WSJ What’s News - Does Europe Have What it Would Take to Fight Russia?

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

A.M. Edition for Mar. 14. Democrats clear the way for the Republican funding bill, ending the threat of a government shut down. Plus, the Trump administration makes an emergency plea to the Supreme Court on birthright citizenship. And, with America’s commitment to NATO suddenly in doubt, the WSJ’s Dan Michaels explains how Europe’s military would stack up against Russian aggression. Kate Bullivant hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At Enterprise, we know you're constantly on the move. Getting this, fixing that. You reach a destination, and then it's on to the next. And when life is moving at the speed of, well, life, Enterprise is right there with you, around the corner and around the globe. We'll keep you moving forward. Enterprise, her lives in drive.

Democrats clear the way for the GOP funding bill, ending the threat of a government shutdown. Plus, with America's commitment to NATO suddenly in doubt, European leaders grapple with the unthinkable, facing Russia alone. Europe relies on the US for the backbone of fighting, communications, intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance, things that it's still possible to fight without them,

but it's kind of like fighting blind. And the price of gold reaches a record high. It's Friday, March 14th. I'm Kate Boulevent for the Wall Street Journal, filling in for Luke Vargas. And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. world today. Senate Democrats are planning to help advance a Republican measure to fund the government in a vote this afternoon, ending the threat of a shutdown. Democrats had struggled for days on how to approach the GOP bill, which gives the Trump administration more flexibility to downsize and dismantle federal agencies.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said there was no good option, adding he would back the GOP measure because the prospect of a shutdown was worse. Siobhan Hughes covers Congress for the Journal. Schumer's decision is a politically risky one. He is set to lose more than half of the Democratic caucus as he votes in favor of the Republican bill to keep the government open. A shutdown Schumer argued would give President Trump even greater power to lay off federal workers beyond those in agencies he has already targeted. Senate Republican leaders have scheduled a procedural vote for

this afternoon. Without action, the government will shut down at one minute past midnight on Saturday, furloughing hundreds of thousands of workers and stopping non-essential services. At the same time, two judges have now ordered the Trump administration to reinstate thousands of probationary workers who were fired at a number of federal agencies. As we mentioned on our PM show, a US district judge in California yesterday ruled that probationary workers from six federal departments, including agriculture and veterans affairs, should be offered their jobs back immediately, describing their firing as a sham. Later in the day, a US district judge in Maryland issued a similar ruling in a case brought by 20 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, saying employees at 18 agencies should get their

jobs back. The Trump administration has brought its plan to restrict birthright citizenship to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to scale back lower court orders, blocking the president's decree of denying citizenship to children born in the US to parents without legal residency. Although the case is in preliminary stages, the emergency request will force the justices to weigh in on one of the most aggressive moves made by the new administration. The Fourteenth Amendment provides quote, all persons born or naturalized in the US and subject of the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States. In an Inauguration Day order, Trump asserted that children born to people lacking permanent residency aren't subject

to US jurisdiction and therefore don't hold citizenship, essentially arguing that the long-standing interpretation of the 14th Amendment is mistaken. Turning to markets now and gold rallied overnight to reach a record high of $3,000 a troy ounce for the first time ever. Prices for gold have been rising sharply over the past year, with the yellow metal having already surpassed the 2025 price target set by many Wall Street forecasters.

Journaled Europe Finance editor, Alex Frangos, says there's a few things driving gold higher. One is there's a lot of uncertainty in the world and gold is a millennia old safe haven for investors. There's concern about the economy going into a recession, interest rates falling. And when interest rates are going down, that makes gold more attractive. The last thing is gold is a speculative asset. It is used for certain things like jewelry and microchips.

But most demand for gold is people thinking that gold is going to be worth more tomorrow than it is today. And when that frenzy starts, it takes on a life of its own. And the flight to safety could have further to run amid stock market volatility. Yesterday the S&P 500 fell into correction territory, having declined more than 10% from its record high on February 19. In the fashion industry, few people are as synonymous with a brand as Donatella Versace, but now Versace's longtime creative director has stepped down, following tensions between

the Italian designer and the US corporate chief. John Idol's ideas to pump up sales by appealing to a wider audience often clashed with those of Donna Teller who as creative director has defined the brand's looks featuring bright colors and bold prints since her brother's murder in 1997. The change comes amid a decline in Versace's sales and as people familiar with the situation tell us, Eidl is exploring a potential sale to Italian rival Prada. Coming up, with America's commitment to NATO

