Imitating US Doctrine Cost Europe Its Heavy Combat Power

Bence Nemeth
©2026 Bence Nemeth

ABSTRACT: This article argues that Europe’s loss of heavy combat power is primarily the result of doctrinal shifts influenced by the United States, rather than underfunding alone. Unlike existing research that focuses on defense budgets or burden-sharing, this study isolates the opportunity costs of adopting US-based expeditionary and counterinsurgency doctrines. Using force structure data for Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom (1990–2022), it conducts a counterfactual analysis of lost tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and heavy artillery pieces. The article shows that Europe’s shortfalls are doctrinal as much as fiscal and highlights the relevance of maintaining balance in future doctrinal choices.

Keywords: military doctrine, European defense, heavy combat power, expeditionary operations, NATO deterrence

Elbridge A. Colby, US under secretary of war for policy, urged British officials in May 2025 to refocus military priorities on the Euro-Atlantic region. This shift in policy marks a significant departure from the Biden-Harris administration, which encouraged European military engagement in Asia. Colby’s remarks highlight that the Pentagon no longer expects Europe to invest heavily in a theater secondary to its security.¹

Previously, at Washington’s urging, European nations invested in capabilities and operations later rendered redundant or ill-suited to evolving strategic conditions. Concomitantly, Europe has chronically underinvested in defense, enjoying the peace dividend under the protection of the US security umbrella. While much research has focused on overall defense spending shortfalls and burden-sharing issues, no studies explicitly measure the doctrinally driven opportunity costs of Europe’s expeditionary focus.²

This article does not question the necessity of increased European defense spending. Rather, it asks a different question: How would Europe’s defense posture look in 2022 if its nations had spent their defense budgets differently? What if European militaries had not restructured their forces to align with US doctrine emphasizing expeditionary and counterinsurgency operations? How would Europe’s heavy combat power look differently against Russia?

This article argues that Europe’s adoption of post-9/11 US expeditionary and counterinsurgency doctrine came at a steep and unacknowledged cost to its heavy combat power. It also shifted force ratios; had European armies maintained their 2001 force structure ratios while downsizing, they would have been able to retain the necessary heavy equipment to meet the deterrence benchmarks in the Baltics. This doctrinal shift—not just underfunding—explains today’s shortfall, and reversing it will require a significant re-investment in armor and firepower.

To assess the extent of heavy combat power lost and the opportunity costs of these doctrinal choices, this article conducts a counterfactual analysis of equipment-to-personnel ratios in 1990, 2001, and 2022 for three NATO countries (Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom) and estimates the cost of closing capability gaps based on actual and counterfactual force structures.

Doctrinally Driven

In his seminal work, The Sources of Military Doctrine, Barry Posen highlighted that external factors, such as shifts in the balance of power, and internal factors, like organizational dynamics, can significantly influence the evolution of military doctrine. Since then, a wealth of research has studied doctrinal innovation, and scholars have argued that major changes typically occur in response to dramatic performance failures, substantial shifts in budgetary resources, strong civilian leadership compelling change, the expansion of defense organizations, or internal competition driving improvements.³

The doctrinal changes in Europe following the Cold War, particularly after 9/11, were influenced by external factors and organizational dynamics in NATO. In the 2000s, US defense secretaries pressed European militaries to become leaner, more agile, and better equipped for expeditionary and counterinsurgency operations. These reforms were driven largely by US-led missions in the Balkans during the 1990s and, more importantly, by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006, noted, NATO had “recognized the need for more deployable, flexible, sustainable, interoperable, and survivable forces to engage effectively in a range of missions. But we have not yet matched our rhetoric with action and resources.” His successor, Robert Gates, echoed similar concerns: “I’m worried we have some military forces that don’t know how to do counterinsurgency operations. . . . Most of the European forces, NATO forces, are not trained in counterinsurgency; they were trained for the Fulda Gap,” a reference to the Cold War–era corridor in Germany, where NATO once expected a Soviet invasion into Western Europe.⁴

