How Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will play out remains unclear. But it’s already been a geopolitical game-changer—in Europe and beyond.

Russia’s aggression has jolted Europe out of its post–Cold War complacency. Lulled by decades of peace and confronted now by the reality of war next door, European states have been forced to take security more seriously and act to upgrade their defence capabilities. The sea-change is most striking in Germany, which has committed to a US$112 billion boost in defence spending and pledged to meet NATO’s 2% of GDP target. Norway, Italy, Austria, Denmark and Poland are among others committing to increased defence expenditure.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reinvigorated NATO with a renewed sense of purpose and unity. The bloc is expanding its forward military deployments to reassure its eastern-most member states. Long-time Nordic neutrals Finland and Sweden are now contemplating NATO membership.

While underscoring the enduring importance of transatlantic security ties, the Ukraine conflict has spurred efforts to enhance the EU’s strategic autonomy, and security capabilities, outlined in the newly-approved ‘Strategic Compass’.

Although for now Washington must deal once more with the reality of security challenges in both Europe and Asia, increased European military capabilities may over time reduce the defence burden on the US, facilitating its pivot to Asia.

Yet the challenge ahead is to sustain European resolve and unity as the conflict in Ukraine drags on, especially as the economic costs of confronting Russia grow. Corralling those European states disposed politically to take a softer line on Russia, notably Hungary, will be difficult.

The Ukraine crisis has also prompted European governments, especially in Germany, to accelerate moves away from dependence on Russian gas. Short term, this includes diversifying sources of LNG, but it has also given impetus to the shift towards adoption of renewables. Nuclear power is enjoying a revival, especially in France, but also in the UK.

Beyond Europe, estrangement with the West has made closer relations with China a strategic necessity for Russia.

The partnership between China and Russia is based on shared authoritarian political affinities, economic complementarities, foreign policy convergences—especially, hostility to US primacy—and reassurance that each has the other’s back politically.

Yet despite talk of their strategic partnership knowing ‘no limits’, the relationship remains wary, transactional—and increasingly asymmetric, in Beijing’s favour.

On Ukraine, China has tilted towards Moscow—but its support has limits. Beijing won’t want to jeopardise its more important economic interests with the US and Europe (China’s US$147 billion trade with Russia is dwarfed by its US$1.4 trillion combined trade turnover with the US and EU). It is also aware of the reputational risks that support for Russia implies.

Beijing wants Russian President Vladimir Putin to survive—but not necessarily thrive. A humiliating defeat for Russia and a stronger and more united NATO under US leadership would not serve China’s interests. Yet a weakened Russia would be a more dependent and pliant partner for Beijing.

India’s relatively neutral stance on the Ukraine conflict has gratified Moscow but frustrated the West.

Yet India faces a dilemma. Moscow is a longstanding, friendly strategic partner. Trade, energy and, especially, military ties are strong (Russia remains India’s biggest weapons supplier). New Delhi is suspicious of Pakistan’s warming ties with Russia, and doesn’t want to drive Moscow into Beijing’s arms. Yet India’s relations with the US have expanded greatly, and New Delhi sees the Quad as a useful counter to China.

India, then, is walking a tightrope on Ukraine, trying not to antagonise either Russia or Western countries.

It is not alone.

While the result of the UN General Assembly vote condemning Russia’s aggression in Ukraine seemed impressive, this masked the reality that key developing countries, such as Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa, are essentially sitting on the fence. And nearly half the UN’s African members did not support the resolution.

For some developing states, this muted response reflects close ties to Russia—whether political, military or economic. Others are reluctant to be drawn into what is seen as a West versus Russia dispute, echoing the Cold War. And some are sceptical of the West’s motives, seeing double standards.

Russia’s actions in Ukraine pose a real challenge to the United Nations. When a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council commits unprovoked aggression against its neighbour, contravening those very principles of national sovereignty and territorial integrity the Security Council is charged with upholding, the UN is rendered powerless to act and, through its paralysis, loses credibility.

This has real, and worrying, implications, especially for small and mid-sized countries reliant on UN rules and institutions to underpin their security and prosperity. Some will conclude that they need to build up their own military capabilities—potentially sparking regional arms races.

And Russia’s growing pariah status brings its own problems.

