“Europe: the choice of weapons”, the European awakening for its future common defense

The end of an illusion… and the start of a race against lost time. Caught between the war in Ukraine and the gradual abandonment of Washington, Europe realizes that it must now count on its own forces. This documentary by Olivier Toscer, former journalist for “New Obs”, meticulously details the projects opened to urgently rebuild defense industries and armies atrophied by three decades of underinvestment, in the face of a Russia entirely refocused on its war economy.

Compared to the 1980s, the number of active soldiers in the French army has been halved. Germany, for its part, has embarked on a forced march of catching up. In 2026, its military budget will exceed 100 billion euros, double that of France, with the ambition of building the first army in Europe. Experts estimate that 2,000 billion euros would need to be injected for the continent’s armies to return to their level at the end of the Cold War.

“Today, we can destroy a state without firing a shot.”

If the Ukrainian conflict has demonized investments in defense, European delays are glaring. « Certain services considèrent qu’à l’horizon 2027 on risque d’être brutalement testés par la Russie » alerte le député LR Jean-Louis Thiériot. “We have learned over the last 500 years that when the Russians threaten us, we have to take them seriously,” adds Radoslaw Sikorski, Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs.

On the border of the Baltic countries and in the Suwalki corridor, between Belarus and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, unusual military movements have been observed in recent years. The Achilles heel of European defense: its organized dependence on American equipment, such as the F-35 fighter plane, but also on the services of digital giants such as Microsoft or Starlink.

Not to mention the new situation of hybrid warfare and its attacks using invisible methods, difficult to attribute. As Jean-Marc Vigilant summarizes: “The battlefield is everywhere. Today, you can destroy a state without firing a shot.”

â—— Tuesday June 2 at 9:00 p.m. on Arte. Documentary by Olivier Toscer (2026). 1h24. (Available in replay until August 30, 2026 on Arte.tv).