Although successive US officials voiced frustration over the pace of transformation, by the early 2010s, most European armed forces had undergone significant transformation, largely abandoning their heavy land capabilities. The Netherlands, for instance, eliminated its entire fleet of main battle tanks (MBTs), while Denmark embraced the deployable, expeditionary force concept and divested much of its heavy equipment. In hindsight, these capabilities would have proven crucial after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, especially if the United States follows through on shifting the burden of European security back onto the continent as it pivots toward its principal geostrategic challenge—China.⁵

If doctrine helps explain Europe’s loss of heavy combat power, the most policy-relevant question is where do those losses threaten deterrence first? The answer lies in NATO’s Baltic frontline, where capability shortfalls cannot be hidden by rhetoric or pooled statistics. As Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom act as framework nations there, their force structures function as a real-world test of the article’s claim. The next sections, therefore, assess what these three armies retained—and what they did not—relative to a counterfactual in which post-2001 doctrinal shifts had not occurred.

The Framework Nations and Their Sector Responsibilities in the Baltics

This article focuses on Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom because these three countries serve as the framework nations for NATO’s forward land presence in the Baltic region, widely considered the most vulnerable part of NATO’s eastern and northern flanks. Each country leads a Forward Land Forces (FLF) battlegroup in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, respectively. While these battlegroups are multinational by design, the framework nation contributes the majority of the troops, equipment, and sustainment capabilities. Each effectively assumes lead responsibility for force generation, operational readiness, and combat credibility within its assigned sector.⁶

This arrangement echoes NATO’s Cold War posture, when it assigned national corps-sized formations (50,000–60,000 troops) clear territorial responsibilities along the central front at the West German border. For the purposes of this analysis, the article assumes that without the doctrinal transformations discussed later, NATO might have followed a similar logic after the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014 or Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and would have assigned larger nationally led formations, such as the divisional-scale, to defend the Baltic frontline states. Notably, the Forward Land Forces sectors now led by Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom broadly map onto the territory those same countries would likely have been assigned under Cold War–style plans.⁷

Furthermore, today the term “framework nation” means more than designated command lead, it publicly signals burden ownership, which makes capability gaps politically visible. A shortage of tanks or artillery in these nations is a national issue and a gap that shapes NATO’s deterrence in the most exposed parts of the Alliance. Identifying the specific national choices that led these countries to trade away heavy capabilities after 2001 explains the current constraints on NATO’s deterrent credibility along its eastern flank.

To assess whether the doctrinal transformations and expeditionary commitments contributed to today’s capability shortfalls, this article uses a benchmark provided in a joint publication between Kiel Institute for the World Economy and Bruegel, an economic policy think tank. Their estimate suggests that credible European deterrence—to prevent a rapid Russian breakthrough in the Baltics—would require a minimum of 1,400 main battle tanks, about 2,000 infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), and 700 artillery systems (howitzers with 155mm caliber or larger and multiple rocket launchers), which is more than all these assets of the British, French, German, and Italian land forces combined.⁸

This article adopts a two-step approach to determine the number of additional heavy land systems the countries studied would have possessed in 2022. First, it conducts a simple counterfactual analysis, drawing on force-structure data from corresponding editions of The Military Balance for Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom in three benchmark years: 1990, 2001, and 2022. By comparing actual 2022 equipment inventories with hypothetical figures based on maintaining 2001 ratios of heavy equipment to personnel, the analysis isolates the effects of post-2001 doctrinal shifts. The focus is on the core assets of conventional land warfare—MBTs, infantry fighting vehicles, and heavy artillery (howitzers with 155 mm caliber or larger, as well as multiple rocket launchers). Second, the article draws on post-2022 procurement contracts for main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and howitzers to estimate the cost of filling the gap between the actual and counterfactual 2022 inventories of the three studied countries and the Bruegel–Kiel benchmark for heavy capabilities needed to defend the Baltic states.⁹

By combining these two elements, the study estimates the extent of heavy combat power lost, not merely due to austerity, but as a result of doctrinal reorientation and expeditionary commitments, and assesses the opportunity costs those decisions may have incurred.

