As America seeks to dial back its military presence in Europe and war continues in Ukraine, countries in Europe are dusting off their war machines and training for battle. By all indications, no matter what happens between Russia and Ukraine soon, tensions on the historically war-fraught continent will almost certainly not return to pre-2022 levels.
On Wednesday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced a new, chummier military partnership between his nation and Ukraine. He said Germany will continue to provide military support, and promised to dole out 5 billion euros in military aide to Ukraine. Merz also said the Germans will supply Ukraine with long-range weapons that can strike inside Russia. “This is the start of a new form of military-industrial cooperation between our two countries and one that has huge potential,” the chancellor said. “There will be no range restrictions, allowing Ukraine to fully defend itself, even against military targets outside its own territory.”
Later during an appearance on German TV, Merz addressed a question pertaining to Taurus air-launched cruise missiles. He told channel ZDF it is “within the realms of possibility” that Germany will give Ukraine these long-range, German-made missiles. Taurus missiles — the name is an acronym for Target Adaptive Unitary and dispenser Robotic Ubiquity System — are harder to detect and posses a range of up to 315 miles. In Ukrainian hands, they easily pose a threat to Moscow. Neither the British Storm Shadow nor the French cruise missiles Ukraine has received can travel beyond 150 miles.
The Ukrainians would need training to operate these missiles, which would further involve the Germans in the conflict, whose citizens have in the past made clear they’d rather not send these weapons to Ukraine. A survey that came out March 2024 said 61 percent of Germans opposed Taurus deliveries to Ukraine, according to Alex Croft and Kirsten Grieshabner at The Independent. Germany’s former chancellor, Olaf Scholz, held on to them for fear that it would involve his country directly in the war. Merz seems to be throwing that caution to the wind.
The Russians are wagging their fingers. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dubbed this recent development a “very dangerous trend” and accused Germany of taking “an irresponsible position.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov issued a stronger warning, sprinkling a dash of trash-talking in the mix. He said:
If I got it right, [German Chancellor Friedrich] Merz said at a press conference that he means to fund the production of missiles of any range in Ukraine. Supplying German missiles is allegedly out of the question. We must delve a little deeper into that.… Germany is now directly engaging into this war.… Germany is sliding down the same slippery slope it has already treaded a couple of times just this past century — down to its collapse. I hope that responsible politicians in this country will make the right conclusions and stop the madness.
Chatter in the pro-Russian realm suggests that should the Ukrainians launch Taurus missiles, Russia would deploy its new intermediate-range ballistic missile, the Oreshnik, which can hit anywhere in Europe within minutes.
Pro-Russian commentators point out that supplying Ukraine with these missiles would essentially put Germany at war with Russia. And since Germany is NATO member, the world could soon witness a large-scale conflict not seen since the 1940s.
While other historic powers such as France and the United Kingdom have been restrained in their ability to rearm due to debt and general economic incompetence, Germany has taken the brakes off its fiscal frugality to go on a defense shopping spree. In March, Berlin passed a legislative amendment to void limits on how much it can borrow for defense spending. “Germany will exempt military spending from its strict fiscal rules and create an off-budget fund of 500 billion euros to finance infrastructure spending, laying the ground for a big boost in the country’s defense budget,” reports announced in March. Merz framed the move as one necessary in defense of liberty. “Given the threats to our freedom and to peace on the continent, we must do whatever it takes.”
Over on Germany’s eastern border sits another country that’s no stranger to Soviet hostility. This year, Poland will spend about five percent of its GDP on its military, the most of any NATO nation. Warsaw has the European Union’s largest army and “is spending billions of euros on jets, rockets, tanks, artillery and more,” noted Politico. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced the goal is for every Polish man in the country to have military training by the end of this year.
Poland is also fortifying its northern border with Russia. The area includes a deep ditch filled with water and rows upon rows of anti-tank barriers called hedgehogs. “These hedgehogs are here so that our enemy breaks his teeth before he even thinks of biting us,” Polish Lieutenant Iwona Misiarz told NPR.
Mariusz Marszalkowski, publisher of Warsaw-based security magazine Defence24, told NPR that since Poland feels it can no longer count on the United States to defend it in case of Russian aggression, it has begun to look elsewhere, particularly for other nations that have the nuclear arsenals. Marszalkowski said:
The Polish government sees hope in France, which has an extensive nuclear arsenal, and the terms under which it can use these weapons are different from Britain’s, which require American consent before they deploy them. So from a security perspective, France is the safer option from where to seek assistance.
The report goes on to say that within the next few months, Poland and France will sign a security deal that “may include Poland’s purchase of French air tankers, submarines and weaponry, and may also include an agreement that Poland will now be inside France’s protective nuclear umbrella.”
