The recent elections to the European Parliament and French National Assembly shook the political landscape in Europe. Though the European Union’s center has held, its power base has shifted. The rise of the far right in France and Germany has eviscerated the government in Paris and enfeebled the one in Berlin, paralyzing the duo that traditionally stood at the center of EU decision-making. Before European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen could be confirmed by the European Parliament for another five-year term on July 18, she first had to negotiate with right-wing parliamentarians and Italy’s populist prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.
Europe has a leadership vacuum as it faces its biggest war and security crisis since 1945. Who will pick up the baton in shaping foreign policy? Around which strategic approach will EU members rally? There are three candidates at present.
Notwithstanding French President Emmanuel Macron’s much-diminished status, France still aspires to European leadership. At the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine in 2022, Macron’s failed attempts to appease the Kremlin threatened to split the EU over security policy; since then, he has shifted 180 degrees. He wants NATO to admit Ukraine; a few months ago, he even proposed that individual NATO states could send troops to Ukraine. French soldiers are reportedly preparing to deploy there to train Ukrainian recruits, although other NATO allies are skeptical about the benefits of in-country training given the need for force protection and exposure risk. Macron has also pledged to send an unspecified number of Mirage jet fighters to Kyiv.
If genuine, these announcements would mark a revolution in French foreign policy. Only a few years ago, Macron outlined a strategic vision that included Russia in a “project of European civilization” to collectively balance against the United States and China.
Yet it is an open question how sustainable these new pledges are, and to what extent Macron can deliver with a new government in Paris. France still has the second-largest military in Europe after Ukraine, with more than 200,000 personnel on active duty. But so far, Paris has deployed only 750 soldiers to Romania and 350 to Estonia to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank. French bilateral financial aid to Ukraine ranks only 16th among the 27 EU member states in terms of share of GDP—0.14 percent. And its 2.69 billion euros ($2.9 billion) in military aid is dwarfed by Germany’s (10.2 billion euros, or $11.1 billion) and even ranks behind the contribution of much smaller economies, such as Denmark and the Netherlands. Until French actions and resources start to match the rhetoric, Macron’s declarations could be seen as mere tactical posturing rather than signs of a strategic shift. If this is European leadership, it’s leadership on the cheap.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has pursued an inverse approach to Macron’s: allocating significant resources but trimming his rhetoric. In June 2022, Berlin launched a 100 billion euro ($109 billion) off-budget defense fund to ramp up its military capabilities. It leads the EU in overall financial assistance to Ukraine, including in the form of weapons deliveries, and plans to increase its presence in Lithuania to a permanent base with nearly 5,000 soldiers. It just announced a landmark agreement to station U.S. missiles on German soil. Berlin has also has spent nearly 24 billion euros ($26.2 billion) in refugee aid for Ukrainians, compared to less than €4 billion euros ($4.4 billion) by France.
But Germany’s strategic posture toward Russia continues to hedge. Scholz has refused to deliver much-needed Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine and previously stalled on supplying Leopard tanks and other higher-end weapons. Scholz’s aim to be a “peace chancellor” appears admirable, but it seems ill-suited to an ongoing war in which either Ukraine and the West will prevail—or Russia swallows Ukraine and prepares for the next stage of its war. If this is European leadership, it is leadership without a goal or strategy.
A third model of leadership is emerging in Poland, where a new government has combined strong rhetoric with vast resources. Five years ago, then-European Council President Donald Tusk linked the future of Ukraine with the future of Europe in a speech at the Ukrainian Rada. Since becoming Polish prime minister last year, he has been very clear about Europe needing to adopt a prewar posture as it prepares for further attempts by the Kremlin to reestablish its former empire. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has been similarly clear in arguing for Europe’s long-term rearmament. He also warned Russia that it “is not we, the West, who should fear a clash with Putin, but the other way around.”
Sikorski has also floated innovative policy proposals, such as the creation of an all-volunteer European Legion, 5,000 soldiers strong. This force would be authorized for missions by consensus within the European Council and operationally controlled by a European commander. It would be mobilized outside the national military channels and financed out of the EU budget. Most importantly, it would be deployable on high-risk missions, such as countering Russia’s Wagner Group in Africa, counterterrorism missions in the Sahel, or stability operations in Libya—bridging the interests of Southern and Central European EU members.
Warsaw is putting its money where its mouth is, launching a major rearmament that will make Poland one of Europe’s leading military powers. It already spends more than 4 percent of GDP on defense and is expanding its already formidable force. In 2023, the Polish defense budget increased by 75 percent over the previous year—by far the largest annual increase of any European state. Warsaw plans to double its land forces to 300,000 troops. With major defense orders from the United States and South Korea, as well as expanding domestic production, Poland is on track by some estimates to have more tanks than Britain, France, Italy, and Germany combined by 2030. Just last week, the Pentagon confirmed that Poland will acquire $2 billion worth of F-35 stealth fighters, Patriot missile systems, and additional Abrams tanks.