falling on shaky ground, does Europe's military have what it takes to fight Russian forces without US support? That story after the break. Want to own part of the airline you flew with US support. That story after the break. With America's commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization suddenly in doubt, Europe is having to consider the once unthinkable. Could its armies fight Moscow's forces without US support? Journal Brussels bureau chief Dan Michaels has been speaking to top American military brass and officials who've served across the Atlantic and they say Europe would pack

a strong punch. Dan, you've been looking at Europe's military capabilities. How do they stack up against Russia's at the moment? Europe together is a formidable fighting force. Individually, the countries are not so strong and they do lack certain capabilities that the US has, but they constitute a really quite large army, air force and Navy. And the verdict of the Americans and Europeans who I've spoken to about this is that

in a fight directly with Russia, the Europeans are formidable and would give the Russians a pretty serious black eye. Hold them off. Europe, for example, has an enormous air force combined and are buying more new, advanced, especially American F-35 fighter planes. Europe together has more than 2,000 combat planes. Russia has slightly more than 1,000 combat planes. Russia has slightly more than 1,000. So Europe is almost double the size

and the performance of the Europeans probably is much better. By some estimates, one in five fighter planes that the Russians have sent into Ukraine has been lost, shot down, had some kind of accident. And that's against a much less well less well prepared military, the Ukrainians, than the Europeans. The Europeans, even though they provided a lot of equipment to Ukraine, still have quite vast armories of even more advanced equipment waiting precisely because of fear of Russia. So if these numbers are looking in Europe's favour, why is the absence of the US such a concern to European leaders? Two reasons.

One is Europe for decades has assumed it would always fight against Russia with the US. So going back to the start of the Cold War, there's been the Alliance of NATO. And so the thought that it might not be there is upsetting and prompting Europeans to reassess their fundamental understanding of the Alliance. The more perhaps tangible element is the US has military capabilities and equipment that Europe simply doesn't have. The US has the world's largest and most advanced military, also the most experienced at the moment because the US has been fighting in places like Iraq and Afghanistan for years. And so if there were a fight between Europe and Russia,

the Europeans would not have air defenses, for example, against long-range Russian rockets, missiles, and some kinds of artillery, which would put, for example, European cities at risk. Europe relies on the US for sort of the backbone of fighting. Communications, intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance, things that it's still possible to fight without them, but it's kind of like fighting blind. So given all that, what are European leaders doing to fill this gap?

To fill the gap of US capabilities would take years and cost hundreds of billions of dollars, if not more. So there's not a lot the Europeans can do immediately, but it has become fairly clear over recent weeks that Europe is going to be spending a lot more money on defense. And so Europe in the not too distant future will have bigger militaries, it will have more weapons, and it will have bigger military industries. This on one level will make Europe potentially more independent of the US. It will also mean that

Russia would have a harder time launching an attack on Europe, which might have a deterrent effect, but it might also conversely just generally increase the level of tension in Europe because having standing armies and lots of weapons in the past has not always been a recipe for peace. So not exactly the relative time of peace that Europe has been enjoying over the last 30 years. Dan, thank you for breaking this down for us. Thanks. Always good to talk with you. And thank you for breaking this down for us. Thanks, always good to talk with you. And while Europe may be learning to go it alone, the US is actually turning to Ukraine

for help building better drones. Since the start of the war, Ukrainian forces have been relying on increasingly sophisticated drones to battle Russia's army. And despite limited resources, drone makers in Ukraine have found a way to mass produce them. That's piqued the interest of US startups who are spending billions of venture capital dollars to develop small drones that the Pentagon says it needs for future conflicts. But most of them don't fly well.

Here's tech reporter Heather Somerville. Since the start of the war, there's been a lot of interaction between US and Ukrainian drone companies. So what we have now is we have a smattering of official partnerships, businesses that have been created through a combination of US entrepreneurs and Ukrainian drone manufacturers. And what they're trying to do is leverage all of this Ukrainian know-how that has been developed over more than three years of war with the software skills that American engineers really excel at. Combining those things together, the hope is we'll start to have some really seriously

good drones that the US Defense Department can begin to buy. And you can hear more about how Silicon Valley is tapping into the know-how of Ukraine's well-trained drone makers over on our tech news briefing podcast. And that's it for what's news for this Friday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach with supervising producer, Sandra Kilhoff,

and I'm Kate Bulevant for the Wall Street Journal, filling in for Luke Vargas. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, have a great weekend and thanks for listening.