Oped published on Bruegel, Welt, LeMonde, and others. Europe must rebuild its defence industry; reliance on the US is no longer tenable, whatever the outcome of the US presidential election
Europeans might think that a Kamala Harris victory in the United States presidential election on 5 November would mean a return to business as usual in terms of US leadership in transatlantic security. This attitude would be wrong. Whatever the outcome, Europe stands increasingly alone on defence and must act on this urgently.
The election matters less for European security than Europeans would like. Regardless of the outcome, the US is destined to disengage from the protection it granted Europe in the post-Cold War period of American military supremacy. President Trump and vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance, along with conservative academics, have been clear: the US supports Israel first and confronts China second. Meanwhile, Harris has strongly and continually emphasised her commitment to Israeli security and to a hawkish Middle East policy.
Harris has also underlined the importance of NATO. But the reality of American military power is that it is based on a “crumbling defence industrial base” unable to credibly back up American commitments across the globe. This is a long-term structural problem.
The war in Ukraine shows that modern warfare is fundamentally about industrial production and sustaining forces for lengthy, attritional combat. The US may at the moment be Ukraine’s greatest supporter, but its industrial might falls short. Tank and munitions production volumes remain lower than Russia’s, and are unable to meet American, Ukrainian and allied demand.
The US has spent billions on air defence to protect Israeli airspace, and billions again on precision-guided missiles and bombs to fight Yemen’s Houthis. In combating Iranian missile salvos and Houthi flotillas, the US had to use high-end air defence interceptors for which annual production is in the low dozens, far less than current demand and expenditure rates. This is not sustainable, and means these very same interceptors are not available for NATO air defence, such as the Aegis Ashore facilities in Poland and Romania.
With such severe constraints on American military might, Europe must ensure its own security. But leading European countries such as Germany are not keeping pace and Russia is outproducing Europe in defence. The reality of European security is that it is being challenged by a Russian military that is larger and better equipped than in February 2022, when the full-scale attack in Ukraine started.
A defence industry renaissance in Europe is nevertheless possible. First, funding is needed to enable scale and cost effectiveness in demand and supply. Large European countries, especially Germany, currently do not make credible long-term budget commitments but that is not a budget-constraint problem, but rather a lack of political will. Defence budgets need to be given greater priority. Some debt at both national and European Union level should be issued to fund expensive equipment, such as air defences that will be used for decades.
Second, defence companies that know that defence budgets will be reliably large will increase investments in industrial-scale production capacities. But smaller companies that are often engines of innovation face funding constraints. Support for defence-only projects from institutions such as the European Investment Bank would be an important signal to the broader financial sector that it is time for the stigma attached to defence investment to end.
Third, production numbers need to go up to reduce the price per unit. However, fragmented national defence markets and economic nationalism mean that the numbers ordered in Europe remain too small to warrant industrial production. Fostering political agreements to enable joint purchases could be one critical step. The war in Ukraine has also exposed the fragmented nature of enforcement of NATO standards, which reduces interoperability and undermines the combat effectiveness of European militaries. The EU could play a role in enforcing NATO standards, which would also reduce costs.
Fourth, the EU does not have to fixate on ‘buying European’. Instead, intelligent European preference means focusing on resident firms to enhance strategic autonomy, but cooperating with major non-EU partners when it is clearly more cost effective, timelier, or irrelevant from a strategic autonomy perspective. The October 2024 Trinity House Agreement between Germany and the UK is a template for such agreements. Enhanced cooperation with Ukraine on defence production is not only smart for the security of Ukraine, but also an opportunity to learn and produce at scale at low cost.
Europe must rebuild its defence industry for the turbulent times to come. Russia has had a head start but Europe, with its vastly larger economy, can catch up and even surpass Moscow’s military production. The material and political constraints in the US, still the leading NATO state, make it clear: on defence, Europe needs to rely increasingly on itself. It needs to act.
