The Ukraine war has increased Europe’s dependence on arms imports over the past five years, but may also have helped turn Europe into a growing arms manufacturer and exporter, new research suggests.
Imports of major weapons by European states more than tripled during 2021-25, when the Ukraine war broke out, compared with the previous five-year period of 2016-20, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in its annual report on Arms Transfers published on Monday.
Recommended stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
Nearly half of those weapons (48 percent) came from the United States, suggesting that Europe is failing in a common ambition to become more arms autonomous.
Poland and the United Kingdom are Europe’s largest arms importers, SIPRI said.
The growing European market
However, there are caveats to that scenario.
“Ukrainian arms imports in the last five years accounted for 43 percent of the overall increase in European imports,” said Katarina Djokic, a leading SIPRI researcher.
That figure measures only direct imports from the United States to Ukraine, he said. It does not include imports carried out on behalf of Ukraine by other European states. So in reality, Ukraine’s needs accounted for an even larger proportion of Europe’s imports.
Beneath that headline figure of growing European imports lies another image of Europe.
“Taken together, arms exports from the current 27 EU member states increased by 36 percent,” the SIPRI report says.
This is a faster growth rate than the United States’ 27 percent during the same period and China’s 11 percent.
The European Union’s combined arms exports accounted for 28 percent of total global arms exports over the past five years, almost replacing its imports, which account for a third of the world total.
That 28 percent of the global market is “four times larger than Russia’s export volume and five times larger than China’s,” SIPRI stated.
The Russian market is collapsing
At the same time, Russia, seen as Europe’s main security threat, has seen its share of arms exports collapse by 64 percent in the last five years compared to the previous five years.
“Their exports have declined in part because they desperately need what they make themselves,” said Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. forces in Europe.
“But no one wants to buy Russian equipment because it has been proven that they are not that good… their technology has been defeated by Ukrainian technology,” he told Al Jazeera.
Russia’s biggest customers are abandoning him, Djokic said.
“China has promoted its own defense industry and become independent in weapons production. For a while, they imported at least, for example, Russian-produced engines for Chinese-made aircraft. Now they have their own design, they don’t really need it,” he said.
Will the United States continue to dominate Europe?
Europe depends on the United States for several reasons, Djokic said.
Some items, such as multiple launch rocket systems, are not manufactured in Europe, he noted.
Then there is the desire to seek the best of its kind.
“(States) are looking for something that they perceive as superior technology, so there are many air forces that want to have the F-35 (aircraft), although some of them cannot use all the capabilities that they get with that,” Djokic said.
Another example is the battle-tested Patriot anti-ballistic missile defense system.
But perhaps the most important reason is the desire to strengthen the security partnership with the United States, which has been perceived as the largest security partner, “especially in the eastern part of the EU,” Djokic said.
For example, Poland, which says it is building Europe’s largest land army, is equipping its armed forces almost exclusively with American weapons.
That may be changing.
Unlike previous EU support packages, Brussels now insists that Ukraine give preferential treatment to weapons it can buy in Europe.
That’s because after the United States stopped providing aid to Ukraine under President Donald Trump, the EU has become Ukraine’s largest donor and supporter, sending €195 billion ($230 billion) to date and voting to lend Ukraine another €90 billion ($106 billion) over the next two years. Much of that money will now return to the EU.
The perception of the United States as a security partner is also likely to be affected, Hodges said.
“The transatlantic relationship is still there, but it is not the same and probably never will be the same,” he said. “Europeans are realizing that they have to become less and less dependent on the United States if an American president can say, ‘Fuck you guys.'”
‘The dangers are not going to disappear’
Hodges was referring to Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine amid the Russian invasion, his questionable commitment to NATO and his threat this year to invade Greenland, territory belonging to a NATO ally.
“Given Russia’s war in Ukraine and the fighting in the Middle East, the dangers are not going away. That is why most European countries have a more sober and realistic view of the threats and the need for stronger deterrence capabilities, especially if they feel that the United States is not as present, capable or reliable as before,” Hodges said.
“We will continue to see growth, and investors are now more willing to invest in defense (pension funds, insurance companies) that have traditionally avoided defense.”
Europe has invested 150 billion euros ($175 billion) in Security Action for Europe (SAFE), a low-cost loan program given to member states that buy weapons from other member states. More than €113 billion ($113 billion) of that amount has been allocated to member states.
None of these changes in spending and perception are yet reflected in the SIPRI figures.
“What we are seeing now are new orders for European weapons systems, in particular the Aristide air defense systems from Germany or the Caesar howitzers from France, where you can see that this type of support through the European Union plays a role in promoting procurement within the EU,” Djokic said.
