NATO’s top commander U.S. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich on Monday vowed to block, blunt and break any Russian attack as part of a new “Theory of Victory,” and underlined that alliance troops would fight even if U.S. forces were engaged elsewhere.
Speaking at the Warsaw Security Forum, Grynkewich outlined how the 32-member alliance would respond to an invasion of NATO territory as concerns grow that Russia could be capable of attacking a NATO member by the end of the decade.
“Our alliance exists to preserve peace,” he said, “but let there be no doubt: should war come, we will block, blunt any attack, and then, if it does not cease, we will break the forces conducting aggression against us.”
The rare intervention by the four-star general to discuss a military blueprint underscores NATO’s effort to deter Russia. It is also aimed at sending a message of NATO unity after a grueling year for the alliance, which was rocked by Donald Trump’s threats to annex Greenland and infighting over the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.
Under the three-part blueprint, NATO would initially use land-based troops — buttressed by air, naval, cyber and space capabilities — to stop an assault, targeting attacking forces and preventing them from seizing territory, Grynkewich said.
NATO would then use sensors and autonomous systems among other capabilities to “overwhelm enemy formations … and their advance,” he said, before using “highly effective precision munitions” and unmanned systems if necessary to “break the [enemy] warfighting system” and “everything that supports” it.
Lithuanian Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said the theory laid out by Grynkewich “will send a strong message to our adversaries that we are going to defend ourselves.”
NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe said he does “not assess that conflict is imminent or inevitable.” But “we will … ensure any attack against any ally proves utterly futile.”
The speech describes a more forceful response if a foe attacks, but its credibility depends on allies having the forces, infrastructure, and coordination to implement the plan.
Asked whether the plan factored in a scenario where the U.S. was engaged elsewhere, Grynkewich said: “It absolutely does account for that, and in fact, it must.”
Under Trump, the U.S. has sought to refocus its military on other priorities such as the Indo-Pacific, homeland security and the Western Hemisphere. U.S. ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said in Warsaw on Monday that Europe only ranks fourth among Washington’s strategic concerns.
“No one should question the commitment of the United States to this alliance,” Grynkewich argued, but added that “ultimately, it’s a political decision about who’s providing troops where.”
Camille Grand, NATO’s former assistant secretary-general for defense investment, said the plan was “a very deliberate effort” to signal that the alliance would be ready to fight with or without large-scale involvement of U.S. forces.
“For my country, fighting with Russians is with or without Americans,” said a separate senior European defense official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely. “We expect them to come, but if they won’t, we will fight anyway.”
Grand added that the blueprint is also an indication that NATO is ready to take a bolder approach toward Moscow by threatening the destruction of its war machine even deep behind the front lines.
That comes as Moscow sent a letter to NATO last month threatening to use its nuclear arsenal if the alliance tried to isolate its Kaliningrad exclave.
Grynkewich warned that NATO would be ready to respond — even with its nuclear arsenal.
“Should an adversary threaten escalation by saber-rattling, or should one actually decide to escalate during conflict, it will not fracture our alliance,” he said. “We should take comfort in our ability to deliver mass effects and the implicit warning that we could match any enemy move up the escalation ladder.”
LYMPNE, England — A Reform UK government would take a “keen look” at Britain’s support to Ukraine, the populist right-wing party’s leader Nigel Farage said Monday.
Farage said Ukraine is “one of the most corrupt countries on earth” and that he is “very worried” about where some of Britain’s money has ended up — while also acknowledging the threat from Russian President Vladimir Putin is now the greatest it has ever been.
The Reform leader added: “I’ve never said we shouldn’t support Ukraine — ever. But I have said I would like to have a keen look to make sure British taxpayers’ money is not being swallowed up in corruption.”
The Ukrainian embassy in London declined to comment.
The U.K. has committed £25 billion to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion, according to government figures published in July 2026. That includes £16 billion of military support, up to £5.6 billion in non-military support and a £3.5 billion cover limit for export finance.
Farage was answering questions at a press conference after Donald Trump deepened the gulf between Washington D.C. and Kyiv by saying he would suspend sanctions on Russian diesel exports. After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticized the deal, Trump said Saturday: “It’s time for Ukraine to get a new president.”
Farage, an old ally of Trump who previously spoke at his campaign rallies, said he did not agree with the U.S. president’s decision to buy diesel from Russia, but criticized EU nations for “buying vast amounts of Russian petrochemicals” during the course of the war.
Farage also declined to agree with Trump’s call for regime change, saying: “I understand that Trump and Zelenskyy have a somewhat tempestuous relationship, so it’s not any particular surprise. At some point, Ukraine needs an election. That’s true if it is to be a country that aspires to have Western-style values. As to when that election comes, we’ll have to see. After all, we did have an election during World War Two.”
Asked if there is a limit to his support for Ukraine, Farage added: “No one’s support for Ukraine is limitless, is it? Is [U.K. Prime Minister] Andy Burnham’s support for Ukraine limitless? No, it’s not. But do we need to go on supporting Ukraine?
