On February 19th 2025, the U.S. president Donald Trump first referred to the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as a “dictator”.
This was followed by the U.S. government coercing Zelensky to sign the mineral deal, which would give the US government a 50% cut of all revenue earned from any future monetization of Ukraine’s government owned natural resources while leaving certain details like how lasting peace would be achieved to be discussed after signing the agreement. When Trump and Zelensky met face to face on February 28th to sign this mineral deal the world was once again shocked to see it devolve into an argument which left the mineral deal still unsigned. After this, on March 3rd, the U.S. government cut off all military aid to Ukraine. Before this, several European leaders met in London to discuss this turn of events. Not long after, the president of the EU commission Ursula von der Leyen proposed a plan to “rearm Europe” which involves an €800 billion defence package. The narrative being pushed here is that Europe in its current state is not capable of defending itself and that this could be solved by increasing military spending.
But is this narrative true? In terms of manpower, the EU countries expected to agree to this defence package alone have roughly 1,441,537 active forces which is already more than Russia’s 1,320,000. This excludes Ukraine’s 900,000 active forces and the UK’s 184,860. which when taken into account would ensure 2,526,397 active militants, nearly double that of Russia’s. When it comes to military spending the European Union has spent €326 billion in 2024. If we compare this to Russia’s €114 billion. it kind of begs the question why we need to spend seven times more to potentially fight a country that has been at war for at least three years. Some might argue that this temporary increase in defence spending is necessary to increase how much equipment we have. But once again if you compare the 25 EU countries with Russia you find that the EU 25 member states expected to agree with ReArm Europe have roughly 5,300 active combat aircrafts while Russia has 4,292. However, these 25 member states don’t have a majority in tanks, roughly 4,184 tanks while Russia has 5,750. This once again disregards all non EU countries in NATO excluding the United states and Ukraine’s 1,114 tanks. If we did account for those numbers, it would bring us to 7,362 tanks. Yet, the question whether this brings us a true advantage or not depends on how much certain NATO countries will respect article 5.
To conclude, it is always important to question the choices made by our leaders and when we do so, we should use data like this to form our opinion on it. The only group that truly profits off of arms races are defence firms and they are profiting massively.