European Defence and Space Commissioner Andrius Kubilius has called for European countries to take primary responsibility for the continent’s conventional defence within NATO over the next 10 to 15 years, citing a changing security environment after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Kubilius wrote in a blog post on his website andriuskubilius.lt that Europe’s post-war security arrangements were shaped in 1949 by the creation of NATO, with the United States taking the lead on defending Europe against the Soviet Union’s conventional and nuclear forces.
He said that after the Cold War NATO shifted away from territorial defence towards international missions, including in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 showed that shift had been premature, he wrote, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 prompted NATO to restore “institutions, capabilities, and doctrines” for territorial defence.
Kubilius pointed out that the United States has increasingly shifted strategic attention towards China and the Indo-Pacific, and that Washington has asked Europeans to assume primary responsibility for the conventional defence of Europe while the US continues to provide nuclear deterrence — a concept he described as “NATO 3.0”.
Defence readiness and a warning about 2030
Public assessments by intelligence services in several EU member states have warned that Russia could be ready to launch military aggression against EU member states before 2030, Kubilius wrote.
He said the EU has adopted and is implementing a “Defence Readiness 2030” agenda, adding that “significant financial resources” have been allocated and that a rapid ramp-up of Europe’s defence industry is “clearly visible”.
Beyond 2030, Kubilius argued that the EU also needs a longer-term strategy that looks decades ahead, and he urged what he described as a long-term mindset among Europe’s political leadership.
In the same article, Kubilius also pointed to long-term global economic shifts, writing that China is likely to become the world’s largest economy by the end of the century if there are no major domestic or global crises, and that India is expected to become the second-largest economy.
He said this would push the United States to third place in global economic rankings, while Europe could fall from second to fourth.