“Look, this is one of the most corrupt countries on earth. We know that. I’ve been very, very worried about where some of our money has gone. And goodness me, Zelenskyy’s administration has been rocked by corruption claims, which perhaps makes at some point a general election there an important thing to do.
“But I am in no doubt at all that Putin now poses a greater threat than he’s posed at any point.”
Farage accused his critics of a “willful attempt to misconstrue” comments he made in 2024, when he said the eastward expansion of NATO and the EU gave Putin “reason to his Russian people” to justify the war. Farage said at the time: “We provoked this war. Of course it’s his fault — he’s used what we’ve done as an excuse.”
Farage said Monday that he believes NATO has been a “huge success over many, many years” and Britain’s role in the alliance is “a vital one, as a bridge between Europe and America, and keeping America on side with NATO.”
Right-wing rifts
Reform’s opinion poll lead ended in the summer and the party now trails four points behind Burnham’s center-left ruling Labour Party in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls. Polls currently predict that the right-wing vote would be split between Reform and the Conservative Party in a general election, due by 2029.
While Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch said last week that she would sooner force a second general election than form a governing pact with Reform, Farage said he “would work with anybody from any party” after an election to see his plans through.
Farage was speaking at an industrial estate in Kent to pledge a series of hardline reforms to the migration system, including halting all asylum claims for five years and deporting anyone left on the waiting list for a decision.
Reform officials previously said that Farage planned to meet France’s National Rally Leader Marine Le Pen in late October, around the time the party holds its conference, and that he was examining a possible visit to Ukraine.
Farage avoided saying, when asked by POLITICO, if he would travel to meet leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Instead he appeared to suggest that Reform was a more moderate alternative to far-right politics rising up in parts of Europe.
“I have friends in the AfD. I have some of the AfD I’m less certain about,” he said. “But it is quite ironic when people attack Reform and say Reform is extreme. I’ll tell you what. There is a politics now developing in Europe directly as a failure of migration policy that would make most people in Reform blush. And this is why our fighting the next general election and winning it is so important — because it might just be the last chance to re-establish trust and faith in the electoral system.”
The EU approved its biggest package of sanctions against Russia since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, targeting the Kremlin’s ability to make missiles.
The bloc’s foreign ministers approved the package during a meeting in Luxembourg, adding 1,600 new listings “targeting Russia’s military-industrial complex,” the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said on X.
“This is the single largest expansion of our sanctions list since Russia started its war,” she added. “More than half are connected to the production chain for ballistic missiles.”
The new listings follow the removal of Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman, two of Russia’s wealthiest men, from the sanctions list last month after heated, down-to-the-wire talks between EU capitals.
Monday’s approval was a formality after EU countries agreed on the sanctions list in earlier talks.
“We are making it significantly harder, slower and more expensive for Russia to produce the weapons it uses to kill Ukrainians,” Kallas said.
The sanctions list will last for three years before it needs to be renewed.
BRUSSELS — The EU should use frozen Russian assets to fund Kyiv’s defense, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said, adding that doing so would counter claims from the far right and far left that Europe is footing the bill for the war.
Using the assets would reassure “skeptical audiences across Europe” ahead of a year of major elections, Sybiha said, in a nod to votes in countries including France and Italy in 2027. In France, presidential frontrunner Marine Le Pen has vowed to end financial aid to Kyiv; in Italy, Roberto Vannacci is challenging Giorgia Meloni from the right and opposes continued support for the war-torn country.
The G7 immobilized roughly €300 billion in Russian central bank reserves in 2022, including about €210 billion in the EU — most of which are held at Belgian financial depository Euroclear. Belgium, backed by Italy, rejected an EU proposal late last year to use these assets to back a loan for Ukraine, citing legal and financial risks and fears of Russian retaliation.
The push gained fresh momentum over the summer, when Sweden, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain urged the European Commission to reopen talks and explore ways to overcome Belgium’s objections. But Belgium again shot the idea down.
Sybiha sought to address the Belgian concerns, saying Ukraine’s finance ministry had proposed placing the assets under collective EU control, making the decision to use them and any liability a shared responsibility.
“Belgium’s exposure is a reason to share the risk, not to do nothing,” Sybiha said.
Sybiha also rejected concerns that using the reserves would undermine the euro or weaken Europe’s leverage in future peace talks. The euro’s credibility, he wrote, “rests on Europe’s ability to defend order and principles.” And the leverage provided by the frozen assets “is not in holding the money — it is in spending it.”
He dismissed the risk of Russian retaliation against Western companies, saying Moscow had already seized control of European business assets, including Nestlé, Auchan and Metro. “Keeping the assets immobilized did not deter it,” he wrote.
Russia plans to spend a record €180 billion on its military in 2027, more than 40% above its 2026 spending, Sybiha said. He called on EU leaders to act this fall, warning that a delay would prolong the war and raise the cost of defending Ukraine.
WARSAW — NATO must modernize its military infrastructure to move forces and equipment from Western to Eastern Europe “where we would expect any future conflict,” U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said Monday.
Speaking on a panel at the Warsaw Security Forum, Whitaker’s comments came as Washington reviews its military presence on the continent — with the ambassador saying that Europe ranks fourth among Washington’s strategic priorities, behind homeland security, the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific.