Michael Alexander and Timothy Garden’s article about the “arithmetic of defense policy” in 2001 showed that Europe’s military power was set to shrink even without the operations in Iraq or Afghanistan, and the US military’s further push toward lighter forces. They pointed out that because defense-specific inflation runs several points above headline inflation, a budget that is flat in real terms loses purchasing power each year because though maintenance costs track general prices, personnel and modern weapon systems become far more expensive every year compared to normal inflation. In 2001, Alexander and Garden estimated that unless defense spending rose sharply, the number of frontline personnel in the United Kingdom would fall by roughly one-half by 2020. The forecast proved pessimistic but directionally correct. UK frontline personnel fell from 211,000 in 2001 to 153,000 in 2022, a 27 percent reduction.¹⁰

Since policymakers anticipated cutting the active land force by roughly one-third to one-half, our counterfactual keeps the 2001 heavy-equipment-to-troop ratio intact. This article assumes that further savings from a smaller force would have been reinvested in modernizing the retained heavy platforms, upgrading them to current variants while preserving the 2001 heavy-to-light balance, thereby maintaining a larger share of armor and direct-fire capability. This method bakes the budget-driven contraction into the baseline while revealing how much of today’s armor shortfall stems from the subsequent emphasis on expeditionary doctrine rather than the predictable squeeze of defense inflation.

While this comparative framework provides a useful lens to trace the evolution of force structure over time, it does have limitations. It does not account for differences in readiness levels, operational availability, or changes in alliance burden-sharing and multinational procurement arrangements. Nevertheless, examining equipment-to-personnel ratios over time offers a clear and quantifiable measure of force composition trends, enabling a consistent comparison across decades and highlighting the scale of doctrinal impact on heavy capability retention.

From Downsizing to the Impact of Doctrinal Transformation

The doctrinal shift toward lighter and expeditionary forces in the 2000s viewed heavy capabilities as increasingly redundant, reshaping mission priorities and the structure and composition of European land forces. To assess the impact of these doctrinal choices, the following comparative analysis highlights equipment-to-personnel ratios at three key points in time: 1) 1990, marking the end of the Cold War; 2) 2001, reflecting reductions driven largely by lowered threat perceptions and budget constraints; and 3) 2022, capturing the state of forces just before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This framework isolates the effects of post-2001 doctrinal transformation from earlier structural downsizing and quantifies how these choices contributed to Europe’s current shortfalls in heavy combat capabilities.

Assessing the Peace Dividend Baseline

Between 1990 and 2001, European countries significantly downsized their armed forces in response to reduced security threats following the Cold War. This shift was reflected in NATO’s post–Cold War strategy, as the London Summit of 1990 and the Rome Summit of 1991 emphasized the need for more mobile and flexible forces capable of crisis management and defense. To steer NATO in this direction, US officials like then–Secretary of State James Baker and General John Galvin, then–NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, played instrumental roles.¹¹

The post–Cold War period also saw the broader strategic context evolve. As the threat of a large-scale war in Europe seemed improbable, governments capitalized on the peace dividend, redirecting resources to non-defense priorities. Many countries suspended conscription and moved toward professionalized forces, though in Germany, conscription persisted until 2011. The Gulf War and NATO interventions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo highlighted the inadequacy of Cold War–era force structures, reinforcing the need to adopt more flexible, US-inspired doctrines. In response, NATO and the EU launched transformation programs that accelerated personnel reductions and reoriented military planning toward mobility, deployability, and expeditionary operations.¹²

As armies shrank in the 1990s, so did their heavy equipment stocks, but not always proportionally. Some countries retained more MBTs, IFVs, and 155mm (or higher) caliber artillery pieces per soldier, while others retained fewer. These shifting ratios provide a historically grounded benchmark for understanding how much heavy equipment was typically preserved when reductions were driven primarily by lowered threat perceptions and budget constraints, rather than major doctrinal changes.

Between 1990 and 2001, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom reduced the size of their armed forces overall, with particularly sharp cuts in land forces (see table 1). Personnel numbers and MBT inventories declined significantly across the board. Germany experienced the most substantial reductions, cutting one-third of its personnel and halving its MBT fleet while reducing its IFVs and artillery systems more modestly (by 10–20 percent). Canada and the United Kingdom each reduced land force personnel by roughly 25 percent. While Canada retained its small MBT fleet, it eliminated more than half of its artillery. The United Kingdom, by contrast, halved its MBT holdings but expanded its IFV fleet by 60 percent and increased its heavy artillery by a quarter. These changes largely reflected the United Kingdom’s efforts to modernize its equipment by replacing armored personnel carriers (APCs) with better protected IFVs and phasing out lighter artillery systems in favor of higher-caliber platforms.