The West’s strong response, providing political and military support for Ukraine and imposing damaging sanctions on Russia, will ineluctably reinforce anti-Western hostility in the Kremlin. This will make Russia even more difficult to deal with internationally. Don’t expect, then, Russian cooperation on issues like climate change, arms control and Antarctica. And Moscow may become a more disruptive force in unstable regions, such as the Sahel, Balkans and Middle East.

There are economic ramifications too.

Short-term energy and commodity prices have spiked. This has squeezed food supplies in Africa and the Middle East, both highly dependent on Russian and Ukrainian wheat—which carries domestic political implications. Already disrupted global supply chains have been further aggravated. Inflation has been fuelled worldwide, complicating recovery from the pandemic.

In the longer term, the Ukraine crisis will only further encourage the global drift towards political confrontation and economic nationalism, weakening globalisation and free trade. Efforts by Western states in particular to reduce their reliance on Russian energy, fertiliser, minerals and commodities will impose cost and efficiency burdens.

The Ukraine war is thus likely to exacerbate worrying political tensions and economic pressures, already aroused by the Covid-19 pandemic, intensifying US–China competition and the global energy transition.

As 2021 drew to a close, the prospect of a full-scale war in Europe appeared unlikely to most, if not unfathomable.

What a difference two months can make.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine has set in motion an urban conflict between Europe’s two largest states the likes of which has not been seen since World War II.

The stakes are astronomically high. Putin has now placed Russia’s strategic nuclear forces on ‘special alert’ and warned Sweden and Finland that any attempt they may make to join NATO will be met with ‘serious military repercussions’. These are ominous signs, likely confirming that Russia’s invasion is not so much an isolated incident of great-power aggression but rather an attempt to agitate for major strategic realignment and the creation of a new geopolitical paradigm.

Today, as fighting rages across Ukraine’s besieged metropolitan centres, it is right for us to consider what form the next phase of the conflict may take. In the absence of more substantive peace talks, it appears likely that we’ll see the war in Ukraine shift gears over the coming weeks and transition to a more protracted, asymmetric campaign of armed resistance. This assumes that Russia will be willing to resort to the use of indiscriminate force and/or non-conventional weapons if necessary in order to enter and occupy Ukraine’s key cities.

It’s important that Western observers fully understand not only that a prolonged insurgency is likely on the cards in Ukraine, but the reasons for this.

Ukraine is a sizeable nation of 44 million people with 500,000 veterans who have gained direct combat experience as a result of the recent simmering separatist tensions in the country’s east. While in Lviv in October 2019, I was struck by the sight of transiting troops choking platforms at the city’s main railway station. The reality is that Ukraine has been fighting a near-total war—and doing so alone—for the better part of a decade.

As a result, the country is well reconciled to the horrors of modern conflict and it was fully aware before last week that Western intervention could not be relied upon in the event of a full-scale Russian invasion. These core realities have contributed to a high level of preparedness and self-sufficiency on the part of the Ukrainian state, and there is every reason to believe that Ukrainians will retain the ability to wage a protracted campaign of armed resistance in the coming months even once their Territorial Defence Forces are ultimately dispersed by overwhelming Russian firepower.

The question then becomes, will Ukrainians have a desire to fight on, even once their urban centres begin falling into Russian hands? For the reasons outlined below, the answer is surely ‘yes’.

Although Putin has rightly pointed out that Ukrainian statehood is a relatively novel concept, the galvanising effect that the 2014 conflict has had on Ukraine’s nascent national identity in the space of a few short years must not be underestimated. The defence of Donetsk airport by Ukrainian ‘cyborg’ forces in 2014 and 2015, and the defiant acts of protesters at Kyiv’s Independence Square during the Maidan Revolution in particular, have served to solidify Ukraine’s independent national ethos and turn the tide of public opinion firmly against Russia.

My time in Kyiv in 2019 highlighted just how much Ukraine has changed since the removal of Russian-backed president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. In short, there is now simply no going back for Ukraine.  As a young democracy, it is keen to move forward with its new-found national identity—an identity that permeates every aspect of national life from museum exhibitions to pop culture and urban design.

Ukraine will not allow its future to be predetermined by its Soviet past. And while the country’s sense of self has indeed been forged more recently than that of neighbours such as Poland, its new identity has one major advantage in the current crisis—it is defined and framed almost exclusively in terms of Kyiv’s opposition to and rejection of Moscow. The recreation of Ukraine’s union with Russia is now seen as fundamentally incompatible with the views of most Ukrainians and, for better or worse, the country’s citizens are likely willing to make that fact known through a prolonged and costly resistance.