He pointed to outdated military bases, fuel supply chains and agreements governing the stationing of American troops in Europe as areas requiring attention under the ongoing U.S. force posture and basing review.
He emphasized the importance of military mobility and “moving things from the west to the east,” citing discussions with EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius. European officials warn that Russia could be ready to attack a NATO country by the end of the decade.
Whitaker did not announce any decisions to relocate or withdraw American forces. He nevertheless made clear that Washington is reassessing its global commitments to avoid spreading its military resources too thin.
“Superpowers and great global powers have mostly had challenges when they get overextended,” Whitaker said, adding that U.S. President Donald Trump wants allies to become “capable and not dependent.”
“The United States isn’t stepping back. We’re just asking you to step forward,” he said.
Whitaker also criticized countries that are falling short of their defense-spending commitments.
He said he had recently delivered a “very strong message” to political leaders in Czechia. The country’s defense spending for this year is approximately 1.8% of GDP, falling short of NATO’s current 2% benchmark.
European governments must continue strengthening their armed forces, he argued, warning that the continent still lacks many of the capabilities it needs to defend itself.
Kubilius, meanwhile, stressed the need to reduce Europe’s military dependence on Washington, highlighting EU efforts to develop its own drone defenses, satellite communications and surveillance capabilities.
Polish presidential adviser Marcin Przydacz, also on the panel, urged Western European allies to accelerate defense spending while emphasizing that NATO, rather than the EU, must remain responsible for Europe’s collective defense.
A Russian attack that killed at least 17 people including three children in Ukraine are Moscow’s “thanks for the lifting on sanctions on diesel exports,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday.
A series of strikes on the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia also injured at least 18 people, including three children, Ukraine’s state emergency services said on Saturday afternoon.
“People continue to be searched for under the rubble of destroyed houses. Rescue operations continue,” said Mykhailo Semikin, acting head of Zaporizhzhia regional military administration in a Telegram post.
“Today, Russia expressed its thanks for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia,” Zelenskyy said on X.
The strikes took place just one day after U.S. President Donald Trump announced he would temporarily lift sanctions on Russian diesel in a bid to bring soaring prices down.
Ukrainian officials were meeting on the same day with European and U.S. officials in Miami in a fresh diplomatic push to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Zelenskyy criticized the deal on Friday and accused Trump of using the peace talks as a “smokescreen” while pursuing a deal with the Kremlin.
Even though the talks were supposed to last two days, the Ukrainian team decided to return home earlier then planned “because they managed to talk everything through earlier,” a senior official familiar with the matter told POLITICO. Ukraine will continue to bomb Russian oil refineries despite US-Russia deals, the official added.
The Ukrainian armed forces said Saturday they struck a major oil facility in Russia’s Samara region overnight.
Zelenskyy is currently busy coordinating with Europeans and preparing several high-level meetings, the official said. He spoke on Saturday with leaders of France, Norway and Finland.
“Russian strikes killed over 80 Ukrainian civilians in two days. Moreover, it has stepped up its hybrid attacks against Europe, both EU Member States and NATO Allies,” Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said Saturday. “Suspending sanctions on Russian diesel provides Moscow with more revenues to wage war.”
“On Monday, EU Foreign Ministers intend to approve the biggest set of sanctions listings targeting Russia’s war machine since the start of the war,” Kallas added.
BRUSSELS — It was meant to be Europe’s escape from the web of Chinese critical mineral supremacy.
But two years after it took effect, the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act is not on schedule. Just one in four critical mineral projects granted special status under the law is on track to be ready on time, according to new analysis shared with POLITICO.
On Friday, EU industry chief Stéphane Séjourné will unveil a new list of critical mineral projects that will receive privileged access to funding, accelerated permitting and help from Brussels to find buyers.
The idea is to make Europe a major producer of materials essential to clean energy, tech, and defense manufacturing. It’s currently a heavy importer.
But progress on the first round of 47 projects, announced early last year, offers little hope for the bloc’s ambitions.
“At least one in three mining and processing strategic projects is either late, stalled, at risk, or no longer exists, and only about a quarter are clearly on track,” said Diego Marin, policy officer for raw materials at the European Environmental Bureau, citing publicly available sources. The findings will be published in a report later this month.
Financial, regulatory, and political hurdles are blocking European mining projects, the industry says, despite the Critical Raw Materials Act’s aim to speed up the time it takes to get the shovels in the ground.
The EEB’s findings were echoed in an industry call in August, where 23 projects named in the first round claimed some were facing “immediate jeopardy,” in a letter sent to the Commission and obtained by POLITICO.
Those same companies also believe that announcing more strategic projects will create more problems. However, a Commission official dismissed that claim, saying that some of those projects had received direct funding from the Commission, and claiming the companies believe new projects would “dilute their status.”
The EU unveiled 47 projects in March 2025, covering 14 of the bloc’s 17 designated strategic raw materials—from lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite for electric vehicle batteries and rare earths for magnets used in wind turbines, to tungsten for military equipment and gallium for semiconductors. It also includes 13 projects from outside the bloc.