These reductions and changes reflected both the peace dividend and the operational lessons of the 1990s Balkans interventions, and NATO countries accepted that they needed to prepare for overseas operations. While the United Kingdom was the most forward-leaning in adopting a power projection posture, its 1998 Strategic Defense Review maintained a balanced approach. The review emphasized the need to retain the ability to deploy an armored division, as demonstrated in the 1991 Gulf War, while also preserving the capacity, “at much longer notice, to rebuild a bigger force as part of NATO’s collective defense should a major threat re-emerge in Europe.” This situation is the kind of contingency now unfolding in Ukraine.¹³

The review also noted that these goals “will not require significant changes to the strength of our Regular forces” but would demand greater flexibility in force configuration and enhanced investment, including investments in strategic lift and ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance) capabilities, to support rapid joint deployments to emerging crises. Accordingly, at the end of the 1990s, the United Kingdom expected investments in new capabilities but did not anticipate major structural changes to its land forces.¹⁴

These decisions set the stage for the more radical doctrinal turn after 9/11, and the subsequent US-led interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq accelerated and deepened the doctrinal shift. Expeditionary warfare became a preferred posture and a strategic imperative for NATO militaries.

Even before the 9/11 attacks, Pentagon thinking had already shifted in this direction, but Rumsfeld doubled down on it. In a 2002 Foreign Affairs article, he argued that the United States no longer needed “a massive, heavy force to repel a Soviet tank invasion,” advocating instead for agile, rapidly deployable, and technologically integrated forces, an approach that shaped NATO’s broader transformation agenda. As Sten Rynning noted, Rumsfeld sought to have European forces organized, trained, and equipped in the image of US forces, a push that gathered momentum within NATO structures and through operational commitments after 2001.¹⁵

Furthermore, among others, informed by Counterinsurgency, US Army Field Manual 3–24, published in 2006, NATO embraced population-centric counterinsurgency (COIN) as a doctrine and an operational template. This approach encouraged European militaries to prioritize presence, influence, and development over conventional combat mass, recasting success in expeditionary theaters like Afghanistan as the ability to “out-govern” insurgents rather than defeat them outright—a model (Clear-Hold-Build) that offered conceptual clarity but proved ill-suited to the complex civil war dynamics in places like Helmand province, Afghanistan. Nonetheless, its influence was decisive; it entrenched lighter force structures and sidelined investment in heavy capabilities that are now urgently needed in Europe’s defense.¹⁶

Testing the Counterfactual

The core logic of the analysis now extends the 2001 baseline to the year 2022, creating a hypothetical scenario that estimates what the heavy equipment inventories of three countries would have looked like if they had continued reducing their armies proportionally without changing their doctrine to favor lighter, expeditionary capabilities after 2001. In other words, this scenario assumes that the relationship between heavy equipment and personnel numbers remains unchanged from 2001 onward. By comparing these hypothetical numbers to the actual equipment levels recorded in 2022, it becomes possible to identify how many additional tanks, IFVs, and artillery pieces European countries would have retained if they had not adopted the post-2001 doctrinal emphasis on lighter, more deployable forces.

This method deliberately avoids complex statistical techniques and provides a straightforward and intuitive way to quantify how the shift in military doctrine has influenced Europe’s current shortfalls in heavy capabilities. The analysis concretely identifies the tangible impact of doctrinal decisions by measuring gaps between actual and hypothetical holdings. The results clearly illustrate the significant impact that doctrinal shifts toward lighter and more expeditionary forces after 2001 had on the heavy capabilities of Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Under these assumptions (see table 1), the United Kingdom would field approximately 457 MBTs instead of the 227 tanks recorded in 2022, meaning that doctrinal choices cost the British Army roughly 230 tanks. Similarly, Germany, maintaining its 2001 ratio, would possess around 746 MBTs in 2022 rather than its actual 284—an additional 462 tanks that would significantly bolster NATO’s deterrence posture in the Baltic region. Canada’s heavy tank holdings would be 56 more, projecting 138 tanks compared to the actual count of 82.¹⁷