The apparent willingness of the international community to provide effective assistance to Ukraine is the final factor that will likely help sustain a possible insurgency against Russian occupation. Promises of lethal aid for Ukraine continue to stream in from the US, UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Australia, crushing Russian hopes of a speedy resolution to the war.

Berlin’s seismic decision to break from its longstanding prohibition on the export of lethal aid speaks to the seriousness of the security crisis currently enveloping Europe. UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss’s decision to publicly support UK nationals who travel abroad to fight as part of Ukraine’s ‘foreign legion’ is also an extraordinary and unprecedented measure. A predicted flow of irregular foreign fighters moving into Ukraine will only serve to further stymie Russian efforts to occupy the country.

The world has rightly been captivated by the defiance and tenacity of Ukraine’s armed forces this week, and Russia’s failure to accomplish any of its first-day invasion objectives is testament to the courage of Ukraine’s service men and women.

However, we must steel ourselves for the likelihood of a brutal and contested occupation of Ukraine in the months ahead—an occupation that has the potential to take a truly horrific human toll. We must not place the next phase of this conflict out of mind simply because we don’t like where things may be headed.

The outcome of this week’s eight-hour-long US–Russia talks in Geneva wasn’t reported on the main news broadcast of Russia’s state-owned Channel One, a primary propaganda outlet for the Kremlin, until the 11th minute. The first two stories focused on events in Kazakhstan, particularly President Vladimir Putin’s virtual consultation with the leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). It seems that Putin wanted to impress Russians in other ways than by issuing an ultimatum to the West as a pretext to invade Ukraine.

Russia’s deployment of troops to help quell unrest in Kazakhstan is of a piece with Putin’s efforts to reconstitute the Russian empire through intimidation and military force. Putin is aiming to erase 25 years of Western security policy by curtailing the sovereignty of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and even the former Soviet republics—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—that have already joined NATO. To strengthen his negotiating position, Putin wants to show that Russia has something like its own NATO.

Although the CSTO, a kind of ‘Warsaw Pact–lite’, was founded in the 1990s, the Kremlin has never used it to justify a foreign intervention—until now, in Kazakhstan. The CSTO didn’t intervene when Kyrgyzstan requested Russia’s help in 2010, or when Armenia did so during its recent conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.

But the Kremlin now seems to have learned the lessons of the popular uprisings in Belarus and Ukraine over the past decade. To launch joint missions with Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s forces, Putin could simply hide behind the CSTO. Tellingly, the CSTO’s ‘peacekeeping military mission’ in Kazakhstan is headed by Russian Colonel General Andrei Serdyukov, the same man who led the military operations to seize Crimea in 2014, and who then commanded Russian forces in Syria.

Russia’s entry into Kazakhstan has certainly got the West’s attention. Its most important assets are its raw materials (oil, gas and uranium) and its central placement in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which branches into Iran, Turkey and Russia. Under Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled for three decades until stepping down from the presidency in 2019, Kazakhstan maintained a policy of relative independence vis-à-vis Russia, China and the United States; now, however, the balance has suddenly shifted.

But it’s unclear exactly what the Kremlin hopes to achieve in Kazakhstan. If it tries to take control of the country’s resources, it will end up in a confrontation with China, which it cannot afford. Nor can it control the political situation in the country. The protesters, after all, have already achieved their goals of forcing the government’s resignation and restoring fuel-price caps (a doubling of prices triggered the unrest).

Nonetheless, after years of the Kremlin standing by and watching as the US and China colonised Kazakhstan economically, those countries now must watch as Russian soldiers help to patrol Kazakh cities. Chevron, ExxonMobil and European oil companies have fields and installations across Kazakhstan, so the last thing they want is a deeper conflict.

As always with Putin, the domestic audience is a key consideration. Most Russians—including many independent analysts and opposition figures—consider Kazakhstan a part of the Russkiy mir (‘Russian world’). As with Russian speakers in Ukraine, the assumption is that all Russophones in Kazakhstan are in fact Russians who dream of nothing more than annexation by the motherland. In the 1990s, extreme nationalists, including the Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the writer Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, openly called for northern Kazakhstan to be incorporated into Russia.

Yet many Russian-speaking Kazakhs are not pro-Russian, nor do they want to incorporate their country partly or wholly into Russia. There are Ukrainians and Kazakhs who speak only Russian and don’t want that language to be their country’s official language. But none of that matters to Putin. He sees the mere existence of a Russian minority—whose size he usually inflates several times over—as sufficient justification to include a neighbouring country in Russia’s sphere of influence.