These were designed to deliver the EU’s raw materials targets: by 2030, the bloc aims to mine at least 10 percent, process 40 percent and recycle 25 percent of its own needs, while sourcing no more than 65 percent of any one material at any processing stage from a single non-EU country.
Breaking Europe’s dependence on China for key metals is at the heart of the policy, a goal European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen highlighted in her State of the Union speech last month. “We are more than 80% dependent on China for many critical raw materials [and] 90% for some rare earths,” she lamented.
Outgoing Euromines president and former CEO of Swedish miner LKAB Jan Moström, who says Europe is a long way from meeting its targtets, in an interview at the 2025 European Industry Summit in Antwerp. | John Thys/AFP via Getty Images
A Commission official said that if all goes to plan, the EU will meet its 2030 goals for lithium, cobalt and rare earths, but results for other materials are mixed, with shortfalls in nickel processing and recycling and across the manganese supply chain. They did not give hard figures, though.
Industry skeptical
“Unless something happens that is absolutely not foreseen today, we will be far, far away from reaching the targets, even if they are quite low,” said Jan Moström, former CEO of Swedish mining giant LKAB and outgoing president of Euromines. He said better access to financing and faster permitting was key.
The EU is under additional time pressure as a pause on China’s export controls on rare earth minerals is due to expire in January.
Global think tank ODI found in June that “out of 60 projects, 14 are unlikely to contribute by 2030 because their estimated start of production falls between 2029 and 2031,” and that “three out of four are either behind their expected schedule or impossible to verify using up-to-date public evidence” — backing up the EEB’s numbers.
A European Court of Auditors report this year also revealed that “many projects will struggle to secure supply for the EU by 2030” and that there was “no proper tracking of results.”
The European Commission questioned the current validity of the ECA’s findings, saying it “audited a period of policy that does not cover everything we’ve done since this mandate. So the Court of Auditors had very relevant points that we took into account in our policy, but should absolutely not be seen as a fair assessment of the work we’ve done with the von der Leyen Commission number two,” said a Commission official.
Desperate times
Since adopting the Critical Raw Materials Act in 2024, Brussels has rolled out a flurry of initiatives to get projects moving. They include a proposed critical raw materials center, for which Parliament is seeking €2 billion; the “RESourceEU” plan that’s mobilized more than €2 billion; a mechanism to identify suppliers; and plans to revise water rules and speed up environmental impact assessments.
But industry leaders say the EU is moving too slowly.
“I’m still to be convinced that it makes any difference,” Michael Staffas, CEO of Swedish miner Boliden, told POLITICO when asked about the benefits of being designated as a strategic project. Boliden’s subsidiary Somincor was granted strategic status for a copper and zinc mine in Portugal.
The “strategic project” label promised faster permitting and help securing public and private finance, with permitting deadlines of 27 months for mines and 15 months for processing and recycling projects.
“In Sweden you have different authorities that can basically object to a permit process and that in itself creates way longer time than 27 months, just the legislation,” said LKAB CEO Johan Menckel, whose company currently has three strategic projects.
One is the Per Geijer deposit, home to Europe’s largest rare-earth deposits, which the local indigenous Sámi community opposes, arguing it would harm their reindeer-herding tradition.
A 2023 view from the highest point of the Covas de Barroso complex in Portugal, the site of Europe’s largest lithium deposit. | Henrique Campos/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
Karin K Niia, a Sámi reindeer herder, said in comments that the EU will be complicit in cultural genocide if the project goes ahead.
Europe’s lithium hope
Europe’s biggest bet to escape China’s foothold in battery metal supply chains is the Barroso lithium mine in Portugal, run by UK-based mining company Savannah Resources. The company says the mine could supply enough lithium for around half a million electric-vehicle batteries a year.
“I don’t think the strategic project stamp and the [Critical Raw Materials Act] have been absolutely essential, but it wasn’t also supposed to be. It was supposed to, in my understanding, be important to set a framework under which Europe can do the right thing faster, better, and for the better benefit of the next generation of Europe,” Savannah’s CEO Emanuel Proença said, calling it just another piece of a very big puzzle.
Europe’s lithium-refining ambitions are also faltering: France’s Viridian Lithium went bankrupt after failing to secure funding, while Portugal’s José de Mello Group was unable to finance its planned €492 million refinery — despite both projects winning strategic status in the EU’s first round.
Viridian Lithium spokesperson Luc Pez said the strategic project label was a ‘curse.’
Rio Tinto’s Jadar project in Serbia, one of the non-EU projects to gain strategic-project status, was meant to provide double Barroso’s lithium capacity and cater to up to 25 percent of Europe’s demand. That, however, was suspended because of permitting issues and became a widely protested project amid allegations of corruption and environmental concerns.
That reflected the simple fact that people don’t like mines in their backyard — an obstacle for mining projects worldwide, but especially in Europe, which is densely populated and has strong civil society.
“These projects had strategic status, EU money and fast-track permits, and it still wasn’t enough,” said EEB’s Marin. “If the supply push can’t deliver even under those conditions, the EU has to take demand reduction and sufficiency seriously. We can’t permit our way out of a market problem.”
