Europe and NATO are stepping up on Ukraine
Chairwoman Shaheen, Ranking Member Ricketts, members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I am Tara Varma, a visiting fellow with the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. My research focus includes current French security proposals in the European framework, as well as efforts to implement European sovereignty in traditional and non-traditional security fields.
I am honored to speak with you today about expectations ahead of this year’s NATO summit in Washington. My testimony this afternoon reflects my personal views and should not be attributed to the staff, officers, or trustees of the Brookings Institution.
I would like to focus my statement today on three points: first, the state of play, then how Europe is stepping up, and finally why reinforced EU-NATO cooperation matters.
The state of play
In July 2022, NATO adopted its latest Strategic Concept, almost five months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This new Strategic Concept laid out NATO’s core tasks as deterrence and defense, crisis prevention and management, and cooperative security. It described a Euro-Atlantic security environment profoundly and durably changed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The swift reactions of the alliance in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s attack also demonstrated its vitality and relevance.
The summit in Vilnius last year succeeded in showcasing strong trans-Atlantic unity and resolve. The alliance’s center of gravity is its unity, solidarity, and cohesion. Russia’s attack on Ukraine has reinforced our sense of political cohesion, as well as the credibility of the alliance’s deterrent. Russia has committed relentless attacks and massacres in Ukraine but has yet to attack a NATO member country. The 2022 Strategic Concept explained that Russia poses “the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area.”
If the summit in Vilnius last year succeeded in showcasing strong trans-Atlantic unity and resolve, especially in terms of political cohesion, the question of the future Ukraine-NATO relationship remains open and will be part of the Washington Summit discussions too. Key discussions should also revolve around sustained defense equipment procurement and production, going beyond the 2 percent of GDP threshold.
Europe is stepping up
The shock of the attack and the new reality it brought about means mitigating the effects of the previous reality in which European national defense spending had fallen by an average of 31 percent between 1995 and 2015, with disinvestment in key capabilities for collective defense and by Ukraine.
Europeans acknowledge these capability gaps, and they are looking at ways to mitigate them, in particular by taking the unprecedented step of agreeing to a common European missile and ammunition acquisition and production deal last year. For a political project whose essence was to maintain peace on the European continent, these decisions are historic. However, their implementation will take time. And time is precisely what Ukraine doesn’t have.
The question of Ukraine’s path to NATO membership overshadowed the Vilnius Summit. Last July, the NATO secretary general said member countries had agreed Ukraine would eventually join the alliance once the war is over. While the war continues, and absent a membership proposal, several European countries, the United Kingdom, Germany, and soon France, have committed to providing security guarantees to Kyiv. These should be clarified to ensure Ukraine and Europe’s security.
European heads of state are meeting tomorrow (February 1) at the European Council, where I hope they will agree to give Ukraine the long-term, predictable funding it needs.1 It is of vital interest to Ukraine, and hence it is now of vital interest to Europe too. Europeans should go a step further and make sure that Kyiv receives not only societal and economic support—which has been the bulk of European aid—it needs but also the much-needed military equipment to protect Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and population.
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