The scenario also highlights substantial gaps in heavy artillery capabilities. Germany would retain approximately 304 heavy artillery systems instead of 162 in 2022, indicating a doctrinal loss of roughly 142 units. Similarly, the United Kingdom would have around 222 artillery pieces compared to the actual number of 124, a shortfall of nearly 100 systems directly attributable to doctrinal choices. Canada, meanwhile, would have almost doubled its artillery holdings from the actual 37 to approximately 70 systems, a difference of about 33 units.¹⁸

The only category in which actual inventories exceeded the counterfactual projections is IFVs. Germany fielded 674 IFVs in 2022, surpassing the estimated counterfactual figure of 624 by 50 units. The United Kingdom also came close to matching its counterfactual baseline, retaining 388 IFVs compared to an expected 421, a relatively modest shortfall of 33 vehicles. Canada, meanwhile, made the most significant gains in this category. It possessed no IFVs in 2001 and acquired approximately 550 by 2022, reflecting a major investment in mechanized infantry mobility by replacing its aging APCs with wheeled IFVs.¹⁹

Canada stands out as an outlier compared to Germany and the United Kingdom, having increased its regular army personnel by 20 percent while the other two countries significantly reduced theirs. Although Ottawa substantially reduced its holdings of MBTs and artillery, it made considerable investments in IFVs. These positive shifts in personnel and IFV numbers would likely not have occurred without the doctrinal transformations of the 2000s and Canada’s participation in NATO’s mission in Afghanistan. The Alliance’s broader emphasis on mobility and force protection in expeditionary operations drove a reorientation toward capabilities better suited to that context. In this sense, NATO’s doctrinal shift benefited Canada’s heavy force structure. Nonetheless, these gains were limited and did not offset the broader loss of heavy capabilities across categories or among other key European allies.

These doctrinally driven changes have significantly weakened NATO’s frontline deterrent capabilities. Absent the post-2001 doctrinal shift, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom would collectively field approximately 1,340 MBTs—just 60 short of the 1,400 deemed necessary for Baltic defense by the Bruegel-Kiel Institute analysis. This figure is 747 tanks more than their combined inventory of 593 in 2022. For heavy artillery systems, the counterfactual scenario estimates 596 systems, roughly 100 short of the benchmark requirement, yet 273 more than the 323 fielded by the three countries in 2022.²⁰

In contrast, IFVs tell a different story. The three countries held 1,612 IFVs in 2022, exceeding the counterfactual projection of 1,045 by 567 vehicles, almost entirely attributable to Canada’s acquisition of 550 IFVs between 2001 and 2022. This outcome suggests that while doctrinal reorientation and operational experience in Afghanistan drove down investment in tanks and artillery, they also spurred increased procurement of protected mobility platforms like wheeled IFVs.²¹

The counterfactual scenario shows these three countries would have been far closer to meeting NATO’s heavy equipment requirements for defending the Baltic region, particularly in terms of tanks and artillery, had they not adopted expeditionary-oriented doctrines after 2001. Although real-world IFV holdings are higher, largely due to Canada’s specific trajectory, meeting the full requirement would still have demanded additional investment. Not all systems are operational or available at any given time. Still, the analysis highlights that the theoretical maximum capability would have been greater across most categories if doctrinal priorities had not shifted after 2001.

The Costs of the Doctrinal Change

The counterfactual analysis in the previous section demonstrated that had Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom preserved their 2001 heavy-equipment-to-personnel ratios, they would already be within close reach of the Bruegel-Kiel benchmark for heavy combat forces. This section translates that force-structure gap into financial terms by asking what it would cost, using real post-2022 contract prices, to procure the missing main MBTs, heavy artillery systems, and IFVs needed to close the gap.

