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A 100-billion-euro fund for Ukraine means a precise, long-term commitment with more offensive connotations than the support offered so far by the West.
What Ukraine can do with 100 billion euros in armaments
Although it was not - and was not going to be - approved by the NATO foreign ministers at the April 3-4 meeting in Brussels, the amount is in itself relevant. It is about the same as the military aid provided by the Western countries from the beginning of the conflict until January 15, 2024: 118 billion dollars/nearly 109 billion euros, according to an assessment by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy cited by CNN . With the money already spent, 788 tanks, 815 howitzers, 119 air defense systems and 98 missile launchers have been delivered to Ukraine – conservative estimates, as some deliveries have not been made public. Numbers don't say much in themselves. If we compare them, for example, with the amount of tanks Ukraine had before the war - about 1,000 - or estimates for Russia in the same period - almost 3,000 units - we can understand the scale of the Western military aid. The fact that the war in Ukraine exhaustingly consumes huge amounts of armament is known. According to Forbes, for example, in the first 23 months of the war (so until January 2024), Russia had lost more than 2,600 tanks, but it has the industrial capacity to replace them.
The above figures are quite relevant if we think that the war in Ukraine is what I called a steampunk war. In a sense, it repeats the dynamics and resource investments of World War II, in some kind of alternate future, based less on precision strikes and computerized strategies than might have seemed possible. Massive casualties, artillery barrages and extensive tank operations seemed a thing of the past. The combat vehicles themselves – T-72 or first-generation Leopard tanks, Mig-29 jets, also 50 years old – place the entire conflict in a kind of alternate history. And if all the above seems too modern, Mosin-Nagant rifles, launched in 1891, and Maxim machine guns from 100 years ago were also used in Ukraine.
As the WWII analogy proves to be solid, the famous claim that the conflict was won by the Allies in the Detroit factories and not in the actual theater of operations comes into play. Participating with significant contingents in actual combat after December 1941, the US was decisive primarily in the massive deliveries of military equipment and other items by convoys across the Atlantic, just as Germany had its degree of military success in the first part of the war thanks to the militarized economy effectively set in motion by Albert Speer, with the support of German industrialists like Krupp, Porsche or Herbert Quandt (BMW). Among other things, the years of destruction of the Second World War also led to a positive legacy, because containers, which are the backbone of global freight transport today, were standardized and put into wide circulation just for the military transports of those years.
An essential breath of fresh air for the West's allies
Beyond the sum itself, the timing of Jens Stoltenberg's proposal is important. The specter of an isolationist USA, led by a Donald Trump who is anything else than a big fan of NATO and Ukraine involvement, started to haunt the civilized world, because of an American aid of 60.1 billion dollars (55 billion euros) being blocked in Congress. Informed circles in Washington directly link Trump's influence over some radical Republican congressmen to the legislative deadlock. So far, the US has contributed to the aforementioned military and humanitarian aid with 41% of the total.
If a decision on the 100 billion was not expected at the meeting of NATO foreign ministers, and is to be made before the summit of the organization in Washington in July, the significance of the amount is clear: it is to some extent a step away taken by NATO from US stewardship. Not in the sense of actual financial contributions, but in terms of decision-making mechanisms, because as things stand at the moment, the security of Europe depends on the agenda of the US Congress and the political maneuvers related to it, in another kind of alternate reality: the one where Trump seems to have already become president again, although the election is scheduled for November 5 and his victory is far from certain.
What does NATO actually want to deliver to Ukraine?
However, what is the point of Stoltenberg's initiative, since the NATO countries have already delivered substantial military aid to Ukraine, with or without US input? So far, the aid is being offered in the so-called "Ramstein format", named after a meeting at the military base of the same name in 2022, where the 32 NATO countries and other nations (over 50 in total at the moment) created a contact group to coordinate the support provided. The difference between Stoltenberg's proposal and the current state of affairs lies in the long-term commitment - a period of five years. In Brussels there was even talk of an "internalization of the Ramstein format" by NATO, but the new initiative is more of a sustained effort, less exposed to the internal political developments in each country. Or a strategy tailored to the reality that the war in Ukraine is clearly proving to be a long-term conflict, in which NATO must become a kind of “Brussels’ Detroit”, if I am allowed to use a barbarism. If Stoltenberg's proposal becomes, through the foreign ministers, country-level commitments, they will be less jeopardized by political developments in the 32 member states, as is happening these days with US aid blocked in the US Congress. And the fact that 2024 is one of the busiest electoral years , with elections yet to take place in at least ten Western countries, should be taken into account.
The chances of the Stoltenberg proposal
Foreign ministers' reactions to the proposal were generally positive . Belgium had a more reserved attitude, through the voice of Hadja Lahbib: "We must not make promises that we cannot fulfill." And of course, as usual, there was the voice of Viktor Orbán's Hungary, whose foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, drew attention to NATO's defensive nature, stressing that "Hungary will reject any proposal that would turn the alliance into an offensive one."
More interesting is the reticence with which the White House greeted the initiative. National Security Adviser John Kirby reiterated his support for the support group in its current form (Ramstein). If the statement has any clear interpretation, it proves that Stoltenberg's proposal is a turning point.
In order to be accepted, it needs consensus, which at the moment is not guaranteed. The skeptical attitudes mentioned above could change in the coming weeks as a result of the negotiations. For now, it is certain that Ukraine absolutely needs support similar to the Atlantic convoys of the Second World War, in the face of a much more massive enemy, with much greater economic resources. And NATO, like the European Union, needs a geopolitical voice and autonomy of action, regardless of the whims or internal interests of some member countries. If such a voice gets shape, in the form proposed by Stoltenberg or in another, NATO will secure its position.
In a curious way, in the same alternative future in which we seem to be, the Atlantic is a kind of pool inside the NATO headquarter in Brussels but surrounded by more tension and less mutuality than during the last global war. It's true, for the US to enter World War II and reposition Detroit from the auto industry to the military, it took a catastrophe called Pearl Harbor. Let's hope that it won't be the case this time.
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