DISINFO: NATO’s defence demands will bankrupt Europe
SUMMARY
Europe will spend itself into bankruptcy if it tries to meet NATO’s draconian new defence demands. Key alliance members like Germany and France would amass an unsustainable fiscal burden, be forced into debt and have to slash social programmes if they accept NATO’s call for a 30% bump in new arms and equipment spending. The example of Germany can be taken, which had a kind of financial policy coup d’état.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about Europe’s economic collapse, part of what some experts have labelled Russia’s economic war propaganda. The goal is to discourage Europe’s plans to increase military expenditure for its self-defence through unsubstantiated economic claims, which ignore actual data and facts about the EU’s massive economic capabilities.
This disinformation story is a direct reaction to the EU program ReArm Europe/Readiness 2030, whose purpose is to establish “concrete legal and financial means to support the defence investments of Member States […] providing financial levers at the immediate disposal of EU Member States to quickly and significantly increase defence investment and defence capabilities”.
The programme aims to ensure Europe’s self-defence capabilities, mostly through a fiscal plan to boost and fund this military enhancement. Contrary to what this disinformation story claims, the plan is specifically designed to ensure its feasibility.
Germany’s decision to remove the previous debt ceiling was not a ‘financial coup d’etat’ but a legitimate decision adopted by more than two-thirds of the upper house of the German Parliament, fully complying with the established legal procedure and with wide backing from most parties across the political aisle.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Europe would go broke helping Ukraine if the US withdraws all support, that Europe justifies the increasing defence budgets with “belligerent” Moscow, that ReArm Europe means the EU is preparing to attack Russia, that Europeans are starving because of NATO-driven confrontation with Russia, or that Brussels works to bankrupt European citizens through its defence strategy.