Many Portuguese look with suspicion at the increase in investment in Defense. In a country where so many families struggle to maintain their income and guarantee a minimally dignified life, the question arises: does it make sense to spend more on tanks, ships or drones when there are shortages in the National Health Service or in public schools?
The issue is not just budgetary, it is political: how can we explain the importance of this effort without betraying the idea of the Welfare State, or feeding the narrative that “there is money for everything, except for people”? The answer begins in geopolitics, but ends on the ground, in the interior regions, in the real economy.
Portugal has been a founding member of NATO since 1949, when the Atlantic Alliance was born as a response to post-war threats and the need to guarantee the collective defense of the Euro-Atlantic space. Since then, the world has changed several times: the end of the Cold War, global terrorism, energy crises, technological competition and, most recently, a conventional war on Europe’s doorstep.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not just another distant conflict: it is a direct warning to Europe about the price of strategic ingenuity. At the same time, the US position introduces uncertainty about the degree of American commitment to European Defense — precisely at a time when Europeans are called upon to do more for their own security.
This is where the debate about the Defense industry comes in. Investing in Defense is no longer just about buying equipment; is to gain technological autonomy, reinforce European production capacity and reduce critical dependencies on actors such as China, in areas ranging from semiconductors to strategic materials. Instruments such as the SAFE program (Strategic Alliance for European Defence) are fundamental to fostering innovation, increasing production capacity and equitably distributing the benefits of this policy among Member States, strengthening the industrial and technological base of Defense, coordinating security and economic competitiveness.
For Portugal, this does not need to be an abstract conversation about “geostrategy”. It can (and should) be a concrete opportunity: using investment in Defense to promote territorial cohesion, installing companies in low-density territories and creating qualified jobs where today there are only exit options: emigrate or resign.
If the country is able to capture industrial projects in the area of Defense for the interior, it will not just be “meeting goals” with Brussels or NATO. It will be using a strategic imperative — strengthening European security — as a lever to correct internal asymmetries and combat the desertification of vast areas of the territory.
The Portuguese’s perception of investment in Defense will change the day this stops being seen as an obscure chapter in the State Budget and becomes visible in people’s lives: in more jobs, more local economic activity, more future for the children who today leave the interior without looking back. When Defense begins to mean, at the same time, protection of the European way of life and development of forgotten regions, it will be the citizens themselves who will demand that this investment happens.
The real choice is not between tanks or hospitals, between NATO or the welfare state. The real choice is between continuing to depend on the will of others to guarantee our security or assuming that, in a more dangerous world, the responsibility to defend ourselves — and to take advantage of this need to create wealth and reduce internal inequalities — is also ours.
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