Giles Merritt / May 2026
Photo: Shutterstock
The "Fog of War" has enveloped Ukraine, Iran and the whole Gulf region, but what of the fog of peace? There's worryingly little clarity about the speed and effectiveness of the efforts to enhance Europe's security.
The media's focus has chiefly been on soaring defence budgets, and EU support for Ukraine, especially the €90 billion loan now unblocked by Viktor Orban's defeat in Hungary. At first sight, Europe's security is going in the right direction, albeit rather slowly.
The rising proportion of national GDPs related to defence, along with EU-backed lending, points to a Europe that has to tip-toe around Trump's threats to dump NATO but at the same time is quietly determined to reduce its dependence on the US-led alliance.
The reality is far less reassuring. The EU commission has been putting the best face it can on the difficulties of rebuilding Europe's neglected defence capabilities, but it can't disguise how vulnerable Europe has become.
The solution seems to be nothing short of a revolutionary shake-up in Europe's defence thinking. Without seeking to be dramatic, the two most relevant members of the Von der Leyen commission have revealed uncomfortable shortcomings that eclipse the more gung-ho promises making headlines.
Andrius Kubilius, the Lithuanian commissioner who holds VDL's newly-created portfolio for defence, is calling for a new EU treaty as the basis for a 'defence union' with its own security council and a 'European army' of 100,000 troops under a single EU command.
It's an improbably ambitious proposal when set against the backdrop of increasingly nationalistic politics in many member states. But it looks less unrealistic when seen in the context of warnings from Kubilius' colleague, transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas. Crumbling infrastructure and a tangle of red tape mean troops can only be deployed through the EU at a snail's pace.
It would take many weeks, and perhaps months, suggests Tzitzikostas, for reinforcements to be rushed northwards if Russia were to invade the Baltic republics through the Suwalki Gap, the 65-km-wide landstrip that links them to Poland and the rest of the EU but runs between Russia's enclave of Kaliningrad and its ally Belarus.
Military planners know that fateful decisions must be taken on Europe's new weapons, drones and satellite-borne intelligence, but also that these are overshadowed by the banal difficulties of getting armed forces to a future frontline. Most roads and bridges in the EU have a load-bearing limit of 40 tonnes, while tanks often weigh 70 tonnes.
It's much the same story for rail and air transport. Rolling stock suitable for military equipment was scrapped as part of the post-Cold War 'peace dividend'. Heavy airlift capacity was also cut back: The Airbus 400M project promised greatly enhanced mobility for troops and equipment, but over two decades orders for it have been slashed by EU governments.
Kubilius and Tzitzikostas propose policy solutions to these problems. On mobility, they have identified 500 priority infrastructure project costing €70 billion, which is almost half as much as the €150 billion SAFE programme aimed at boosting cross-border partnerships. As to the upgrading of weapons systems - notably to reduce dependence on US equipment - the answer is an even more radical overhaul of national arms procurements.
But the increasingly futuristic aspects of armed conflict contrast starkly with procurement agencies' dogged conservatism. Only 18 per cent of Europe's spending on defence is remotely collaborative, say European Parliament researchers, so the bulk of orders go to 'national champions' and not high-tech start-ups. The Ukraine and Iran conflicts have turned many traditional military assumptions on their heads, but rooted protection of jobs and concern for national sovereignty remain dominant.
The chief danger to Europe will be its inability to adapt to change. It's said that generals always prepare to fight the last war, but this is truer of politicians than the military. The emphasis continues to be on conventional weaponry when the world is in the throes of a digital revolution that is changing the nature of warfare.
The most glaring example of this is in satellite launches, where the EU's Ariane Group last year could put into space only a hundredth of the payload achieved by Elon Musk's SpaceX with its reusable rockets. Artificial intelligence coupled with satellite-borne intelligence and targeting risks leaving Europe trapped in a bygone era.
From roads to rockets, European nations need a coherent plan that scraps their rivalries and lays out a timetable for implementing it. It is a message that lacks a messenger as Brussels' rhetoric tends towards reassurance rather than alarm.