The analysis draws on three major recent procurements to establish realistic unit costs. While some of these contracts include elements of early sustainment, others do not break down such costs transparently. To avoid speculative adjustments and ensure comparability across platforms, the cost model presented here relies solely on procurement prices, excluding long-term life-cycle or support packages. This approach provides a consistent, conservative estimate while focusing on the doctrinal impact on force structure.

The German procurement of 105 Leopard 2A8 MBTs in June 2024 provides the baseline for tank prices. Approved by the Bundestag at a cost of €2.93 billion, the contract covers the vehicle acquisition only, yielding a unit price of approximately €28 million per tank. Separate reports highlight an additional €750 million for early life-cycle costs.²²

Poland’s August 2022 framework agreement to acquire 212 K9A1 self-propelled howitzers from South Korea provides a representative price point for artillery. The contract, signed with Hanwha Defense and valued at €2.32 billion, includes ammunition, training, logistics support, and technology transfer. This price results in an effective per-unit cost of approximately €10.9 million, a figure that already includes first-phase sustainment and training components.²³

The main tranche of the Danish CV90 procurement program offers a conservative, high-end cost estimate for IFVs. Denmark ordered 115 CV90MkIIIC vehicles for €1.3 billion in 2024, with deliveries scheduled over five years. This price translates to €11.6 million per vehicle, representing a high-specification Western European IFV variant rather than a platform-only baseline.²⁴

Using these real-world unit costs, the analysis models the procurement expense required to meet the Bruegel-Kiel benchmark under two conditions (see table 2): from 2022 inventories, and from the counterfactual scenario in which 2001 heavy land system-per-personnel ratios had been preserved. Starting from actual 2022 levels, the three countries collectively face a shortfall of 807 MBTs, 377 heavy artillery pieces, and 388 tracked IFVs. At current prices, meeting this requirement would cost approximately €31.2 billion, of which €22.6 billion would be allocated to tanks, €4.1 billion to howitzers, and €4.5 billion to IFVs.

By contrast, the shortfalls are substantially smaller under the counterfactual model—just 59 MBTs and 104 heavy artillery pieces are missing, though the IFV gap rises to 955. In this scenario, the total procurement cost drops to approximately €13.9 billion, less than half the figure required in the case of the actual numbers in 2022, comprising €1.7 billion for MBTs, €1.1 billion for artillery pieces, and €11.1 billion for tracked IFVs.

The contrast between these two cost estimates is revealing. It confirms that the heavy-equipment gap Europe faces today is not simply the result of post–Cold War downsizing or predictable budgetary pressures. Rather, it is the consequence of deliberate doctrinal decisions taken in the early 2000s to prioritize expeditionary and counterinsurgency operations over conventional deterrence. In the case of the three countries analyzed, retaining earlier force structure ratios would not have eliminated the need for investment, but it would have reduced the cost of the reconstitution now facing European armies. Accordingly, the broader lesson is clear: Had different doctrinal choices been made, Europe’s frontline combat power would be stronger and significantly cheaper to restore. The findings partially validate Alexander and Garden’s insight from more than a quarter of a century ago. Manpower reductions were already foreseen, but the real cost now lies in replacing the heavy equipment that was willingly traded away. The gap lies in armor and firepower, not personnel.

Conclusion

As the counterfactual analysis demonstrates, had Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom not adopted the doctrinal shift toward lighter, expeditionary forces in the 2000s and 2010s, they would have been significantly better prepared by 2022 to defend NATO’s eastern flank. These three NATO Allies, the framework nations for the forward presence in the Baltic states, would have stood much closer to meeting the heavy-equipment benchmarks identified in the Bruegel-Kiel analysis. Reaching those targets would have been far less costly had the 2001 equipment-to-personnel ratios been preserved.

This analysis, however, carries several limitations. First, it assumes that all heavy capabilities from these three countries would be available for Baltic defense, which is unlikely in practice given global commitments and national priorities. Second, the article counts whole-fleet inventories, even though only about 60–70 percent of tanks, IFVs, and artillery pieces are normally mission- ready at any given time. Third, the study focuses solely on Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom, while the Bruegel-Kiel benchmark applies to the whole of Europe. Including additional NATO members in the counterfactual calculation would likely show that the doctrinally driven gap could have been narrowed and closed or even exceeded significantly. Fourth, the 2022 inventories used here do not reflect the substantial quantities of heavy equipment that NATO members have since transferred to Ukraine. While this affects current stock levels, it does not alter the broader conclusion. Namely, the shortfall in heavy combat power is not solely the result of underfunding, but of deliberate doctrinal choices.

