When Andrius Kubilius considers Europe today, he thinks about the U.S. in the late 1930s. The former Lithuanian prime minister, now European commissioner for defense and space, sees many parallels. Americans lacked a sense of urgency about Nazi aggression. The U.S. had few reserves of manpower or weaponry. Its arms industry had been weakened by years of underinvestment. Manufacturers, uncertain about future orders, hesitated to ramp up production capacity, and money was in short supply.
In the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt defied this apathy and inaction with the historic defense buildup known as the “Victory Program.” Eighty years later, Kubilius says, Western democracies face a different form of totalitarian aggression. But if America could do it then, Europe can and must do it now. “We have the same responsibility,” the commissioner wrote recently in a personal post, “to define and to implement our ‘Victory Plan.’ This is our moral task. For our grandkids to live also in peace.”
Kubilius is one of the architects of the European Union’s ambitious new rearmament strategy, ReArm Europe Plan/Readiness 2030, approved in principle last month by 26 of the continent’s 27 heads of state. Unlike in the U.S. where it now seems unclear to many whether Russia is a friend or foe, few Europeans are confused about the need for the initiative. Kubilius sums it up with one fact: as things stand today, Russia can produce more weapons in three months than all the NATO member states, including the U.S., can produce in a year.
