LONDON — President Obama spent Wednesday in Brussels talking up the importance of the security relationship between Europe and the United States, but it is considered unlikely that Russia’s seizure of Crimea will prompt increased European military spending at a time of economic anemia and budget cuts.

NATO and the European Union regard the Russian move in Ukraine as a wake-up call, a reminder that hard power can easily trump 21st-century assumptions about Europe as a sphere of trade, international law and cooperation.

Despite the newly militant tone, NATO members will continue to spend paltry amounts on defense, experts say. But there is likely to be a slowdown in cuts and a renewed debate on how that money is spent. That debate has already started in Britain.

Richard Dannatt, the former chief of staff of the British armed forces, made a public plea this week that the British government should reverse its plans to reduce regular army troops to their lowest number since the Battle of Waterloo, to roughly 82,000 by 2018, and to withdraw all its 20,000 troops stationed in Germany. Mr. Dannatt said that Britain should keep 3,000 troops in Germany as a “statement that greater military capability must underpin our diplomacy.”