Europe’s Strategic Role in the Wake of the Euro-Crisis

Europe continues to rely on NATO for its defence. This in practice means relying on the United States, which dwarfs even its militarily more significant European allies — the United Kingdom, France and Germany — in the resources it devotes to defence, and the military quantity and quality that those resources bring, as the 2011 Libyan operation showed. NATO enlargement to Central-Eastern Europe (CEE) turned enemies into allies, but that apart, did not increase European security by much, since many of the new joiners were economically and militarily weak. This has been exacerbated by the economic downturn, which is turning into a long-drawn-out affair. At any rate, only Poland plans a big rise in defence spending in the coming years, with a large slice going towards technical modernisation and new armaments. This means that Poland alone in CEE will make an appreciable contribution to European defence, helping its ambition to join the EU ‘top table’.