US President Donald Trump has been urging the European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to increase their military spending. The US defence budget is bigger than the next nine largest defence budgets combined, and it spends about 3.4% of its gargantuan GDP on defence. Precisely because the US spends so much, its European allies have been lulled into relying on American muscle, spending less on defence and more on domestic welfare. Those freeriding times are over. Europe is under immense pressure to increase its defence spending.This compulsion to overhaul its spending priorities will, however, prove to be a blessing, even if it comes along goose-stepping in intimidating combat gear. This is because Europe also is being forced to stare at proximate industrial collapse, unless it moves on from its traditional areas of strength, and into radically new lines of production. Weapons present themselves as a new economic opportunity, however distasteful those long trained to choose the gooey option in the tradeoff between guns and better might find this to be.
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