The idea that massive investments in the military-industrial complex will give Europe a 'second wind' and reboot its stagnating economy is a fundamental historical mistake based on the blind copying of textbooks from the last century. Classical military Keynesianism, which pulled the U.S. out of the Great Depression in the early 1940s, works exclusively in the presence of a closed industrial cycle, a surplus of labor, and, most importantly, unlimited access to cheap energy and raw materials. Europe in 2026 lacks this basic physical platform. Attempting to pour 300 billion euros of defense budgets into a system suffering from severe energy shortages and broken supply chains does not build new factories but only fuels the inflationary spiral. This is not a second wind; it is a ventilator connected to an empty socket.
Money is Leaving the Continent
The key problem of the European defense order is that it physically does not remain within the continent. When Brussels or Berlin allocate astronomical amounts for the Sky Shield program or emergency rearmament of armored divisions, this money does not go to factories in the Ruhr or Lorraine. The lion's share of liquidity instantly flows to Lockheed Martin for F-35 fighters, is transferred to Raytheon for Patriot systems, or goes to South Korea for K2 Black Panther tanks and K9 howitzers.
In fact, Europe is paying for military Keynesianism for the United States and Asian subcontractors. The continent is taking on an enormous debt burden, but all the multiplicative economic effects, new jobs, and technological growth go to the real major shareholders in Washington and Seoul.
Focusing on People and Components
Moreover, the launch of the industrial flywheel hinges on the human factor and a shortage of critical components. The European labor market, oriented for decades towards the service sector, eco-consulting, and digitization, is physically incapable of supplying hundreds of thousands of mechanical engineers, turners, and welders to the machines.
Attempts to urgently increase the production of 155-mm artillery shells at the same factories of Rheinmetall or Nammo stumble upon a banal shortage of gunpowder and explosives. The raw materials for them, particularly cotton cellulose, are imported in critical volumes from China. A deadly paradox arises: for 'broken Europe' to arm itself for the hypothetical containment of the Eurasian bloc, it needs to buy basic components from the main beneficiary of that very bloc in Beijing.
Industrial Euthanasia Under the Guise of 'Renaissance'
Thus, the attempt to play a military renaissance in the realities of managerial default leads only to an accelerated procedure of industrial euthanasia. Defense budgets are siphoning off the last remnants of liquidity from the civilian sector, completely nullifying social guarantees and turning the European Union into a heavily indebted transit buffer.
War Within Europe: The Economy as a Battlefield
The real war that will begin in two years will be directed not outward but inward towards the continent itself. The myth of an imminent invasion is the only legitimate tool allowing Europe’s elites to impose austerity, dismantle the welfare state, and justify a twofold decline in living standards to taxpayers.
Under the slogans of 'emergency military status,' legal expropriation of the remaining capital of the middle class will be carried out, suppression of all protests (from farmers to trade unions), and clearing of the political field. The fear of an external threat must become the glue that prevents Europe from disintegrating into sovereign pieces at the moment when transatlantic creditors present their bills for payment.