But even if Europe were to enter a war economy in the full sense of the term,
as President Macron suggested in June 2022, it would still be more than a decade before it could acquire the conventional military potential of the United States. If we were to add to this the US nuclear deterrent potential, the basis of the global deterrence set out in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, the defense expenditure of each European state would have to amount, according to some estimates, to 6% or 7% of GDP, from the current 2%. Needless to say, neither the governments nor the public would be keen to do so, especially given the concomitant need for cuts in areas like social support and health.
It is therefore far from certain that Europe alone, even when including the UK and Norway, could withstand high-intensity conventional aggression from Russia. France, whose nuclear strike force is independent, would have to drastically revise its nuclear doctrine, and London, whose deterrent is integrated into NATO (and currently being
updated at a cost of around $38bn) , would have to do the same.