The EU has finally woken up to the necessity of hard power

On the morning of Feb. 24, as Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, German army chief Alfons Mais got up and wrote on LinkedIn that he had “never ever expected to experience war again” in Europe. After years of budget cuts, he observed that the Bundeswehr, the German military, “stands naked. The options we can offer our government to support the alliance [NATO] are extremely limited.”

Only three days later, on Feb. 27, after Putin had put his nuclear deterrent forces on alert, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz committed an extra 100 billion euros, around $112 billion, to his country’s defence budget.