Accordingly, the counterfactual scenario demonstrates that doctrinal changes matter, which questions the common narrative that NATO Allies lost heavy capabilities purely because of insufficient defense budgets. For instance, an American Enterprise Initiative (AEI) analysis argued in 2014 that in “the Netherlands, battle tanks have been eliminated. Interestingly, this decision was based not on an analysis of the operational environment but on budget-related considerations. . . . The same trend can be seen in the United Kingdom, where 188 MBTs are to be cut from the land force, and the AS-90 self-propelling artillery system phased out.” Yet, based on the analysis of this article, we can see these choices were not driven solely by a defense budget squeeze but by doctrinal choices. For instance, in principle, Europeans and Canadians could have resisted Washington’s urge regarding doctrinal transformation and retained more of their heavy forces while also cutting back their NATO contributions to the missions in Iraq or Afghanistan.²⁵

This article does not seek to criticize past decisionmakers. The strategic context of the 2000s was different. Many European leaders hoped to keep the United States engaged in Europe and bought into the US military’s transformation agenda, as they feared NATO might otherwise drift apart. Nonetheless, the analysis presented here points out the long-term trade-offs such decisions entail, which may only reveal their consequences decades later, when strategic conditions change and hard combat power is once again needed close to home.

Accordingly, militaries must maintain a manageable balance during doctrinal shifts. During the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, analysts highlighted this point in their criticism of the US Army’s failure to capitalize on the counterinsurgency expertise it gained from the Vietnam War, leaving it less prepared for the challenges of the 2000s. Similarly, NATO’s shift away from conventional operations after 9/11 presents a comparable issue.

Bence Nemeth
Dr. Bence Nemeth is a senior lecturer (associate professor) in the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London, teaching at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. He is the cofounder and executive director of the King’s Centre for Defence Economics and Management (KCDEM) and the author of How to Achieve Defense Cooperation in Europe?: The Subregional Approach (Bristol University Press, 2022). He previously served as the academic program director of the Advanced Command and Staff Course (ACSC), the flagship postgraduate program of the United Kingdom Joint Services Command and Staff College. Before joining King’s College, he worked for eight years as a defense planner in Hungary’s Ministry of Defence.

