Lawfare Archive: Conversations from Aspen, Part 1: Shashank Joshi on European Security and Iris Ferguson on the Arctic

The Lawfare Podcast

This episode of The Lawfare Podcast features two conversations from the 2025 Aspen Security Forum, focusing on evolving European security dynamic

Key takeaways

Europe is transitioning toward greater defense self-reliance, driven by Ukraine war realities and shifting U.S. posture concerns.
Despite increased European defense spending, reliance on American arms persists due to supply chain limitations and industrial capacity gaps.

Main topics

European defense autonomy
U.S.-Europe security alliance dynamics

Notable quotes

"We now maybe have a number of years to have an orderly transition in European security rather than a chaotic, disorderly transition." – Shashank Joshi

Conclusion

Europe is navigating a complex shift toward greater security independence while managing

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hi, friends and fellow students. Americans living abroad can legally vote in the U.S. election. Register or get tailored support at VoteFromAbroad.org. Look, state deadlines are super close, so don't waste another second. Go to VoteFromAbroad.org now and click Request My Ballot and ask to receive it by email. All you got to do is fill it out and send it back in. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. VoteFromAbroad.org. Speaker 3 (0:38) I'm Sarah Wilrich, Internet Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare Archive for September 19th, 2026. On September 16th, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen formally invited Canada to begin talks to become the EU's first, quote, associate member, unquote. Von der Leyen did not share many specifics about what the new status would mean, but emphasized the need for Europe and Canada to cooperate closely on issues from security to critical minerals and the Arctic. The announcement comes as trade tensions between the U.S. and Canada continue to rise. For today's archive, I chose an episode from July 23, 2025, in which Scott R. Anderson shared conversations he had at that year's Aspen Security Forum with Shoshank Joshi of The Economist and Iris Ferguson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. They discussed Europe's pivot away from the U.S. for its security relationships, the strategic significance of the Arctic, and more. Speaker 5 (1:40) It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson. And today I'm sharing some of the conversations I had with leading policy experts and practitioners on the margin of this year's Aspen Security Forum, which took place last week. The first conversation you'll hear is with Shashank Joshi, the Defense Editor for The Economist. We discussed the new dynamics surrounding European security and the path towards, and implications of, a Europe less dependent on the United States for its defense. Speaker 4 (2:07) Could there be a deal on the Arctic to help build economic prosperity between the United States and Russia and have the Arctic be a place of cooperation? That's one angle. And then the other side is to say, like, we don't need to give any favors to Russia because they don't deserve to be partnered with at all. Speaker 5 (2:25) You'll then hear me talk with Iris Ferguson, who was until recently the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Arctic and Global Resilience and is now at the Center for Strategic International Studies. We talked about the strategic significance of the Arctic and how it plays into the modern dynamics of major power competition. This is only part one of two, so be sure to tune in later this week for more Conversations from Aspen. Here's my conversation with Shashank Joshi, defense editor for The Economist. Speaker 6 (2:53) So Shashank, let me start with this. You moderated a phenomenally interesting panel to kick us off for this weekend with a number of European officials talking about Ukraine, what comes after Ukraine. Ukraine is a seminal moment. It's proven to be a turning point for how Europeans think about security and their collective security. It's no longer Western security. NATO is still a big part of it. It's not necessarily the driver's idea that we need to have a European security model. What surprised you from that panel? What did you take away from it? What did it tell you about the trajectory of European thinking on defense, collective defense, and where we think it might be headed in this moment where the Trump administration's commitment to European security, while still there, is nonetheless in doubt because of his past statements and rhetoric about Europeans, alliances, etc.? Speaker 7 (3:39) Well, hi, Scott. Thanks so much for having me back on. Great to be back on in these beautiful alpine surroundings. Look, let's take a step back. I was at the Munich Security Conference in February. And that was a strangely traumatic moment for Europe because you had Pete Hegseth in Brussels telling European allies, look, you're on your own. You need to lead on conventional defense. Then you had J.D. Vance giving his incredibly pugnacious speech at the Munich Security Conference telling Europeans that they were feckless, effete, repressive societies that needed to get over themselves, causing... you know, conniptions within among Europe, Europe's security elite. And then you had Donald Trump the same day opening talks with Russia over Ukraine, which we sort of knew was coming, but shocked everyone. So the mood was mutinous, panicked, traumatic. We didn't know, where is America going? Could America just walk out of Europe? Could he walk out of NATO as he came close to doing in his first term? Could he withdraw hundreds of thousands of troops from Europe? Could he abandon Ukraine at a stroke and sell Ukraine out to Putin? Fast forward several months. We're talking here now in July. The mood is totally different in Europe. It's much, much more assured, much more calm. The NATO summit at the Hague, which I attended, was seen as a very positive event. Donald Trump attended. He didn't cause great ructions. He praised NATO as he left. Allies agreed a new defense spending target of 5 % of GDP on defense, 3.5 % on defense, plus 1.5 % on infrastructure and defense-related spending. So there is this collective sense of things changing. There is much less acute concern about America's posture in Europe and its abandonment of the continent. There's a recognition that we now maybe have a number of years to have an orderly transition in European security rather than a chaotic, disorderly transition, which would be much harder to manage, and a sense that we're stepping up to make that transition serious. Speaker 7 (5:46) However, I think there is a trust deficit. And whilst Ukraine policy for Europe and European perspective is moving in a good direction, with Donald Trump saying that he will keep selling weapons to Ukraine through Europe, that he will stay involved, the intelligence to Ukraine is still flowing, we should say. There are still some US weapons flowing that are contracted under the Biden