Europe’s Defense Budget: The Theater of the Absurd

In the pantheon of bad habits, Europe ’s allergic reaction to defense spending ranks just below chain-smoking in oxygen tents. Here we have an entire continent that’s spent decades patting itself on the back for building a utopia of social programs, all while treating its defense obligations like a gym membership— it’s technically there, but no one’s using it.

Let’s be blunt: The average NATO country still can’t drag itself across the alliance’s 2% GDP defense spending line, much less give that number a fighting chance in wartime. Germany , Europe’s economic bulldozer, was still flailing as of early 2025, having missed that 2% mark for years before finally coughing up a pledge under pressure from

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