European Willingness to Pay for Security: Why Increasing Resilience Should Precede Defence Spending
by Luca Moretto and Yacine Ouahioune
With Europe fighting a war at its borders, Washington reneging on its international role, and revisionist powers coordinating more closely, European leaders increasingly acknowledge the need to increase defence spending. Yet, this imperative confronts a challenge of political economy that is only heightened by Europe’s recent social and economic turmoil: can European countries become more security-focused whilst preserving the socio-economic and democratic systems that were built after World War II, in part because the United States’ engagement in Europe’s defence freed them from such concerns? Our article argues that the USA’s disengagement from European security and the war in Ukraine alone are unlikely to sustainably reinforce Europeans’ willingness to pay for their own security, given the politically and culturally anchored delegation of this responsibility to the US after WW2. Beyond its role in mitigating increasingly unpredictable and diverse threats, building the resilience of the public is thus a necessary foundation for increasing European social democracies’ willingness to assume the economic and political costs of their own defence. Therefore, investing in resilience is a necessary condition to maintaining high budgetary commitments in the long-run, with or without the transatlantic alliance.
The political window for defence spending is narrower than argued
Stepping-up European countries’ political and financial engagement in defence is essential for strategic agency, yet the political window of opportunity to do so is narrower than argued in the defence community. The war in Ukraine and the USA’s ambition to step back from its hegemonic security burdens are thought to have created a political window for European political principals to increase defence budgets. In that respect, the defence community welcomed their commitment to spend 3.5% of their countries’ GDP to core defence capabilities and an additional 1.5% on defence-related expenditure like critical infrastructures, following Trump’s wish to see European NATO members commit to 5% of defence expenses by 2035. Experts like RUSI Director-General Rachel Ellehuus, who spoke at the Blavatnik School of Government’s Calleva-Airey Neave Global Security Seminar Series, see in these commitments a “good start” toward reinforcing the transatlantic alliance and putting European countries in the driving seat of their own defence. Yet, experience has shown not only that such commitments are unlikely to be increased, but that they may not be realized in practice at their current levels, the international context remaining equal. The challenges facing Europe’s political principals are first and foremost ones of political economy. Besides political barriers that are unequal among European countries – think France’s historical contestation of NATO and the role played by the US in it – they face domestic political and economic barriers linked to their status of social democracies. Sustainably increasing defence budgets requires reallocating strained public finance away from welfare systems that represent the bulk of public expenditures, or increasing debt levels beyond those which are already considered hardly sustainable. Born in the context of the post-WW2 reconstruction era, European welfare states benefitted from US commitment to Europe’s security. This is particularly the case in Germany, where this factor explains citizens’ low willingness to pay for defence, in addition to the broader will to disarm after the war.
With the most powerful European states – Germany, the UK, and France – facing domestic economic challenges, reallocating strained public finance from welfare states to defence is a political calculus political parties in power are unlikely to sustain.Despite the war in Ukraine, even a country like France, with a relatively important attachment to its military capacity, faces political challenges in stepping-up its capabilities, as suggested by popular discontent over the adoption of the Military Programming Law 2024-2030 in the context of the reform of the retirement system, and fears that the new aircraft carrier announced in December 2025 will further deepen France’s budgetary woes. Germany faces similar fears, formulated differently given recent history. For European political principals, the challenge is two-fold. First, domestic social and economic challenges such as inequalities and ramping indebtedness mean that citizens’ short-term priorities are elsewhere and that they are particularly cautious when it comes to public spending. Second, the risks posed by revisionist powers are not tangible enough, as suggested both by Rachel Ellehuus’ mention of the recent opinion polling of UK citizens about their perception of risks and by RUSI’s recent study on the link between European countries’ geographical proximity with Russia and their perception of the risks posed by the Kremlin. Although Trump’s pressuring of NATO members may have pushed them to commit to 5% defence spending by 2035, one might thus see European political principals renege on these commitments in the coming years, or simply not operationalize them beyond discourses, as seems to be the case with the EU-US trade agreement on energy.
