Europe’s Cognitive Dissonance: Rearmament without Resolve

Joint article with Ryan Dillmann

Pexels/Creative Vix

At the historic NATO summit in The Hague on 25 June 2025, alliance members agreed to raise direct defence spending to 3.5% of GDP, with an additional 1.5% allocated for civil preparedness, security infrastructure, and the defence industrial base by 2035. This decision has been the direct result of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, and various other world tensions, prompting a renewed need for rearmament. Outside of the high politics at the city behind the dunes, how the Dutch public views this decision is another matter. Specifically, public opinion on the task and situation at hand, and how this has been affected by Russian cognitive warfare.

The numbers paint a damning picture of Europe’s cognitive dissonance. In the Netherlands, polling confirms that 71% of the Dutch public now views Russia as an enemy, and 72% are worried about a possible attack, including a cyberattack. Yet, this acute threat perception dissolves when it faces the harsh reality of limited fiscal resources. Moreover, reaching even a modest 3% of GDP for defence spending, a figure many strategists now consider a bare minimum, would require either hikes in taxation (most likely with respect to the value-added tax), or politically radioactive cuts across social security and education budgets. The Dutch Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party made a point of introducing a potential “vrijheidsbijdrage” (“freedom contribution”), which is, effectively, a tax, regardless of how it is politically framed. This is the core of the “guns versus butter” trade-off, and public choice theory dictates the outcome: politicians are focusing on the hypotheekrenteaftrek, a mortgage subsidy costing the state EUR 11 billion annually, because the marginal utility of protecting that immediate household benefit is, for the median voter, far higher than the perceived utility of another armoured brigade.

That Russia is waging cognitive warfare on the Netherlands is acknowledged by its military intelligence service, the MIVD. A cybersecurity advisory was issued on 21 May 2025, jointly with several other European and the US intelligence services, indicating that Russian security services continue to conduct hybrid operations against the United States and its (NATO) allies. One of many purposes for this could be the preparation for a future military conflict with NATO. Russia state-sponsors cyber campaigns targeting Western logistics and technology firms as part of a structural effort that has lasted at least the past two years or more. What is more, while Russia spends the equivalent of EUR 29 million a week on “Strategic Communication” (read: misinformation, propaganda), the EU spends barely a million a week. Despite this being double from last year. This is an uphill media battle that we cannot expect to win without additional resources.

Russia does not solely involve itself with compromising the mental, spiritual and cognitive strength of the Netherlands or public support for Dutch state action. The physical security of this country is also at risk of damage through hybrid operations. A 2024 report by the Algemene Rekenkamer (the Dutch Court of Audit) on the integrity of the Netherlands Armed Forces Integrated Network (NAFIN) has revealed just how ill-prepared the critical data infrastructure is in the event of a major military conflict. NAFIN is the secure government-owned network of fibre-glass cables designed at the turn of the 21st century to provide the military with its own data infrastructure capability. However, over the course of its lifetime, several government ministries, institutes and organisations have been connected to NAFIN, making it no longer exclusively a military network. The Court of Audit tested NAFIN’s security through 3 tests where officials tried to access server rooms without authorisation. In all three tests, access was achieved. In two out of these, an alarm was raised on the internal network, yet no sufficient action was taken by on-site staff. The implications of this lacklustre security cannot be overstated: the massive network failure in the Netherlands on 28 August 2024 that impacted military, Eindhoven Airport, emergency services, municipalities, DigiD, and the Coast Guard was a NAFIN failure.

Any student of War Studies will tell you that, besides weapons, the ability to mobilise society is paramount to a strong defence. Public readiness and willingness to fight are not immune to the influence of state recruitment and marketing efforts to entice its citizens to voluntarily enlist in the armed forces. There has been a mixed recent track record of this in the Netherlands. Kamp van Koningsbrugge is a television programme where 15 ordinary citizens are selected to undergo a tough training programme, advertised as representative of commando training. Despite its watch number success, a MOD staff officer himself attested at a conference that the show had, in fact, been a major blow to military recruitment levels; it imbued a general sense of suffering and pain as part of the usual military routine, something that does not particularly inspire those of this generation to enlist. On the other hand, there has been a significant success story with the introduction of the Dienjaar and Defensity College programmes to recruit young part-time military personnel. The announcement of the Princess of Orange, the Royal heir, joining the latter programme resulted in a 75% increase in applications for Defensity College. Thus, the irony is that the military cannot handle the influx of recruits, rather than low public willingness being the direct problem.