BRUSSELS — NATO is seeking to reassure Russia that an upcoming nuclear drill in Italy is nothing to fear, with tensions high between the alliance and Moscow.
NATO announced Thursday that 17 allies will participate in the annual Steadfast Noon exercise from Oct. 13-23. But this year, the exercise follows a tense exchange of letters between Moscow and NATO after allies conducted exercises near Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave in August.
“We have been doing this every year and … this is also a clear message to nations like Russia that there is no need to worry,” said Nassima Barrows, NATO’s nuclear policy director. “This is predictable and there is no reason to miscalculate.”
“Its purpose is really essentially to train our allied forces so that we are ready and prepared, and we ensure the safety and security of our nuclear capability,” she told reporters.
Following the previous NATO exercises, Moscow sent a letter to the alliance threatening to hit allied territory and mentioning the use of its nuclear arsenal — a move that NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte publicly rebuked last week.
Tensions are rising as European countries accuse Russia of sabotage and growing so-called hybrid attacks across the continent.
“Our intention is to really keep things calm,” said a senior NATO official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely. Russian officials “keep ratcheting up this mood of tension and we are going to keep trying to calm the mood.”
U.S. Col. David Bull, chief of NATO’s nuclear operations, said the exercise has garnered “similar” participation to previous years and involves everything from a “simulated alert to [a] live flight exercise” — but “no live nuclear weapons.”
It will also feature dual-capable aircraft and ground troops to support the exercise and train on loading, fueling, and maintaining planes, a senior NATO military official added.
Russia’s embassy to Belgium didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Insurgent far-right parties are seizing on cost-of-living grievances and waning support for defense spending.
By VICTORJACK, JACOPO BARIGAZZI and CHRIS LUNDAY in Brussels
Illustration by Natália Delgado/POLITICO
The growing popularity of far-right parties across Europe is sparking worries in NATO that they could weaken public support for rearmament and military aid to Ukraine as risks grow of a confrontation with Russia.
In France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Poland and Romania, these parties are looking to turn voters’ cost-of-living concerns into opposition to aid for Kyiv, and rejection of higher national defense budgets and a greater role for the EU in defense — although each party has often sharply diverging views on those issues.
France’s National Rally leader Marine Le Pen last month called for limiting aid to Ukraine, saying: “financially, we can’t do it anymore.”
Roberto Vannacci, a former general and MEP who leads the far-right National Future party, which is increasingly challenging Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, called for a rethink of defense spending. “Let’s evaluate whether this military spending is justified: in my opinion, it isn’t, especially at a time when commodity prices are hitting record highs,” he said last week.
The challenge for Europe’s mainstream parties is how to sustain support for higher defense budgets even if that means competing with welfare and other priorities.
“People are struggling with the rising cost of living across the board … so there’s room for populistic rhetoric about how much should we support Ukraine financially, or how much should we invest in defense,” said Janne Kuusela, permanent secretary at Finland’s defense ministry.
The dilemma is sharpening as several large NATO members, including France, Italy and Poland, face elections in 2027, when far-right parties stand a real chance of coming to power. Many countries are also beginning talks on next year’s budgets.
For NATO, a spending slowdown would complicate efforts to meet the alliance’s target of spending 5% of GDP on defense and security by 2035. Four NATO diplomats, granted anonymity to speak freely, said the risk is a growing concern, though some said its effects may not be clear until next year’s budget cycle.
“We’re already in a situation where we need to catch up” with Russia, said a NATO military official. “So far, we’re on a positive trajectory — if someone closes the faucet, there’s a risk of losing capabilities.”
Turning the tide
European countries and Canada are expected to spend $634 billion on core defense needs this year, an 11% hike relative to 2025. But public support has limits.
In eight European countries, an average of 46.2% of respondents said they would not back higher defense spending if it meant higher taxes, while 35.5% were in favor, according to an August poll assessed by the European Council on Foreign Relations and shared with POLITICO. More people were opposed to increasing taxes to finance military spending in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland. Respondents in the Netherlands, Sweden and the U.K. were more likely to accept higher taxes for military spending.
Protests against higher defense spending have taken place in Rome, Brussels and Madrid this year, with demonstrators criticizing cuts to funding for hospitals, universities and social services.
A damaged residential building is seen in Kyiv after a Russian missile strike on July 6, 2026. | Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images
Support for Ukraine is declining as well, according to NATO’s internal polling from this spring, falling from 59% in 2025 to 55% this year, with lethal aid the least popular form of support.
Far-right pushback on defense varies across Europe and falls broadly into three categories: opposition to military aid for Ukraine; rejection of EU-level defense projects; and criticism of defense spending more broadly. Yet all threaten to halt the continent’s effort to rearm rapidly and jointly — and limit Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
The right’s political foes warn that opposition plays into the Kremlin’s hands. “The pressure from the right doesn’t actually come from the right, but largely from Moscow,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said. Parties such as National Rally and the AfD have longstanding ties with Russia, though they have sought to shake off their links in recent years.