But the Kremlin also has plenty to lose in Kazakhstan. Deploying 2,500 troops may strengthen Russia’s influence, but maintaining a military presence will antagonise Kazakhs, just as previous interventions antagonised Ukrainians and Belarusians who used to consider themselves pro-Russian.

That antagonism will have only marginal geopolitical significance in the short and medium terms, but in the long term it could lead to greater independence. After Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014 and Belarus in 2020, Kazakhstan is another chapter in Putin’s neo-imperial narrative. But that also makes it another traditionally pro-Russian society that Putin is at risk of losing. Though the intervention is supposed to scare the protesters into submission, it could well have the opposite effect, turning Kazakhs decidedly against Russia.

Russia’s military presence in Kazakhstan is an additional source of leverage as Putin pursues his second goal: an unwritten agreement to halt the integration of Ukraine and Georgia into the West. Were it not for Russia’s ultimatum regarding NATO membership, the mere demand to withdraw Western support for Ukraine would be radical. But, against this background, Putin’s objective seems to be a minimum plan—almost a compromise. And the whole course of events in Kazakhstan and along the Ukrainian border serves this purpose.

If, after eight hours of talks, the Kremlin-controlled media don’t thunder that Russia was offended and provoked to an appropriate reaction, then it seems that the outcome wasn’t a pretext for invading Ukraine. The West was supposed to learn from the CSTO’s deployment in Kazakhstan that Russia is equal to the US, has its own NATO and has the ability to expand its influence into large neighbouring countries. As Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said: Russia must get something from NATO.

From now on, an agreement to keep Ukraine out of NATO is the minimum, not the maximum, that Russia will demand. It might work. After all, while a country’s admission to NATO needs to be announced, a decision to keep it out permanently does not.

Critics of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, Beijing in particular, have long portrayed the grouping of Australia, Japan, India and the US as a Trojan horse for an ‘Asian NATO’ designed to balance China’s growing power in the Indo-Pacific. Some proponents of the Quad have argued along similar lines, calling for an Indo-Pacific ‘strategy of collective defence’ to offset shortfalls in America’s regional military power and hold the line against rising Chinese strength.

Australia should resist calls for such a rigid multinational alliance.

It’s important to distinguish between ‘collective defence’ and ‘collaborative defence’. Collective defence implies that countries in the Indo-Pacific should pool resources in a unified, multinational command structure akin to NATO.

Collaborative defence is a much looser arrangement in which countries work together in different ways in different groupings on slightly different missions. Collaborative defence arrangements are the sum of bilateral and trilateral partnerships that are then operationalised as a broader regional grouping.

The broader grouping develops slowly with each meeting or exercise and without the rigidity of a collective alliance. That provides the tactical flexibility for bilateral or trilateral partnerships to be invoked in response to different threats in particular operational theatres at opportune times.

NATO’s collective defence regime was able to deter the Soviet Union precisely because it existed in continental Europe during the Cold War. With member states’ clearly defined spheres of influence, the declaration in Article 5 of the NATO treaty that an attack on one member state would be an attack on all member states had credibility.

Every NATO member had a common interest in ensuring that the Soviet Union would penetrate no further into Western Europe. The liberal democratic world was united in its determination to thwart the march of Soviet communism. If West Germany fell, the Netherlands would be next.

Once the Cold War ended, Soviet communism could march no longer. Democracy had won. In losing its strategic and ideological rival, NATO had lost its binding agent. The deterrent value of Article 5 had diminished.

After the Cold War, Russia noticed that NATO had lost its coherence as membership began expanding and its focus moved on to transnational threats such as terrorism. Vladimir Putin  modernised aspects of the Russian military to develop a force that could exploit a temporal advantage and use coercive tactics slightly below the threshold of armed conflict to secure a fait accompli. That way it could further undermine the deterrent force of Article 5 and make inroads into areas Putin deemed to be within Russia’s sphere of influence.

Crimea offers a good example. Russia exploited NATO disunity, and a lack of resolve in Washington, to annex part of Ukraine. It did so to a country on NATO’s periphery, and with minimal force. Ukraine wasn’t a NATO member, but it had developed a close relationship with the alliance and was considering joining, a prospect NATO officials took seriously.

