Arming Europe
The thundering roar of an F-35 fighter plane rips through the tranquillity of the snow carpeted Norwegian landscape. Its silhouette is just visible under the thick layer of clouds. Then, all is silent again.
During this NATO exercise, soldiers act out their roles among the pine trees, testing how they cope with the cold weather conditions. Meanwhile, a real and deadly war is unfolding in Ukraine.
This ‘Cold Response’ manoeuvre took place in March – and was announced eight months before Russia invaded Ukraine. But while around 30,000 soldiers from across Europe and North America, including France, Poland and Spain, practised their winter warfare, the question of European defence was being asked ever more loudly. In the face of Russian aggression had the time come for the European Union to become a military power in its own right?
War in Ukraine will be long-lasting, ‘shaping European policy for years and decades to come’, Josep Borrell, the EU Commission’s Foreign Policy Chief told the European Parliament, soon after the invasion.1
In the Versailles Declaration, issued a few days later, the 27 member states spoke with a unanimity which is rare on issues as sensitive as the situation at hand. They vowed to ‘resolutely invest more and better in defence capabilities’ and agreed to ‘increase substantially defence
