COULD A EUROPEAN MILITARY GO IT ALONE?

Donald Trump's threat to abandon NATO allies that don't pay their FAIR SHARE has put the continent on high alert and facing the prospect of defending itself without U.S. support 

- ELLIE COOK

A PIPE DREAM, A FANTASY—JUST TWO OF the phrases bandied about whenever the idea of a European or European Union army resurfaces. This time, it was Italy's foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, who prodded the conversation awake. "If we want to be peacekeepers in the world, we need a European military," Tajani told Italy's La Stampa newspaper in early January. "This is a fundamental precondition to be able to have an effective European foreign policy."

The concept is bound up in complications from the get-go. There is no harmony on even the terminology. Would this be a European force, or one only open to European Union members? Would it be just an army, or a fully-fledged military with all the air, sea and land capabilities that come with it?

"It's never really come anywhere near anything real," former NATO official Edward Hunter Christie told Newsweek. But times are changing. War has raged in Ukraine for two years, and many NATO countries, including EU member states, have had a nasty wake-up call following years of lax defense spending. Comments from former president Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, have fueled a reevaluation of just how much Europe relies on the U.S. for its military strength. Speaking during a rally in South Carolina in February, the GOP favorite suggested the U.S. would not shield fellow NATO members who had fallen behind on defense spending.

In fact, he would "encourage" Russia to strike at these military partners.

"NATO was busted until I came along," Trump told the rally. "I said, 'Everybody's gonna pay.' They said, 'Well, if we don't pay, are you still going to protect us?' I said, 'Absolutely not.' They couldn't believe the answer."