Rearmament in Europe: From Peace Dividend to Defense Race. Anxious democracies navigating renewed militarization and fragile security

For decades, Europeans relied on a fading peace dividend, cutting armies, shrinking arsenals, and outsourcing hard security to distant guarantees. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine shattered that illusion and forced governments into a rapid, often chaotic return to heavy defense spending. Budgets rise, new weapons are ordered, and parliaments debate targets once considered unthinkable, while leaders insist this is the price of safety in an era of open aggression and eroding trust in the old security order. Behind these headline shifts lies a quieter, more intimate story: anxious citizens caught between fear of war and deep unease about rearmament, historical guilt colliding with present danger, and a growing sense that Europe is entering a long, uncertain defense race without a clear end point.
This book invites readers to slow down and examine that tension: how it feels when a continent built on "never again" must again talk about tanks, missiles, and deterrence, and what it means to search for security without losing its democratic soul.