypass the elected European Parliament entirely if there’s an economic crisis tied to energy supply or a natural disaster.
But when you’re Ursula von der Leyen, apparently fine print is just a minor detail. She’s used it to skim profits from energy companies, bankroll the bloc-wide “get paid to stay home” scheme during the Covid pandemic, force an energy consumption crackdown that left Europeans layering up in turtlenecks and taking speed showers to “own Putin,” and slap on a gas price cap that was conveniently NOT the higher one that member states wanted, Le Monde has reported.
And all of these measures under Article 122 are supposed to only be temporary. But Ursula’s grand military splurge? That’s shaping up to be the kind of one-night stand that comes with a lifetime of regret.
As for the democratic process that this loophole use is undermining? Well, when it comes to fast-tracking a weapons wishlist, democracy is apparently like a seatbelt in a Hollywood car chase that can just be ignored when things get spicy.
