Transforming European Defense

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered sudden increases in military spending and the political will to act boldly on defense across Europe. While this is a potentially transformational moment for European security, significant challenges lie ahead. Europe does not just need to spend more on defense, it must also rationalize and integrate its efforts. But while Europe has often discussed the need to reduce fragmentation and unify efforts, it has mostly struggled to followed through. Proposals for rationalizing European defense have repeatedly encountered institutional resistance, bureaucratic turf wars, parochial national outlooks, and vested commercial and political interests. Europe has lacked both the political will and the direction to overcome these obstacles. This has left the continent reliant on the U.S. to fill capability and operational gaps in collective defense and crisis management.   

Europe now has the will but what it lacks is direction. The Transforming European Defense project leverages the strengths of CSIS in political, military analysis, defense industry engagement, and military affairs to provide independent analysis and create a plan of action to rationalize European defense. While the broad goal is to rationalize European defense, it will also develop specific recommendations to European policymakers to reduce redundancies and inefficiencies in procurement and resourcing decisions, as well as to seek creative joint endeavors for niche aspects of European security. The project will also develop recommendations for actionable initiatives that U.S. policymakers can engage with, get behind, and push European allies to implement. This project thus seeks to impact policy on both sides of the Atlantic.