Warsaw has also allocated 0.7 percent of its GDP to Ukraine, including 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion) in military aid, and has spent more than 22 billion euros ($24 billion) on the roughly 1 million Ukrainian refugees that the country has taken in.
Poland has a clear, actionable vision of the need to prevent Russia from conquering Ukraine and deter it from further wars. This is leadership by necessity.
Who will other EU countries rally around? Some European leaders and citizens recognize the Russian threat but are unwilling to make the tough choice to shift resources from social spending to defense, not to mention putting their societies and economies on a prewar footing. Others may be attracted by the approach of speaking softly while slowly, incrementally arming up. But the necessity of Europe’s circumstances—with an aggressive Russian regime bent on changing borders and already fighting an indefinite European war—will likely compel the EU to gravitate toward Warsaw’s approach.
Macron has launched numerous diplomatic initiatives, including the European Political Community and the European Intervention Initiative, in his continuous attempt to occupy the center stage of political attention in Europe. But his energetic activity and multitude of ideas have yielded limited results, producing declarations rather than decisions. Europe’s policies on Ukraine and Russia are much more assertive than France’s initial preferences at the start of the full-scale war. France’s ingrained foreign-policy traditions of unilateralism and seeking maximal freedom of maneuver also makes effective coalition-building more difficult.
Scholz, leading a three-party coalition government, is seasoned in the German tradition of consensus building, making Berlin the most likely default option for generating a center of political gravity in Europe. But like France, Germany has followed rather than led on Ukraine policy, resulting in significant frustrations among its EU counterparts.
Berlin’s quiet manner of checkbook diplomacy was invaluable for decades in fostering European cooperation in peacetime, but it is not an effective approach in helping win a war and establish deterrence. These are a test of will as much as a clash of resources.
Tusk, meanwhile, is still digging out from underneath the diplomatic damage left by the predecessor government under the Law and Justice party, which frayed Poland’s relations and standing in the EU and in the world. Poland also does not have the economic heft of Germany or the political reach of France. But Tusk has the unparalleled experience of having served for five years as president of the European Council. In this role, he helped lead and generate consensus among other EU leaders—eight of whom are the same people now as in 2019, when Tusk’s mandate ended. With Tusk and Sikorski, Warsaw brings decades of public service and credibility on foreign policy, particularly concerning Russia and Ukraine.
Tusk’s government, now in its eighth month in office, has been busy rebuilding alliances within the EU. It revived the Weimar Triangle format of coordinating policy with Paris and Berlin. It is negotiating a treaty with France akin to the Franco-German Treaty of Aachen, which would establish much closer channels of consultation and cooperation across ministries at working level. Poland has also engaged with the eight countries joined in the Nordic-Baltic format to address common interests and coordinate regional and wider policy. Among EU members, Warsaw also has a privileged position as Washington’s trans-Atlantic bridge to Europe. Notably, both current U.S. President Joe Biden and then-President Donald Trump chose Warsaw as the place to deliver their headline speeches on European policy.
Collectively, the EU and its member states are stepping up on defending their continent. European NATO members as a group reached the bloc’s minimum of 2 percent of GDP this year, even if some countries are still underspending. Europe has provided more than 170 billion euros ($185.2 billion) in military and financial assistance to Ukraine, trained 47,000 Ukrainian troops (with another 13,000 to finish training this summer), and spent more than 80 billion euros ($87.2 billion) to take in nearly 5 million Ukrainian refugees. The EU recently adopted its 14th round of economic sanctions against Russia. And it has focused on enhancing its defense and technological industrial base to produce the weapons and ammunition that Ukraine needs and future deterrence demands.
Yet Europe is still punching below its weight, and its vast resources have not translated into decisive power. It has faced a vacuum of leadership over the past three years, starting with the massive intelligence and decision-making failures that preceded Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It is unclear whether Berlin, Paris, Brussels, and other capitals have drawn sufficient lessons from these failures and remedied the gaps. The Biden administration has been able to generate a consensus with Europe and forge a unified Western response—and may do so again in a second term, depending on the outcome of the U.S. elections.
But in some European capitals—including Paris and Berlin—Russia’s war has still not generated the necessary sense of urgency on European security. Without active leadership, the EU risks continuing strategic drift. European capitals could do worse than look to Warsaw, following the Polish example to match rhetoric with resources, raise both, and seek to win in Ukraine.
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