Defense spending pressure
The political risk varies by country. Le Pen is a front-runner to become French president, while the AfD has made gains at the regional level but is unlikely to take national office soon.
Far-right gains are putting centrist parties under pressure to defend higher spending or consider cuts to retain public support.
“There is a risk that the formally pro-European mainstream across Europe might be too timid to spend … as would be necessary on defence,” said Paweł Zerka, senior policy fellow at the ECFR.
While Le Pen’s National Rally has indicated that she would respect France’s current trajectory of increasing military spending, Italy’s Meloni last week proposed spending €8 billion less on defense than the government’s initial proposal amid pressure from her far-right coalition partner, the League. Meloni last week proposed spending €8 billion less on defense than the government’s initial proposal amid pressure from her far-right coalition partner, the League.
“You can’t spend on weapons what you can’t spend on pensions, excise tax relief, or utility bills,” Claudio Borghi, a League senator, said last week.
In Poland, President Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing Law and Justice party, tried but failed to block access to nearly €44 billion in EU SAFE defense loans, saying the scheme risked making Poland dependent on Brussels and saddling future generations with debt.
Pressure to rethink defense spending could make it harder for NATO members to fund the capabilities officials say are needed to deter Russia, as capitals begin talks this month on determining the alliance’s war plans, which are due by 2029.
A slowdown by larger members such as France and Italy would have broader effects because they account for a greater share of defense investment and aid to Kyiv, one of the NATO diplomats said.
“If bigger countries stop making progress, then NATO will stop making progress,” the diplomat said. “You weaken NATO, you weaken Europe’s ability to defend itself, and you make Ukraine … more vulnerable.”
It could also affect the sum earmarked for defense in the EU’s next long-term budget if talks stretch on into next year, said Guntram Wolff, a senior fellow and defense economics analyst at the Bruegel think tank.
“Nationalists are all only interested in their country, they don’t want to work together with other European countries,” said German lawmaker Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who chairs the European Parliament’s defense committee.
Pete Hegseth is odd. This isn’t just a personal opinion, though there’s no doubt that he gets widely mocked for his carefully cultivated public persona, which is a mix of megachurch preacher, gym rat and Robert Duvall’s napalm-huffing character in “Apocalypse Now.” The fact that the defense secretary is different is simply a statistical reality.
It’s not just that he’s a white evangelical Christian, a group that, according to PRRI, makes up only 13% of the population. Hegseth’s church, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, is extreme even for the right, with a leader who argues against women’s suffrage and teaches that slavery was the height of “mutual intimacy and harmony” between the races. Even within MAGA, those remain fringe positions, despite great efforts by some Christian nationalists to reignite “debate” on such long-resolved issues.
All this means it’s hard not to laugh when Hegseth pontificates about his hatred of “weirdos.” Although he has a war to fight in Iran, somehow he finds time to focus his attention on what he clearly sees as the greater battle: remaking the military according to the demands of his very white, very male, very right-wing vision.
“No fatties, no t******s, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals,” Hegseth said during a Sept. 30 speech at the U.S. Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. He didn’t explicitly say “no women,” but his kicker — “with testosterone testing on top” — made the implication plain. The “no beardos” demand may seem strange, but as Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times explained, it’s coded racism. Hegseth ended medical exemptions that allowed beards for people, mostly Black men, with certain skin conditions. This may explain why he has no problem when white men have beards, as seen on his church leader, Doug Wilson, or the many celebrities the defense secretary likes to take photos with. (Hegseth himself sported a beard in 2018.)
“Wimps,” “radicals” and “weirdos” are more ambiguous pejoratives, but Hegseth’s recent actions suggest his definitions are expansive enough to cover the vast majority of Americans. He’s been on a firing spree, demanding a 20% cut of the Pentagon’s top brass in an apparent effort to expunge those he deems “woke.” The move comes after nearly two years of blocking promotions for and pushing out Black and female military leaders. Hegseth also rewrote the list of religions recognized by the Pentagon, narrowing from over 200 faith categorizations to a mere 31 — 22 of which are Christian. He claims this is to simplify the bureaucracy, but his motives are likely more disturbing: to stigmatize non-Christians and restrict the definition of “Christian.” The Air Force is already forcing service members to register their religious beliefs under the truncated list, drawing criticism from atheists and others whose belief systems are not included as options.
Last week, Hegseth upped the ante by announcing the formation of the Office of Religious Affairs “to strengthen the moral, ethical and spiritual readiness of our warfighters.” Despite boilerplate claims that this action will not “compel religious participation” or “diminish the free exercise rights” of service members, both the policies and pomp surrounding the announcement made it clear that the goal is to promote Hegseth’s version of Christianity — and shame anyone who does not adhere to it. The office will be run by the defense secretary himself and, in ominous language, promises to fund “research, technology, and analytical tools to support and assess spiritual fitness,” which sounds like a data-gathering operation to ensure troops meet Hegseth’s esoteric views on proper religious practice.
“Our department is, you might say, putting on the full armor of God,” Hegseth said in his announcement, using language from the Book of Ephesians that will be sure to resonate with Christian evangelicals.
