Americans should be ‘a little irritated’ with Europe, especially Germany

Still, Americans also have a right to be irritated with Europe. Alongside the U.S., only Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Greece, and Lithuania spent more than 2.5% of GDP on defense in 2024 (Poland and Estonia actually spent more as a percentage of GDP than the U.S.). It is outrageous that so many of NATO’s 32 member states still spend less than the 2% NATO minimum target or barely meet it. Spain spent just 1.28% of GDP on defense in 2024, and Belgium, which somehow still has the honor of hosting NATO headquarters, spent just 1.3% of GDP on defense. Italy, Europe’s fourth largest economy, spent 1.47% of GDP on defense.

After all, it’s now three years since Vladimir Putin started the bloodiest, largest land war in Europe since 1945. By his own admission, Putin’s ambitions extend beyond Ukraine to Estonia and Poland. European nations have no excuses for failing to take defense seriously. It’s eleven years since the NATO summit, at which all members agreed to move toward at least 2% of GDP defense budgets. It’s fourteen years since then-U.S. defense secretary Bob Gates warned Europeans to their faces that “if current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, future U.S. political leaders – those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience – may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.”

Americans should be especially irritated with Europe’s largest economy and most influential European Union power, Germany. Germany spent just 2.12% of GDP on defense in 2024 and did so after decades of woefully inadequate spending. Is Germany now on the right trajectory? Nein. Germany has dramatically scaled back defense spending boosts for 2025. Unfortunately, rather than resign in protest at Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s refusal to take Russia’s threat to Europe seriously, German defense minister Boris Pistorius spends his time defending Germany’s authoritarian speech laws.

Scholz is even worse. When he’s not slathering at the feet of America’s greatest nemesis Xi Jinping, Scholz is doing his best to avoid necessarily hard choices to ensure European security.

Take the developing plan by Europe’s second-largest economy, the United Kingdom, to provide peacekeeping ground forces to uphold any peace settlement reached by Ukraine and Russia. Europe’s third-largest economy, France, has indicated it will join this effort to ensure that Vladimir Putin cannot use any peace agreement to buy time to reconstitute his forces and re-invade. The U.K. and France are thus showing what taking a lead for Europe’s defense looks like. In contrast, Germany, Europe’s largest economic power, offered a less auspicious response.

When asked about the peacekeeping proposal, which every serious analyst knows is the critical ingredient for any durable and honorable peace in Ukraine, Scholz responded that the discussions were “completely premature.” He added that he was “a little irritated” by the very idea.

This is deeply unserious leadership. Indeed, it offers the Chancellor’s foreign policy companion to the tears of Munich Security Conference chairman Christoph Heusgen in reaction to JD Vance’s free speech address.

THE CHALLENGE AND NECESSITY OF PEACEKEEPING TROOPS FOR UKRAINE

But the broader question must be asked. If Germany is unwilling to take the lead either for NATO in Europe or for Europe in support of Ukraine, and if Germany continues to prostrate itself to America’s greatest adversary, China, why on Earth would the U.S. keep 35,000 troops based in Germany?

Why not move them to Poland or one of the Baltic states instead? You know, to a state that actually cares about burden sharing and taking mutual security interests seriously.