An Action Plan for EUrope

The EU and wider Europe+ must get their priorities right

It’s a very Finnish flex to take great offence at the suggestion that we would not be able to defend our country. Willingness to defend the country was at 78 percent in the 2024 annual poll (slightly down from the 2022 record of 83 percent). Anecdotally, I don’t know any Finns who would NOT be willing to defend Finland. In spring 2022, even my friends on the left side of the political spectrum were wondering what they could do to contribute to a possible war effort - this included friends with professions in no way related to security and defence, such as artists and architects. Finnish friends living abroad were inquiring whether they should come back to Finland to contribute in some way, too. A group of friends in hospitality business had a detailed plan for guerilla action, with specific roles for each person in the team. And they were only half joking.

However, you don’t have to be a Finn to want to defend your country, your home, family, friends, values, principles, way of life, or other things that are dear to you. Essentially, willingness to defend is a mindset. Backing it up by actual military capability is important and quantity has a quality of its own, but quality of the people is what matters most in the end. Finland proved this in the Winter War in 1939, when it prevailed against the utterly overwhelming Soviet Union. But one doesn’t have to go that far back in history to find proof. Just look at Ukraine. You can never subjugate a people willing to defend their freedom with whatever they have at hand.

Picture: President of Ukraine

It is time for Europe to stop being weak. Granted, military build-up is an expensive and often slow process, but it can be done. Europe has enough money to keep Ukraine in the fight and if it prioritizes its resources and political will right, success is a realistic option. As Caroline de Gruyter put it in Foreign Policy, “Europe’s biggest problem isn’t Trump, but pessimism” and I wholeheartedly agree that Europe needs more “possibilist” thinking. In fact, both pessimism and optimism can spur action or inaction. Optimism can facilitate complacency and incentivize ignoring problems - or it can encourage decisive action, if both citizens and leaders believe that bad outcomes are not inevitable. Pessimism can lead to defeatist apathy, but it can also foster a culture of preparing for various worst cases (such as in Finland, which in turn enables activist optimism once a worst case becomes reality). What we need now is swift and decisive action. Whether it is inspired by a pessimistic need to prepare for a suboptimal future or an optimistic take on our ability to rise to the occasion, is secondary.

Essentially, Europe+ needs to demonstrate ability to offer a credible alternative for Ukraine and prioritize Ukraine’s continued existence over everything else. There are four things that the EU and its wider Europe+ partners (including non-EU members like Norway, the UK, Iceland, and Canada) have to get right in the coming weeks and months.

1. Slam enough money to the table to demonstrate credible ability and willingness to keep supporting Ukraine even if the US bails completely. The planned €20 billion military aid package is a good start and needs to be agreed on asap.

2. Remove peacetime bureaucratic hurdles from defence production in Europe. Banks still discriminate against defence companies. More long-term government contracts are required for increasing production capacity. Ukraine needs all the equipment and ammunition we can send today and we will need it tomorrow the latest. So short-term aid for Ukraine and long-term rearmament of Europe have to be combined. There are already examples of successful joint procurement, such as the Swedish-Danish CV90 deal, with a number of the vehicles from the order going to Ukraine. The deal was enabled by the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration’s cooperation agreement with Ukraine. More of this.

3. Harness European innovation power and support joint ventures with Ukrainian companies. This is already happening on a small scale: e.g. the Finnish Summa Defence is beginning to produce drones in Finland, together with Ukrainian partners. The goal is to produce for Ukrainian short-term needs but also to kickstart industrial-scale drone production in Europe. The Estonian Frankenburg Technologies has developed “a miniature missile designed to counter low-flying drones” for Ukraine. Notably, these companies were able to start development and production at a fairly swift pace. The EU and European governments should encourage this type of innovation by providing initial financing.

4. Invest in Ukrainian defence industry. Regardless of the outcome of any hypothetical ceasefire agreement, Ukraine needs to build up its own production capacity to become less dependent on our goodwill.

Picture: President of Ukraine (I interpreted this to be Trudeau hugging Zelenskyy, but corrections are welcome)

It is welcome news that the UK and France (“and possibly two others”) are now working with Ukraine on a ceasefire plan. Down the line, European countries will have to be ready to take also military responsibility for the outcome of future negotiations. However, it looks increasingly unlikely that Trump will be able to broker a feasible deal anytime soon, so a peace plan should not be Europe’s primary effort. Naturally, Europe still needs to be prepared and have something to offer if the fighting is to come to an end this year. At this stage, however, it is questionable whether Trump ever even aimed to reach a serious outcome, or was the deal always meant to be unacceptably bad for Ukraine, so that Trump could then blame the failure on “Ukraine not wanting peace”.

If Europe+ gets its short-term act together, it can change Russia’s (and Trump’s) calculation by showing that it is not helpless if left to its own devices. The war is not going well for Russia at the moment, and only a favourable deal with Trump would save Putin now while they are still in a relatively good position (having to use donkeys for logistics suggests that this window might be closing soon-ish). Europe+ can complicate the equation by throwing its full weight behind Ukraine in a way neither Russia nor the US would have believed possible. If this succeeds, Europe can buy time to figure out all the rest later, such as military arrangements if the US is no longer committed to NATO, and long-term fiscal and decision-making rules for defence spending and the rearmament of Europe. But if Ukraine falls victim to a Trump-Putin sellout, the timeframe for solving any other problem is shortened by years.