Endnotes

1. 1. Demetri Sevastopulo and Lucy Fisher, “US Wants UK Military to Focus More on Europe and Away from Asia,” Financial Times, May 7, 2025, https://www.ft.com/content/21dffaa9-e73b-44f0-be3b-acb6d0d35ced.
2. 2. Jens Ringsmose, “NATO Burden-Sharing Redux: Continuity and Change After the Cold War,” Contemporary Security Policy 31, no. 2 (2010): 319–38, https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2010.491391; Marion Bogers et al., “NATO Burden Sharing Research Along Three Paradigms,” Defence and Peace Economics 33, no. 5 (2020): 534–47, https://doi.org/10.1080/10242694.2020.1819135; and Jordan Becker, “Pledge and Forget? Testing the Effects of NATO’s Wales Pledge on Defense Investment,” International Studies Perspectives 25, no. 4 (November 2024): 490–517, https://doi.org/10.1093/isp/ekad027.
3. 3. Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars (Cornell University Press, 1984); and Bence Nemeth and Nicholas Dew, “ ‘Build the Golf Course First’ – An Organisational and Strategic Management Perspective on UK Defence Reviews,” Defence Studies 24, no. 1 (2024): 29, https://doi.org/10.1080/14702436.2023.2213654.
4. 4. Richard Norton-Taylor, “US Allies Do Not Know How to Fight Insurgents, Says Gates,” The Guardian, January 17, 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jan/17/afghanistan.comment; and Donald H. Rumsfeld, “Rumsfeld Remarks to North Atlantic Council – Brussels: U.S. Defense Secretary on Meeting Future Threats,” U.S. Department of State’s Office of International Information Programs, June 7, 2001, https://usinfo.org/usia/usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/arms/stories/01060806.htm.
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6. 6. David A. Shlapak and Michael Johnson, Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO’s Eastern Flank: Wargaming the Defense of the Baltics (RAND Corporation, 2016), https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1253.html; and North Atlantic Treaty Organization, “Strengthening NATO’s Eastern Flank,” NATO, updated October 23, 2025, https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/deterrence-and-defence/strengthening-natos-eastern-flank.
7. 7. Bence Nemeth, “Defending NATO Without the Americans,” in Strategic Commentaries: Essays About the UK, NATO, China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, eds. Jacob Parakilas and Anna Honich (RAND Corporation, 2024), 27–36, https://doi.org/10.7249/PEA3655-1.
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13. 13. UK Ministry of Defence, Strategic Defence Review, presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Defence by Command of Her Majesty, July 1998, https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20121018172816/http:/www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/65F3D7AC-4340-4119-93A2-20825848E50E/0/sdr1998_complete.pdf.
14. 14. UK Ministry of Defence, Strategic Defence Review, 32.
15. 15. Christopher Tuck, Understanding Land Warfare, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2022), 242; Donald H. Rumsfeld, “Transforming the Military,” Foreign Affairs 81, no. 3 (May/June 2002): 28; and Sten Rynning, “A New Military Ethos? NATO’s Response Force,” Journal of Transatlantic Studies 3, no. 1 (2005): 9, https://doi.org/10.1080/14794010508656814.
16. 16. Christian Tripodi, “Hidden Hands: The Failure of Population-Centric Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan 2008–11,” Journal of Strategic Studies 47, no. 4 (2023): 545–73, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402 390.2023.2169673; and Headquarters, Department of the Army (HQDA), Counterinsurgency, Field Manual No. 3–24 (HQDA, 2006).
17. 17. Military Balance 1990, 60, 67, 83; Military Balance 2001, 49, 56–57, 76; and Military Balance 2022, 45, 109–10, 160.
18. 18. Military Balance 1990, 60, 67, 83; and Military Balance 2001, 49, 56–57, 76; and Military Balance 2022, 45, 109–10, 160.
19. 19. Military Balance 1990, 60, 67, 83; and Military Balance 2001, 49, 56–57, 76; and Military Balance 2022, 45, 109–10, 160.
20. 20. Military Balance 1990, 60, 67, 83; and Military Balance 2001, 49, 56–57, 76; and Military Balance 2022, 45, 109–10, 160.
21. 21. Military Balance 1990, 60, 67, 83; and Military Balance 2001, 49, 56–57, 76; and Military Balance 2022, 45, 109–10, 160.
22. 22. Sabine Siebold, “Germany to Order 105 Leopard Tanks to Equip German Brigade in Lithuania,” Reuters, June 20, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-order-105-leopard-tanks-equip-german-brigade-lithuania-2024-06-20/; and Army Recognition, “German Defense Minister Confirms Order of 105 Additional Leopard 2A8 MBTs for German Army,” Global Defense News Army Recognition Group, June 20, 2024, https://armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/army-news-2024/german-defense-minister-confirms-order-of-105-additional-leopard-2a8-mbts-for-german-army.
23. 23. Defence Industry Europe, “Poland: More Than One Hundred Artillery Systems from South Korea Delivered,” Defence Industry Europe, October 8, 2024, https://defence-industry.eu/poland-more-than-one-hundred-artillery-systems-from-south-korea-delivered/.
24. 24. Defence Express, “After Canceling Upgrades, Denmark Buys 44 CV90 Replacements Old IFVs May Go to Ukraine in 2026,” Defence Express, November 23, 2025, https://en.defence-ua.com/news/after_canceling_upgrades_denmark_buys_44_cv90_replacements_old_ifvs_may_go_to_ukraine_in_2026-16588.html.
25. 25. Guillaume Lasconjarias, “NATO’s Land Forces: Losing Ground,” American Enterprise Institute, June 2, 2014, https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/natos-land-forces-losing-ground/.

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