Taken together, this purge helps clarify what Hegseth means when he’s talking about “weirdos” and “wimps,” as well as other slurs like “t******s.” He’s hostile to women, the LGBTQ+ community, people of color and anyone who doesn’t adhere to his vision of conservative Christianity — although it’s worth noting that with his message of peace and love, Jesus Christ himself would not be accepted by Hegseth as a Christian.
The secretary may have gone to Princeton University, but he hasn’t yet grasped the concept of irony. The people he deems “weirdos” far outnumber those in his narrow category, presumably of non-weirdos, many times over.
Hegseth has tried to justify his position and rhetoric by arguing that a proper military should only contain “the real 1%” of supposedly superior people. But as Eliot Cohen of The Atlantic notes, this claim is ignorant of history. You need large numbers to win wars, which inherently means that armies can’t be elitist institutions.
Hegseth has a real math problem on his hands. His “real 1%” of alleged non-weirdos is just not enough people to staff a modern military, especially in times of war. His solution appears to be to hit the road, trying to recruit more mini-Hegseths to enlist. On Sept. 19 he embarked on the Send Me Tour in an effort to reach out to people in white evangelical-heavy parts of the country with a Bible-heavy pitch about how Jesus wants them to fight for their country. Both the tour’s name and the secretary’s stump speech rely heavily on Isaiah 6:8; Hegseth equates God’s call to the prophet to be faithful with his own plea for evangelicals to join the military.
In a response video, Sen. Raphael Warnock, the Democrat from Georgia who is also an ordained minister with multiple theology degrees, didn’t mince his words. “Pete Hegseth is busy twisting the scriptures yet again . . . When Isaiah answers that call, it is not a call to go into battle.” Instead, Warnock said, “Isaiah challenges corruption” and “those who would crush the poor.”
Those objectives, of course, are not remotely Hegseth’s. His creation of a hierarchy that places white, straight men at the top and relegates everyone else into an underclass of “weirdos” and “wimps” ignores the Bible’s historical context — and actual meaning. Anyone who doubts that can simply examine his behavior in office and his monomaniacal focus on sorting America’s service members into a worthy-unworthy dichotomy, based solely on how much they adhere to his own self-serving ideals of what a soldier should look like.
“At the strong request of the United States Military, and for National Security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, planned since the Civil War Era many years ago, at the Receptive Circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge, into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch,” Trump wrote Sunday on Truth Social.
Trump said the proposed 250-foot structure would house and rapidly deploy “large numbers of drones,” position snipers on its roof and plaza and store “large quantities of sniper ammunition.” He also claimed Washington is the only one of the world’s “59 top cities and Capitals” without a triumphal arch.
But the post raises questions about both the history of the project and its newly announced military purpose.
The Pentagon has not publicly identified which part of the military requested the conversion or what security threat the facility would address. A military official said the Defense Department had nothing to add beyond Trump’s post. Retired Marine Col. Mark Cancian also questioned the need for such a facility when the active Army installation Fort Myer sits roughly a mile away.
Trump’s claim that the arch has been “planned since the Civil War Era” also oversimplifies a complicated history. Plans for a Potomac crossing date to before the Civil War, and various monumental arches were proposed in Washington during the late 19th century. But the plan Congress approved in 1925 for Arlington Memorial Bridge called for two 166-foot columns near what is now Memorial Circle, not Trump’s triumphal arch. Those columns were never built.
The claim involving “59 top cities and Capitals” is similarly unclear. Trump did not identify the 59 cities or the source of the comparison. GlobalSecurity.org examined a similar claim Trump made earlier this year and found that, among the world’s 65 largest metropolitan areas, only eight had what it classified as significant triumphal or memorial arches. Fifty-seven, including Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow and Los Angeles, did not.
The military conversion could also add questions to an already complicated approval process. The project still lacks final approval from the National Capital Planning Commission and faces a federal lawsuit challenging Trump’s authority to build it without congressional authorization. The Washington Post reported Sunday that a military complex had not previously been raised during required historic-preservation consultations.
The Federal Aviation Administration cleared the 250-foot structure Friday, finding it would not pose a substantial hazard to aircraft using nearby Reagan National Airport. Two days later, Trump announced plans to rapidly deploy “large numbers of drones” from the site. There is no indication the FAA’s determination evaluated drone operations from the proposed complex.
It is not the first time Trump has added a national-security purpose to one of his disputed construction projects.
The White House ballroom was initially promoted as a venue for state dinners and other large events. As the project faced legal challenges, Trump increasingly described it as a “Military Complex/Ballroom” and emphasized underground security infrastructure as part of its purpose.
Now the arch, initially promoted as a monument commemorating America’s 250th anniversary, has undergone a similar transformation. Whether the military requested that transformation — and why it needs a drone and sniper facility at Memorial Circle — remains unexplained.
It should come as no surprise that wars break armies. The chaotic, destructive nature of battle tends to wound even the most highly trained armed forces. Today, however, the U.S. military is being impaired not by some determined overseas enemy but rather by its own leadership in a fratricidal war against imagined cultural bogeymen. The harm has become so discernible that Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., called this week for an impeachment vote on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Massie’s push for removal, while unexpected, is not without merit. In his crusade to decontaminate the ranks from the supposed virus of “DEI” — diversity, equity and inclusion — Hegseth is waging a malicious campaign against his own troops with little, if any, precedent in American history.
