The cost of European peace

After six months of delay, the US Senate has finally passed a $60 billion foreign-aid package which will send urgently needed ammunition and military equipment to Ukrainian soldiers. It may well be the last such cheque to be signed in Washington. Donald Trump is favourite to be the next president of the United States and the senators closest to his brand of ‘America First’ politics, J.D. Vance of Ohio and Josh Hawley of Missouri, led the opposition to the Ukraine package. Their argument, crudely put, is that Europe should bankroll its own defence.

The American money confirmed this week gives Europe about a year to adjust to this new reality and prepare for it. A generation had grown up believing that peace and democracy were the natural order of things. If wars needed to be fought, they believed the US would do the heavy lifting. This has now changed. There is a war in Europe and America is baulking at the cost of providing most of the military aid. The Baltic states – likely to be Russia’s next target if Kyiv were to fall – are rushing to restore their military strength. But Britain has been slow to adjust its spend accordingly.

That changed when Rishi Sunak used the Nato meeting in Poland this week to announce his ambition to raise UK defence spending from 2.2 per cent of GDP to 2.5 per cent by 2030, if he wins the election. It is a sign of how much the world has changed in the past two years that German government officials are now pushing the UK government to go even further. Britain’s first consignment of military aid to Ukraine – the first in the world – had to be flown on a circuitous route so as to avoid German airspace.