PPI - Radically Pragmatic
  • Donate
Skip to content
  • Home
  • About
    • About Us
    • Locations
    • Careers
  • People
  • Projects
  • Our Work
  • Events
  • Donate

Our Work

Jacoby for Forbes: With Trump In The Wings, Can Europe Agree To Cooperate On Defense?

  • November 26, 2024
  • Tamar Jacoby

Andrius Kubilius drew back the curtain about an hour into his November 6 confirmation hearing as the European Union’s first-ever commissioner for defense and space. A former prime minister of Lithuania and long-time member of the European Parliament, Kubilius told a story about a recent war game simulating a Russian attack on his home country.

The alarming finding of the exercise: Lithuania would be overrun—defeated by the Russians and occupied—well before NATO forces arrived, probably about 10 days later. Lithuania estimates that preparing for such an assault would require it to double its defense spending from nearly 3% of GDP, already higher than all but four European countries, to 6%. (The U.S. spends 3.4%, according to NATO.) “How shall we do it?” a somber Kubilius asked his fellow parliamentarians. “How much the European Union can help us? That is the question to which we need to find an answer together.”

Some 1,000 days after Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, with President-elect Donald Trump threatening to end the fighting on terms that many believe will be favorable to Moscow, Europeans are increasingly worried that war is coming to their doorstep. The past year has seen a sharp escalation of sabotage that European intelligence services attribute to Moscow: arson attacks on a Warsaw shopping mall, a German weapons factory and a Ukrainian-owned logistics firm in London, plus a foiled plot to sabotage a military installation in Germany and a conspiracy to assassinate the CEO of a German arms manufacturer, among other illegal acts. And German intelligence has predicted that Russia could be ready for an armed attack on NATO by the end of the decade.

Keep reading in Forbes.

Related Work

Feature  |  May 14, 2025

Jacoby for Washington Monthly: Zelensky’s Big Istanbul Gamble

  • Tamar Jacoby
Feature  |  May 7, 2025

Jacoby for Washington Monthly: Poland’s Trump Conundrum—and Vice Versa

  • Tamar Jacoby
Press Release  |  April 29, 2025

New PPI Report Slams Trump’s First 100 Days of Foreign Policy as Most Disastrous in Modern History

  • Peter Juul
Publication  |  April 29, 2025

Donald Trump’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad First Hundred Days On Foreign Policy

  • Peter Juul
Press Release  |  April 28, 2025

PPI Statement on Passing of Paul Hofheinz

  • Will Marshall Lindsay Mark Lewis
Op-Ed  |  April 23, 2025

Ainsley and Mattinson for The New European: How Populism Gives Youth Wings

  • Claire Ainsley Deborah Mattinson
  • Never miss an update:

  • Subscribe to our newsletter
PPI Logo
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Donate
  • Careers
  • © 2025 Progressive Policy Institute. All Rights Reserved.
  • |
  • Privacy Policy
  • |
  • Privacy Settings