administration that I understand are still flowing. So that's also the good. But nobody quite understands whether that will... remain the case, whether after Donald Trump's 50-day deadline, he will change his mind again. And finally, within Europe, as we saw on this panel, where I had contrasting views from the former Icelandic foreign minister, Tordis Dilvedottir, and from Wolfgang Schmidt, who was the former head of the German chancellery, very close to Ola Schultz, this view that on Ukraine, Ukrainians must win, we must help them win, we're still too weak. And the more German view, which was... Let's be realistic. We need to think about a settlement. I think those two strands of thought still coexist, and they are yet to be reconciled in Europe, if that makes sense. Speaker 6 (6:51) So we've got this new plan where the Europeans have bought in to be funding American arms sales to Ukraine. I'm dramatically simplifying the overall ratio. Essentially, European money, American arms. There's a strong logic to that. because Americans have certain unique capabilities. They've already provided a bunch of equipment to the Ukrainians, so you have the classic supply tail problem that you have with any sort of arms sale arrangement. But that still means a lot of spending. I'm assuming that falls in the 5 % cap for a lot of the countries that are contributing to that, whatever the fund is that's going to go to Ukraine, is still being channeled through the United States. It's not building an indigenous defense industry or capability, something we've heard talked about the need for time and time again. What are the barriers to that indigenous capability? And what are the drivers for it in relation to Ukraine? Is it a Ukraine problem? Is there an absent Ukraine? Is there going to be a motivation to develop that capability within Europe? Are we seeing real steps in that direction? First Speaker 7 (7:42) of all, I think it's important to understand that whilst Europeans will buy some American weapons, that that is still a minority of overall European spending, I would guess. The French, I think, have said they will not be buying American weapons. This is quite understandable from a French perspective. proud of their indigenous defense industry and would like to prioritize it. The Brits are spending about $3 billion a year on support for Ukraine. That is embedded within our defense budget. We count it as defense spending, rightly or wrongly. And I would imagine a lot of that is on British weapons. A lot of that is on paying for a drawdown of capabilities we have in our stockpiles and then replacing it. But I think it is true that there is an ongoing debate as to should Europe be buying? whatever it takes to get weapons into the hands of its own armed forces, which is an acute problem given that the British Army has given away all its artillery to Ukraine? Should it be buying European weapons at whatever it takes to get it into the hands of the Ukrainians? And in some cases, stuff we can't make like Patriot anti-ballistic missile interceptors, because it's so urgent, you buy it from wherever it is, whether that's South Korea, the United States, Turkey, or do you say this is a historic opportunity to... put more money into a European defense industrial base and prioritize that. And that's what the French would like to see. That's what the European Commission would like to see, to say, let's build shell capacity here so we're not buying it from the outside. The problem is twofold. One of them is if you need it now, there is stuff you just cannot buy in Europe. There's a capacity constraint. It's not a money constraint. You could throw billions of dollars at the problem. You are not going to buy lots of highly effective... anti-ballistic missile interceptors from a European company. It isn't going to happen. So you have to buy it from outside if you want it now. If you want lots of tanks right now, you know, Rheinmetall and others are not going to be able to give you the whole stock that you need. You'll have to look to the outside world, which is why Poland is buying so many South Korean tanks. They need it now. It's not because they love South Korea. The second problem, Scott, as you probably know very well, is that we're not a single market. When it comes to defense, we're effectively a coalition of 30 plus countries, depending on how you count the United Kingdom, Turkey, non-EU powers, who are developing their own tanks, their own air defense systems, their own guns. And there are some common projects. We're building in the UK a sixth generation combat aircraft with the Italians and the Japanese. The French are building one with the Germans and the Spanish. There's a future main battle tank being collaborated with the French and the Germans. So many, many examples of collaboration, stitching together defense industry, and the European Union is trying to encourage that by saying, you know, you need to do more of this in-house production, in-continent production. But ultimately, we have a fragmented industry. And it's easy to say from the outside, hey, why don't you guys just agree on building one type of... submarine or one type of frigate until you go to the countries and the French say, sounds good, we'll build most of it, right? And you can build the propeller at the back. And others will say, the Spanish will say, no, you do the propeller at the back, we'll do the rest of it. So these defense industrial disagreements are very natural in a fragmented continent of 30 powers, many of whom have big, mature defense industries of their own, Italy, Spain, Poland. Turkey, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, in the case of Saab and air power and very good jets. So again and again, you run into these fragmentation problems. Speaker 6 (11:02) So arms is one part of the equation for a stronger indigenous European defense capability. But another part of it is funding, which we see is maybe the most progress being made, at least so far, in countries' commitments. The third point we haven't heard a lot of talk about is cultural. It's the idea of military service. levels of military service, voluntary participation, size of the military, is unique in Europe in that you have a lot of different cultural perspectives. You have the Baltic, Scandinavian states where there is a strong program for mandatory public service, military service in most cases, although I know there are outs in various capacities. Particularly you look at Finland, you know, more recent NATO member, strong, strong tradition in that regard. For most of Europe, that's become a pretty alien idea. Military conscription participation rates, historically low, although I know they've kind of ticked up in the last few years as I understand it. Are we seeing progress in that direction, about moving towards finding new ways to develop a stronger military personnel capability, either as a standing military or as a reserve capacity, which is obviously something that is really central to the American defense sort of capabilities, that I'm not sure is as prevalent a concept in a lot of