True, there have been moments in the nation’s martial past when social progress and military resistance sat in uneasy tension. The Truman administration’s desegregation of the armed forces or President Bill Clinton’s desire to allow gay and lesbian service members to serve openly exemplified clashes when the very meaning of American democracy seemed to be negotiated among those in uniform.
Previous American wars equally have highlighted both the fraught nature of serving in higher-level leadership roles and in lower ranks where war’s injurious effects are most grievously felt.
During the Second World War, for instance, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall gained a harsh reputation for firing senior officers who didn’t pass muster in the crucible of combat. Yet the future secretary of state — and architect of the Marshall Plan — was most concerned with competence and candor leading to military effectiveness. As one account suggests, Marshall “was not looking for conformists. He believed in the respectful, confidential expression of dissent.” In a time of war, personal ideologies mattered little to national security.
If young Americans serving in uniform during World War II were unaware of how Marshall approached general officer accountability, they certainly felt war’s ravages up close and personal. Marine Eugene B. Sledge, a Pacific theater veteran, marveled at “the incredible cruelty that decent men could commit when reduced to a brutish existence in their fight for survival amid the violent death, terror, tension, fatigue, and filth that was the infantryman’s war.”
The Cold War experience would prove just as injurious, and on more than just the personal level. While veterans of the American war in Vietnam, like Lieutenant Philip Caputo, remembered his men being in a “permanent state of exhaustion,” more senior officers worried about the conflict’s impact on the very health of the U.S. military. Future Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore, who commanded a cavalry unit at the late 1965 Ia Drang battle, fretted how the war was “devastating to the morale and effectiveness of every American unit in combat.” Might the armed forces not survive the ordeal of Vietnam?
Such existential questions endured throughout the post-9/11 global war on terrorism. While pundits and correspondents alike compared the war in Iraq to Vietnam, soldiers and Marines on the front lines struggled to find meaning in their combat tours. As journalist C.J. Chivers, who interviewed scores of fellow veterans, wondered: “Had it been worth it? Have they helped? Why had they been ordered to fight the way they fought?” In such convoluted wars, easy answers were hard to come by.
As in Vietnam, larger questions about the impact of war on military readiness accompanied veterans’ soul-searching. Some wrote anxiously about the “strain . . . being felt throughout the services, in terms of wear and tear on the troops, their families, and their equipment.” Others opined that American strategy lay “dead,” the victim of a hyper-focused counterinsurgency approach that favored tactics over the more important challenge of matching national resources to policy aims.
If the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had “broken” some American servicemembers serving overseas, making for a difficult reintegration back home, they apparently also had fractured the very organizations to which those in uniform belonged.
While the ongoing war in Iran consumes strategic military reserves for ostensibly little strategic gain, the defense secretary persists in targeting the very men and women tasked with carrying out the president’s foreign policy objectives.
Hegseth’s cultural war, however, is far different — and, potentially, far more damaging. While the ongoing war in Iran consumes strategic military reserves for ostensibly little strategic gain, the defense secretary persists in targeting the very men and women tasked with carrying out the president’s foreign policy objectives. The fratricide is nearly all-encompassing.
Unlike any defense secretary before him, Hegseth has inserted himself into promotion board decisions, especially when it comes to selection of officers for promotion to major general. By one account, he has blocked the advancement of more than 80 generals and admirals. His flurry of cashiering officers appears based on little more than targeting those who are not ideologically aligned with the secretary’s worldview.
On another front, his anti-diversity and inclusion crusade continues unimpeded. In a fiery speech to the West Point graduating class in May, Hegseth railed against “woke” and “anti-American ideologies” while castigating those who “embraced the DEI craze.” The message was clear: Only “warriors” need apply to the newly reconstituted profession of arms. Perhaps not coincidentally, adverse promotion decisions have fallen most heavily on Black and female officers.
The secretary’s constant refrain on what we might call “tactical masculinity” oversimplifies the true nature of modern warfare, which is far more complex and multifaceted than his vision of tough and fit infantrymen engaging in hand-to-hand combat. The increasing use of military drones is but one example. But Hegseth’s scorched-earth policies also run the long-term risk of weakening the nation’s armed forces by narrowing recruiting possibilities for an all-volunteer force. An all-white, all-male military is hardly representative of American democracy.
All wars damage the armies that fight them. And, without question, some wars see armies turn against themselves, most infamously in Vietnam, when some 900 “fragging” incidents — attempts on the lives of fellow soldiers — resulted in the deaths of 99 American uniformed personnel.
Yet the current fratricidal war against the U.S. armed forces, championed by its own defense secretary himself, is a phenomenon unlike any other in the nation’s history.
Evaluating the present without the benefit of perspective from the past can be a risky business. At very least, though, Americans today should insist that their civilian leaders don’t wage war against those citizens who have pledged their service for no other cause but the nation’s defense.
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