Beneath the fiscal deadlock lies the deeply flawed economics of military labour. The siren call for a return to conscription ignores its staggering opportunity cost. In 2024, Germany's IFO Institute, for instance, calculated that reintroducing the draft for just a quarter of the young population would reduce annual GDP growth by 0.3% due to the disruption in skills acquisition and delayed entry into the workforce. The model is also proving ineffective in practice; Lithuania's revived conscription system, for example, yields 3,500 to 4,500 conscripts per year, a drop in the ocean of any reasonable reserve requirements. From an economic perspective, conscription is not a magic bullet; it is a hidden, highly inefficient tax levied directly on the young. It imposes a massive opportunity cost on a generation already struggling with precarious employment and a high cost of living, forcing them to trade career development or education for military service. One may argue that military service can contribute to one’s practical/technical and leadership skills, but the exact value of this is rather questionable. The market-based solution, a professional army, is efficient but requires competitive wages, a cost the public has shown, via its elected officials, minimal appetite to bear.

This leads to a political paralysis predicated by the median voter theorem, which holds that parties will gravitate towards the centre of public opinion to win elections. With very few EU citizens supporting higher taxes for defence, the political centre is firmly planted in the soil of social spending and the fiscal status quo. The same can be observed at the EU level, with fewer than a quarter of Eurobarometer respondents stating that EU defence spending is a priority. The result is a fractured alliance rife with the free-rider problem. While Poland is committing 4.7% of its GDP to defence, shouldering an immense burden, countries like Spain and Belgium are still struggling to clear the 2% floor, effectively outsourcing their security to their more committed neighbours. This is not just a policy disagreement; it is a calculated gamble by some national governments that others will pay the price for collective security, a rational yet deeply corrosive strategy for a defensive alliance.

This convergence of fiscal reluctance and social resistance creates a state of near-total budgetary paralysis. European governments are making some progress, but it is coming in far too small steps and far too late. They cannot ignore the clear and present danger from Russia without appearing weak on the world stage and alarming their NATO allies. Yet, they cannot implement the obvious solutions without committing electoral suicide. Raising taxes to fund a professional army would be a direct toll on household incomes already squeezed by inflation. Cutting deeply into cherished welfare states to reallocate funds would provoke widespread public backlash and strikes. Proposing conscription would alienate a segment of young voters and their parents. The rational political calculation, therefore, is to do the bare minimum: to talk tough, to incrementally increase spending where possible, and to hope the fundamental problem simply goes away. This strategic inertia is not a policy failure in the traditional sense; it is a deliberate choice driven by the primal instinct of political survival. Hard decisions are being postponed in the hope that they never have to be made at all.

Europe finds itself at a strategic crossroads, caught in a cognitive dissonance. The persistent reality of Russian cognitive warfare and hybrid threats is clear, penetrating everything from public discourse to critical national infrastructure. Yet, we remain trapped between a manifest danger and an electorate unwilling to bear the necessary cost. Governments have defaulted to a seductive but hollow solution: the politics of high-profile procurement. Announcing a new contract for fighter jets or frigates creates a powerful illusion of decisive action. It is the most politically expedient path, placating allies with a show of commitment while avoiding the electorally toxic choices of raising taxes, cutting welfare, or reintroducing conscription. This focus on expensive hardware, however, is a dangerous façade. It deliberately overlooks the unglamorous but vital foundations of true military strength: deep ammunition stockpiles, robust logistics, and, most critically, the trained soldiers needed to operate this new kit.

Ultimately, without broad-based popular support, Europe risks building an ill-supported army not equipped to fight a large-scale war of this decade. A force that appears formidable on paper but lacks the manpower and resilience to sustain itself in a large-scale inter-state war. The alliance may be buying arms, yet the cost shall be far greater, as eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.