Up north, Nordic countries are pooling together resources to form a defense coalition. In February, Denmark decided to raise military spending by 70 percent over the next two years. Its special forces have decades of experience deploying to parts of Afghanistan and Iraq. Denmark is combining its power with Sweden, Finland, and Norway to forge a regional security coalition. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Norway brings maritime surveillance and fighting capabilities in the Arctic; Finland has one of the largest standing armies and artillery forces per capita in Europe; and Sweden has an advanced defense industry that makes submarines, battle tanks, and supersonic jet fighters.
In April, Wall Street Journal Security Correspondent Sune Engel Rasmussen traveled to the Swedish island of Gotland in the middle of the Baltic Sea, where the “newest NATO member is preparing for war.” Rasmussen’s report included video of Swedes undergoing training to “repel a potential invasion.” Sweden’s troop count is “growing so rapidly that every time they finish construction on a new barracks, the military says they have to start building another,” Rasmussen reported. The report reveals that the island is also cleaning and dusting off the old civilian bomb shelters that were built during the Cold War. If Russia attacks a NATO nation, the reporter says, “many expect Russian troops to land on Gotland first,” which is about 200 miles from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. He who controls Gotland controls the Baltic Sea.
The message in these reports is clear: Europeans worry that Putin won’t stop with Ukraine.
For whatever it’s worth, Putin has said he has no intention of invading countries beyond Ukraine. The Russians have justified the attack on Ukraine as an act of self-preservation. Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO would put a hostile military alliance right on Russia’s doorstep. Interestingly, the invasion has accomplished that with Finland’s NATO entry.
Western media and politicians have framed Russia’s actions as unprovoked and Russia’s leaders as modern-day Slavic conquistadors seeking to Russify Europe. But the truth is far more complicated than that. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Western leaders repeatedly assured the Russians that NATO would not advance eastward past Germany. This is not just Russian propaganda, it’s verifiably true. Those assurances have been trampled repeatedly since the 1990s, and the Russians’ protests have fallen on deaf ears. By 2020, 14 countries in central and Eastern Europe had joined NATO.
After the 2014 Maidan Revolution, Ukraine’s new pro-West government made dramatic policy shifts that included a series of moves designed to ultimately result in NATO membership. In 2017, Ukraine’s parliament adopted a law reinstating NATO membership as a goal. In 2018, the government approved an amendment to its constitution that made entering NATO and the EU a central foreign-policy goal. And in 2019, Ukraine’s parliament voted 334-385 to solidify NATO membership as a constitutional priority. This wouldn’t have happened without the 2014 revolution. And from where the Russians stand, the Maidan Revolution wouldn’t have happened without Western meddling.
Readers of this magazine know that after World War II, the United States carried out numerous covert regime-change campaigns around the world. A number of American experts who’ve worked with or in the U.S. government, including Mike Benz, formerly of the State Department; and Jeffrey Sachs, who has a long career of working as an economic advisor to various European countries after the fall of the Soviet Union, allege that, in this case, the Russians are telling the truth: The 2014 Maidan Revolution was indeed a regime-change operation orchestrated by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Among the many points of support, Sachs cites a leaked January 2014 phone call between then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. During the call, which happened weeks before the violent insurrection in Kiev, they plan the new, post-Yanukovych government. Sachs, whose stance seems antithetical to his impressive globalist credentials, makes a compelling point. You can judge for yourself here.
In 2022, Russia finally followed up on decades of complaints and threats and invaded Ukraine. But considering that it’s taken them three years to grind out a sliver of Ukraine, European concern that Russia plans to roll westward throughout the rest of the continent is profoundly irrational.
Is it possible there is more to the military buildup happening in Europe?
In 1992, shortly after the official collapse of the Soviet Empire, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said he wanted the rest of Russia dismembered, not just the Soviet Union. Then in 1997, national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in the Council on Foreign Relations mouthpiece publication, Foreign Affairs, that Russia should be broken up into three confederations. “In short,” Sachs said, “the 30-year U.S. project, hatched originally by Cheney and the neocons, and carried forward consistently since then, has been to weaken or even dismember Russia, surround Russia with NATO forces, and depict Russia as the belligerent power.”
Of course, there is ample documentation showing that Russia was all too willing to be part of the international power coalition, including Putin’s own words in his interview with Tucker Carlson. But, for whatever reason, the Russians’ overtures to the West were rejected and now they find themselves mired in Ukraine longer than they anticipated and preparing the motherland for a bigger war in Europe. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Some 100 miles east of its border with Finland, in the Russian city of Petrozavodsk, military engineers are expanding army bases where the Kremlin plans to create a new army headquarters to oversee tens of thousands of troops over the next several years. Those soldiers, many now serving on the front lines in Ukraine, are intended to be the backbone of a Russian military preparing to face off with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, according to Western military and intelligence officials.
Russia is recruiting more soldiers, building more weapons, and improving railroad lines in border areas. Putin has ordered the military to boost its ranks by 50 percent. The nation has increased military spending to more than six percent of GDP.
War is brewing in Europe.