In failing to support Ukraine even though NATO had a clear interest in deterring Russian expansionism, the US and NATO showed the limits of their collective defence regime.

Article 5 may have proved iron-clad had Russia attacked a NATO member, but it was useless in defending NATO’s periphery—and the sovereign right of a nation to join the alliance should it so choose.

Russia sowed discord within NATO and prevented it from defending its interests.

China has proved as adept with its militarisation of the South China Sea and its unilateral declaration of an air defence identification zone in the East China Sea. In both cases, the US and its allies judged the use of military action against these egregious violations of international law to be disproportionate. But, in doing nothing, Washington succumbed to Beijing’s fait accompli.

Collective defence didn’t stop Russia from taking Crimea and it’s unlikely to have worked any better in denying Beijing the ability to militarise the South China Sea.

Washington now must ensure that the US and its allies don’t succumb to another such fait accompli. That effort needs to start with an understanding that collective defence has little chance of working in the Indo-Pacific.

The Indo-Pacific today is not at all like Western Europe was during the Cold War. Each Indo-Pacific nation has its own reasons to deter China.

Vietnam and India have fought China to protect territorial boundaries and harbour deep historical animosity towards Beijing. The Philippines and Indonesia reject China’s expansionist ‘nine-dash line’. Beijing claims Japan’s Senkaku islands and uses Tokyo’s behaviour in World War II for its own political gain. For Taiwan, deterring China is a matter of national survival.

The differing situations complicate coalition-building. Some countries are more willing to defy Beijing than others. This is altogether different from Western Europe’s unity in its determination to stop the Soviets.

In a hypothetical scenario, suppose the Chinese navy is exercising in the South China Sea. At the same time, China’s maritime militia attempts to land on the Taiwanese-held Pratas Island, drawing fire from the Taiwanese military. The navy is ordered to stop the exercise and go to the militia’s aid.

The Taiwanese military fires warning shots at China’s naval vessels. Beijing orders its military to seize Pratas. The air force’s fighter jets quickly overwhelm Taiwan’s defences and marines take the island.

Taipei, though not a member, enjoys a close relationship with a collective defence regime known as the Indo-Pacific Treaty Organisation, or IPTO. President Tsai Ing-wen asks the US and Australia for IPTO support. Both back intervention at an emergency IPTO meeting. Japan agrees, but Vietnam and the Philippines, which each have claims to another Taiwanese-held island, Itu Aba, object, each reasoning that advancing its claims to Itu Aba would be easier if Taiwan no longer held Pratas.

Without a consensus, IPTO provides no support for Taiwan. The US and Australia are wary of fighting a peer adversary and now believe it’s too late to act. Beijing strengthens its position and Taipei backs down. IPTO is forced to accept the island as de facto Chinese territory.

Beijing calculated that Washington needed unanimous support from IPTO and so targeted an island claimed by other IPTO allies. Division was sowed, indecision followed and Beijing won.

In this scenario, a looser, more flexible, collaborative defence arrangement would have made it harder for China to act. This is where a grouping like the Quad could prove its worth.

Without a multinational command structure in place, Washington could have invoked its Taiwan Relations Act and used forces on Okinawa to destroy Beijing’s fleet. Once hostilities escalated and Japanese territory was under threat, Tokyo could have deployed its considerable air and naval power to help. Canberra could have responded to a request from Washington to fly anti-submarine warfare aircraft around key chokepoints in the first island chain, while sending warships to support the Indian navy in a blockade of the Malacca Strait as the war dragged on.

The Quad could have become a rolling coalition, allowing countries to make unique contributions at key times to deprive Beijing of its ability to secure a fait accompli at each stage of conflict. The US and Japan would have borne the brunt of the initial fighting, and Australia and India would then have cut China’s logistical systems. Each country would have made a different contribution in a different operational theatre at a different time, gradually increasing the pressure on Beijing.

Instead of pooling resources to create an unwieldy blob, countries need to work bilaterally and trilaterally to respond in novel ways as the strategic environment changes because of China’s willingness to exploit a temporal advantage.

The Quad is a collaborative defence arrangement built off a network of bilateral and trilateral partnerships, making it flexible and responsive to diverse threats at different stages of conflict.

That structural agility makes it greater than the sum of its parts.

In my next article, I’ll explore how the Quad can best deter China as a collaborative defence arrangement.

