In case the reader of this post finds it difficult to believe that the sentence I shall comment below was ever spoken, I share the link to the page of EU’s website where the “Speech by President von der Leyen at the European Parliament Plenary on the new College of Commissioners and its Programme” is archived. Undoubtedly, the most important speech that a President of the European Commission delivers while in office. And it is in this speech that one finds the following sentence:
“Russia is spending up to 9% of its GDP on defence. Europe is spending on average 1.9%. There is something wrong in this equation. Our defence spending must increase. We need a single market for defence. We need to strengthen the defence industrial base. (…) We have no time to waste. And we must be as ambitious as the threats are serious”.
I am certainly not the only one who remained incredulous on reading it, for its paradoxical logical structure.
Let us turn to the website of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to discover that the aggregated Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the EU’s member states amounts (2024) to 19.4 thousand billion dollars (nominal, at current prices) and that of the Russian Federation only to 2.2 thousand billion dollars. Apply the percentages of GDP devoted to defence investment indicated by von der Leyen, to discover that EU’s annual defence spending is – and has been for years – about twice as large than that of the Russian Federation: 369 and 198 billion dollars, respectively. (One may want to add the defence spending of the United Kingdom, that, given its GDP and applying the same percentage (1.9%), would annualy amount to 68 billion dollars.) So why, then, it must be increased?
To compare annual defence spending to justify an increase in the EU’s total defence spending is anyway meaningless. The relevant variable is certainly not annual defence spending, but rather EU’s ‘military potential’ – which is a stock variable and grows over the years as an effect of annual defence spending. The total amount of defence spending over past decades in the European Union’s member state and in the Russian Federation is what should be compared. What counts is the difference between the ‘military potential’ of the EU and that of the Russian Federation.
Let us step back and forsake the unreasonable hypothesis according to which the monetary metric can be used to measure the ‘military potential’. In truth, it is ridiculous to pretend you can express military potential as a sum of money (as much ridiculous as to pretend you can assign a monetary value to biological diversity – nature, in general –, or well-being). To assess military potential is a complex issue, which has not yet been addressed in the public discourse about ‘military security’ in Europe.
It is certainly reassuring to know, in the words of von der Leyen, that “we [the European Commission] will come forward with a White Paper on the Future of European Defence in the first 100 days.” Let us hopefully wait the publication of the announced White Paper, to discover how the European Commission will assess EU’s military potential and frame military security issues. And see whether the elementary rules of a democratic public discourse will be again disregarded – as have done von der Leyen in the Programme she presented and the majority in the European Parliament in approving it.
Commenti recenti