This commentary is part of the European Leadership Network’s special coverage of the 2026 NATO Summit, which will take place in Ankara on 7-8 July 2026. The series brings together expert voices to examine the key security challenges, strategic questions, and policy debates shaping the future of the alliance before and after the summit.
Ahead of this year’s NATO summit in Ankara, one message has dominated the agenda: Europe must spend more on defence. Faced with Russia’s continued aggression in Ukraine and growing uncertainty about long-term American commitments to the transatlantic relationship, European governments are under mounting pressure to strengthen their military capabilities.
Greater investment in defence is undoubtedly necessary. But treating higher defence spending as the primary solution to Europe’s security challenges mistakes an essential means for the ultimate end.
Simply put: Europe will not become safer by buying more weapons.
At the same time, military power remains indispensable. Russia’s full-scale invasion has demonstrated that credible deterrence cannot be taken for granted and that Europe has neglected its defence capabilities for too long. Strengthening Europe’s armed forces and assuming a greater share of NATO’s collective defence burden are therefore both necessary and overdue. Yet security has never depended on military capabilities alone. It also rests on political cohesion, democratic legitimacy, and the shared values that bind allies together.
This broader conception of security risks being eclipsed by NATO’s increasingly transactional approach. The pressures driving this shift are understandable. For years, many European allies failed to meet NATO’s benchmark of spending two percent of GDP on defence, fuelling long-standing allegations from Washington that Europe was relying too heavily on American military power, with the United States still accounting for roughly two-thirds of total defence spending across the alliance. Meanwhile, the US must balance long-term strategic competition with China alongside enduring commitments in the Middle East. But if NATO comes to be understood primarily as a transactional arrangement – security in exchange for defence spending – the alliance risks forgetting that it was never intended to be merely a military pact, but a political community bound by shared democratic purpose.
Since the signing of the Washington Treaty in 1949, NATO has been a political community built upon democracy, the rule of law, and individual liberty. These shared values are strategic assets. They create trust among allies, facilitate intelligence sharing and military integration, and provide the political predictability necessary for effective cooperation. Citizens are considerably more willing to bear the financial and political costs of collective defence when they believe they are protecting not only their territory but also a community of shared democratic values.
Military capabilities generate raw power, but legitimacy determines whether that power can be mobilised, sustained, and accepted. An alliance without a common political purpose ultimately becomes little more than an empty shell.
Ukraine vividly illustrates this point. Despite immense human suffering, millions of displaced civilians, and enormous economic costs, Ukrainians have chosen integration into the democratic European and transatlantic community rather than subordination to Russian authoritarianism. Their struggle demonstrates that security is also about political identity and the freedom to determine one’s own future. These values remain one of the West’s greatest comparative advantages.
Europe will not become safer simply by buying more weapons. Sabine Mengelberg
The US also has a profound interest in preserving this broader conception of NATO. Washington cannot navigate strategic competition with China, instability in the Middle East, and continued confrontation with Russia alone. It requires capable and politically reliable allies. Europe’s contribution to the alliance therefore extends well beyond military capabilities. The European Union, home to around 450 million people and one of the world’s largest economies, adds considerable economic weight, diplomatic influence, technological capacity, and international legitimacy to the transatlantic partnership. These assets strengthen NATO’s resilience and credibility. A stronger European pillar within NATO should therefore be understood not as an alternative to NATO, but as an essential contributor to its long-term effectiveness.
This emphasis on strengthening defence capabilities is also reflected in this year’s NATO Summit Defence Industry Forum, where allied leaders, defence firms, and investors will focus on expanding production and translating increased defence investment into industrial capacity. These efforts should be understood as one component of a wider understanding of security, rather than as an end in themselves.
As NATO leaders commit themselves to higher defence spending, they should also pursue a more comprehensive security agenda. Europe must strengthen its military capabilities and assume greater responsibility for collective defence. Indeed, European NATO allies and Canada increased defence spending by 20 percent in real terms in 2025 alone, demonstrating that this process is already well underway. At the same time, governments should invest in democratic resilience by safeguarding the rule of law, countering foreign interference and disinformation, and strengthening public trust in democratic institutions. NATO, for its part, should continue to present itself not merely as a military alliance but as a political community united by shared democratic principles, as envisaged in Articles 1 and 2 of the Washington Treaty from its very foundation. These objectives are mutually reinforcing: military power underpins deterrence, while democratic legitimacy supplies the cohesion and public support that make it sustainable.
The question facing Europe is therefore not whether it should invest more in defence. It should. The real question is whether military investment alone can provide the security Europeans seek.
The answer is no.
Europe’s greatest strategic advantage has never been its military capabilities alone. It has been the combination of military strength, democratic legitimacy, political solidarity, and trusted institutions. If these foundations erode, greater defence spending will not compensate for what has been lost. Deterrence may prevent war, but only a resilient democratic community and a shared political purpose can sustain peace.
As NATO prepares for the challenges of the coming decades, Europe should remember that effective grand strategy requires the integration of military, diplomatic, economic, and political instruments in pursuit of long-term security objectives. Judged by that standard, a strategy centred primarily on higher defence spending remains incomplete.
Democracy is not simply a value to be defended; it is a strategic resource that ultimately underpins Europe’s long-term security.
The European Leadership Network itself as an institution holds no formal policy positions. The opinions articulated above represent the views of the authors rather than the European Leadership Network or its members. The ELN aims to encourage debates that will help develop Europe’s capacity to address the pressing foreign, defence, and security policy challenges of our time, to further its charitable purposes.
Image credit: dpa Picture-Alliance Archive