With President Donald Trump having returned from his dumpster-fire-lighting tour of Europe, the media firestorm unleashed by his claims last week that the European members of NATO were not meeting their defence spending obligations, and were therefore free-riding on the United States, has now largely burned itself out.

Largely, it was a firestorm in a teacup. While Trump has proclaimed to his base that he pressured the slacker Europeans into paying their fair share, the European members were already moving towards their 2014 goal of raising defence spending to 2% by 2024. And the summit communiqué (paragraph 3) changes neither the the deadline nor the spending goal (despite Trump’s calls during the summit for the deadline to be brought forward and the target to be doubled to 4%).

But is 2% of GDP a meaningful number in the first place? Back here in Australia this question sounds like déjà vu all over again: we went through this debate when the government announced its commitment to raise Australia’s defence spending to 2% of GDP.

While 2% has become the benchmark for what countries that are serious about their defence should spend, there’s of course no divine law that says spending 2% of GDP will guarantee your security. Which is why Israel, a country that faces existential threats, spends a lot more—around 6%.

So how much should NATO’s European members spend? Any discussion of the appropriate level of funding needs to situated in a strategic framework that aligns ends, ways and means: what do you want to achieve, what is your plan to achieve it, and what resources do you need to deliver the plan? If you have a clear goal and a viable way to achieve it, you can get a lot with limited resources. If your goals are open-ended or excessively ambitious, and there’s no real plan to achieve them, huge commitments of blood and treasure can be futile.

One of the great strengths of NATO was its very clear, but limited, goal—to deter the Soviet Union from attacking its members—supported by a simple plan that rested on a firm commitment by all members to assist each other. Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which requires a collective response to aggression, is explicitly limited to an attack in Europe or North America, not just anywhere in the world. Moreover, the clear nature of the threat made it relatively simple to determine what means were needed to counter it.

If the overriding goal of NATO continues to be deterring a Russian attack on its members, 2% of its European members’ GDP should be adequate, and in fact more than adequate. The combined GDP of the European members is 10 times that of Russia. The big-four European members together (France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom) already spend more than twice what Russia does. And if Germany were to raise its defence spending from the current 1.2% to even 1.8%, that alone would be an increase of around US$25 billion—close to Australia’s annual defence budget.

It’s probably true that the European members have enjoyed too much of a post–Cold War peace dividend for too long. Generally it’s good if you can actually operate the equipment you own. This doesn’t appear to be the case with all NATO members, as a string of revelations over the past few years about the state of Germany’s forces suggests. And the other explicit benchmark that NATO members have signed up to, namely to spend 20% of their defence budgets on acquiring equipment, seems too low to recapitalise their forces. If you want to rebuild (as Australia is doing), capital investment is essential. Australia is at around 30% and increasing.

Obviously there’s not a one-to-one correlation between dollars and capability—Russian equipment and personnel costs are much lower than western European costs; some European defence budgets include things that aren’t directly related to military capability, such as pensions; European acquisition programs tend to be driven by domestic industry concerns as much as by capability outcomes; and there will always be an overhead associated with having 29 defence forces.

But achieving even close to the 2% goal would probably generate enough military power to deter Russia if that spending is focused on that task, particularly when combined with actions to use that power such as measures NATO is already undertaking to forward-deploy combat forces from its big members into the exposed Baltic states, forestalling a Russian coup de main.

However, one of the problems facing NATO’s European members is that the organisation’s focus has expanded since the end of the Cold War. Threats such as terrorism originate well outside Europe. Whatever Trump may think, European countries have been active in supporting international counterterrorism operations, for example in Afghanistan (in explicit support of the US in response to Article 5), Mali and now Iraq. If the main task is to defeat terrorism at its source, 2% is probably enough to develop and deploy light expeditionary forces for peacekeeping, stability operations and counterterrorism.

But 2% may not be enough to do both. Just as the US is realising that the main game is China, so the European members seem to be refocusing on Russia. At the same time, however, they’re still conducting expeditionary operations far from home. Like Australia, Europe will find it hard to generate a force structure that has the heavy, conventional forces that can deter or defeat major state aggression as well as the deployable assets that can deal with unconventional adversaries around the world, even with 2% of GDP. Prioritisation will be essential.

And 2% will not be nearly enough should the European members’ focus fundamentally change. Deploying heavy, conventional expeditionary forces around the world to fight peer or near-peer adversaries is the most challenging task for any military. That’s what the US is finding it difficult to do even with 3.5% of the world’s biggest GDP.