Looking forward to the results of the congressional midterm elections

Europe's fears of a change in the US position in Ukraine are strengthening

Europe is threatened with the loss of the great sponsor of NATO in Ukraine with the victory of the Republicans.

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Washington is pressing Europe to increase defense spending, but some Republicans have pledged to cut aid to Ukraine if they make gains in next month's midterm congressional elections.

It seems that Europe is heading towards a troubled reality, as it will soon lose the major sponsor of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Ukraine.

With conservatives poised to make gains in the upcoming US elections, it appears that NATO's largest donor to the war effort in Ukraine will be the most restrained in spending in 2023. This prospect highlights the huge gap between aid from Americans and Europeans.

So far, it is still difficult to get all NATO member states to allocate 2% of their economic output to defense spending.

But Europe is now under increasing pressure from the US to allocate more than 2%, and this comes amid the current debate in Europe over how to fill its dwindling military stocks while financing Ukraine's reconstruction.

Europe needs to strengthen its power

However, the prevailing view among Republicans, who polls show they will control both houses of Congress after the November midterm elections, is that Europe needs to consolidate its power. They have it before they ask us to intervene.”

Although European governments have opened their financial coffers and military warehouses to Ukraine at record levels, Washington's military aid still dwarfs all European efforts.

It is a contrast that Republicans are keen to highlight, and they say that the Ukraine war poses a much greater danger to Europe than it poses to the United States.

2% becomes the minimum

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, European capitals have pledged some €200 billion in new defense spending.

NATO allies pledged in 2014 to spend 2% of their GDP on defense within a decade, and more governments are taking that pledge seriously, but President Joe Biden's administration wants them to do more than 2%.

"We expect with our allies to spend more than just 2%," US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, which some European countries may not be able to do given that they have economic problems.

The Biden administration has been softer in embracing Europe rather than bashing its allies, but Republicans are not so keen on being so soft, and if they can control Congress, they will have a greater say in US spending as well as the tone of rhetoric coming from Washington.

"I think we're going to have a recession and we're not going to write a blank check to Ukraine," House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy told Punchball News earlier this week.

Republicans are likely to notice polls showing a small but growing portion of Americans saying the United States gives a lot of support to Ukraine, and that number rose from 7% in March to 20% in September, according to a Pew Research Center poll. to 32% of Republican voters.

Americans do everything

Although Biden continues to ask Congress to approve more aid to Ukraine, observers say there will be more skepticism about that in the coming months.

"It's going to be hard to do because they feel like they're doing all the work when the Europeans are doing nothing," said Max Bregmann, director of the European program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Although Bregman points out that this is “not fair in many respects” given the economic costs of the war on Europe, and said that on the military side, aid to Ukraine and spending on defense industry capabilities is now “the new 2%”, and in European capitals it is Policy makers keep a close eye on Washington.

"For Europeans, the notion that US policy matters, that is, the impact of what happens in the US midterm elections on Washington's allies, is something that is increasingly taken seriously," said Martin Koensis, a researcher at the Paris office of the German Marshall Fund.

Brussels view

But in Brussels, some officials insist there is nothing to worry about.

"There is broad, bipartisan support for Ukraine," said David McAllister, head of the European Parliament's Foreign Relations Committee.

Indeed, although the pro-Donald Trump wing of the Republican Party opposes aid to Ukraine, more traditional Republicans have backed Biden on the cause of aid to Kiev.

"If there is a Republican majority on congressional committees, I would expect that to have an impact on the debate about the quality of weapons being supplied to Ukraine, but at the end of the day, the president maintains significant control over foreign policy," McCallister said in an email.

McCallister, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, said Europe was now increasing its defense investment and aid to Kiev, citing an EU initiative to train Ukrainian soldiers and a recent increase in EU funding to compensate for countries providing military equipment to Ukraine.

European Parliament member Witold Waschickowski from Poland, deputy chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in an email that he does not expect any Republican control of Congress to change policy on Ukraine, while urging Washington to put more pressure on Europe.

"Poland and the countries in eastern Europe will not be able to persuade the Europeans to send aid to Ukraine," added Wassikowski, a member of Poland's ruling Justice and Law Party.

Indeed, the smell of appeasement and expectations of a return to trade with Russia as usual dominates European capitals.

Lily Bayer ■ Politico's Europe correspondent

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