Nice tanks you bought there, Europe—bought anybody to drive ’em? Such are the taunts the continent’s generals might need to endure following the announcement of a splurge in defence spending anticipated from the NATO summit in The Hague on June Twenty fourth-Twenty fifth. Assuming European governments don’t bin their commitments to larger defence budgets as soon as some form of peace is agreed to in Ukraine—or Donald Trump leaves the White Home—spending on their armed forces will roughly double inside a decade. A disproportionate slug of the leap from a 2% of GDP spending goal to three.5% will go in the direction of buying gear. However armies are about folks, too. Attracting kids to a profession that includes getting shot at has by no means been simple; a little bit of forceful nagging (identified in navy jargon as “conscription”) is already on the playing cards in some nations. Even dragooning recalcitrant teenagers into uniform won’t resolve an issue that’s lurking deep within the continent’s psyche. Europeans are happy with their peaceable methods. If conflict breaks on the market, will anyone be there to battle it?