Given these political economy challenges, our interpretation of minilateral, bilateral, and military-industrial agreements evoked by Rachel Ellehuus diverges from hers. During her seminar, she presented agreements like the Nordic Defence Cooperation, the Joint Expeditionary Force, or Lancaster House as a sign that multilateralism is eroding, in part because reaching consensus in bodies like NATO (comprised of 32 members) has become increasingly arduous as members pursue their domestic agendas through the organization. Instead, one could understand such agreements as an attempt to reinforce security partnerships without additional budgetary commitments, by reorganizing capabilities rather than augmenting them. Similarly, military-industrial partnerships with countries both within and outside NATO, like that of the Gulf Cooperation Council and Turkey Eurofighter deal, are less risky bets than increasing defence budgets given the economic advantages that they present for European countries with a defence industry like the UK and France. Yet, such deals present their own challenges to transatlantic security, with new economic dependencies devoid of binding security agreements given more contrasting politics. As such, they are primarily commercial agreements and fail to provide a satisfactory alternative to solving the political economy challenge of making a strong social democratic system coexist with large defence spending.
Building resilience increases public willingness to pay for security
Given this difficult political economy equation, investing in resilience should not be a cheap expedient for unpreparedness to hybrid threats. Instead, it must make distant and abstract risks tangible to overcome collective short-sightedness. Experts like Ellehuus argue that the increasing diversity and unpredictability of threats make citizens’ resilience the “most effective form of deterrence”. When seeing the significant political pressures faced by European principals in reaction to energy price hikes caused by European sanctions on Russia, one cannot but agree with this assessment. Citizens’ low tolerance for hardship amid conflicts and broader unpreparedness to face events like blackouts or shortages are an obvious disadvantage for countries under attack, made all the more vulnerable by the fact that their citizens are used to the state being tasked with improving their welfare. However, we argue that, beyond strategic advantages amid realized risks, policies meant to build resilience might also provide an opportunity to loosen the political economy constraints faced by European governments to increase their expenses in defence. Systems like blackout drills – already in place in Finland – or military services present the advantage that, beyond preparing populations, they reintroduce existential risks into public imaginaries and make more palpable the welfare costs the populations would incur in the case where such threats would be realized. As such, they could not only create a spirit of collective preparedness but also help overcome the behavioural shortcomings of citizens who discount future and abstract existential risks relative to present economic hardship.
From this, one may reevaluate the suitability of policies like that of Finland. The people of Finland are considered to be generally well-prepared, with a stronger base level of resilience ingrained into society through regular blackout drills. Furthermore, Ellehuus suggests that countries like Finland with some level of military service are more resilient than countries with fully professional militaries. On an industrial level too, Finland particularly utilises its private sector in defence, which monitors the majority of critical infrastructure, allowing for greater flexibility in response to emerging cyber and technological threats. As Ellehuus puts it, “no longer can you count on government and military to have all the solutions… we’re going to have to find ways to work with private sector partners to grapple with these new challenges”. She contrasted the example of Finland with that of the UK, for which RUSI’s recent polling of how prepared the public is in the case of a hybrid attack is concerning. In the UK, at the very least, resilience could be developed through regular drills, information campaigns to prepare the public, and investment in reservists. UK defence would also benefit from greater private investment especially into its critical infrastructure. This all would mark an important shift for British security, which must first be rooted in recognition at the highest levels of developing threats and the necessary shift in the transatlantic alliance as well as in wider international relations. As such, resilience is not a cheap substitute for defence spending – it is the necessary foundation for building public willingness to make defence a political priority in the absence of immediate existential risk.
Resilience first: a long-term investment in the transatlantic alliance
For the transatlantic alliance, the role of resilience in nurturing a culture of collective security implies that it should precede expanding defence budgets logically. This is not a chicken and egg issue: investing in resilience must come first, otherwise commitments to step up budgets are empty and temporary promises. Solving the political economy challenge of sustainably increasing defence budgets in European social democracies first requires policies meant to shift citizens’ perception of the nature and likelihood of risks. Otherwise, one risks seeing commitments diminished or reneged in the medium-run, if, for instance, Europe were to find a more reliable ally in the next US administration. Therefore, we conclude this article by formulating three recommendations meant to loosen the political economy constraints faced by European social democracies in increasing defence budgets in the medium-run. First, reinstating military services across Europe under a shorter form meant to create a culture of collective security and a sense of urgency in stepping-up defence and security capabilities against hybrid threats. Second, a regular and explicit communication on risks, including for business. Finally, an emphasis on the fact that risks go beyond national borders and that security must be collective at the European level. Taken together, such policies would likely achieve a higher degree of willingness to pay for security among Europeans, requiring political principals to accept short-term unpopularity for the long-term security of Europe.
