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Europe must agree a “road map” with the US to shift the burden of defending the continent away from Washington, Finland’s defence minister has said, and at the same time avoid a disjointed switch that Russia could exploit.
Some European capitals are already in talks over how to rapidly scale up their military capabilities in areas where they rely heavily on the US, fearful that President Donald Trump will reduce support to the continent more quickly than they can increase defence spending to build their own capacity.
“The conventional defence capabilities burden must be shared to taxpayers in Europe. That’s for sure,” Antti Häkkänen told the FT. “And now the key question is do we have this joint road map, a timetable . . . so that there will be no window of opportunity for Russia, if the US is shifting the balance too early and Europe is not fast enough.”
The comments come as Nato foreign ministers meet for a second day of talks in Brussels featuring discussions on burden-sharing and reducing European reliance on the US, which has made clear it wants to pivot its force projection towards Asia.
The concern about gaps emerging in Nato’s European capabilities if the US were to begin stepping back before Europe is ready are shared among many alliance governments, several Nato diplomats told the FT.
Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte said yesterday the US had “no plans” for a “sudden” US withdrawal from Europe, but that any such move would be “co-ordinated” with European allies.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio told his European counterparts that Trump “supports Nato”, but needed allies to commit to a “realistic pathway” to shift the burden away from American taxpayers.
Europe relies heavily on the US for critical capabilities such as air and missile defence systems, command and control functions and long-range precision missiles, officials said. In other areas such as heavy-lift aircraft necessary to rapidly move armoured forces, Nato allies depend almost entirely on America.
Häkkänen said other countries including Germany were involved in the push to agree a “timetable” with the US, and that he had “a good dialogue” with US defence secretary Pete Hegseth on the issue.
“We should have a joint understanding [with the US] that European Nato countries are coming now, but is the timeframe two years or three years or five years and in terms of what capabilities and troops?” Häkkänen said. “If all the countries are taking the measures nationally, we can see that there can be this road map.”
He said he used a meeting of EU defence ministers in Poland on Thursday to urge his colleagues to speed up their efforts.
“We have to run fast because we have two challenges: Russia is running fast even though there will be peace [in Ukraine]. And America is changing their burden towards the Indo-Pacific area,” Häkkänen added. “And we’re now starting to see the signs that they [the US} are really starting to do this conventional power shift.”
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