National Interest

by Emilian Kavalski and Maximilian Mayer

    Europe’s defense industry is fragmented along national lines and dependent on the United States for key inputs and infrastructure.

    For three years, the war in Ukraine has offered a brutal reminder of an old truth: wars are ultimately decided by production, not promises. Ammunition, air defenses, drones, spare parts, secure energy supplies and logistics matter far more than summit declarations or alliance rhetoric. Yet Europe, the primary theatre of the conflict, still runs a defense economy designed for short production runs and not prolonged industrial warfare.

    A second shock has now reinforced this reality: the release of President Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy. The document makes clear that US security commitments are becoming more explicitly conditional, interest-driven and politically contested. Together, these two forces—the industrial demands of Ukraine and America’s redefined strategic posture—are forcing an overdue reckoning. Europe can no longer assume that the United States will always underwrite the material foundations of its own defense. If Europe wants to remain strategically relevant, it needs to build a genuine war economy.

• Europe’s Endurance Problem

    High-intensity conflict in the 21st century is brutally consumptive. Ukraine now fires ammunition at rates that would have been considered unsustainable in any Western planning scenario just a decade ago. Air defense interceptors, drones, armored vehicles, artillery barrels and electronics are destroyed and replaced on a massive scale. Victory depends on industrial endurance, not exquisite platforms.

    Yet Europe’s defense-industrial base has been optimized for efficiency, not surge. Production runs are short. Orders are fragmented across national lines. Stockpiles were allowed to shrink after the Cold War. Skilled labor migrated to civilian sectors. Energy costs and regulatory complexity hollowed out much of the heavy industrial ecosystem. As a result, even after three years of war on its doorstep, Europe still struggles to replace battlefield losses at speed, let alone sustain the output required for a long war of attrition.

    This is not primarily a budget problem. European defense spending is rising rapidly. It is a production problem. Without long-term contracts, predictable energy access, secure supply chains and trained workforces, more money often translates into debt rather than output. A war economy means something very specific: a permanent industrial posture designed for sustained military production under crisis conditions, with surge capacity built in before and not after, the shooting intensifies.

• Europe’s Hidden Dependence on the United States

    Europe’s industrial weakness is compounded by structural dependence on US-controlled infrastructure across three critical layers.

    First, space and intelligence. Modern warfare depends on satellite navigation, targeting, surveillance and secure communications. While Europe operates some independent assets, much of its high-end battlefield awareness remains linked to US military and commercial systems. The operational “nervous system” of European forces is therefore not under European control.

    Second, weapons servicing and logistics. Many of Europe’s most advanced platforms (from aircraft to missile systems) depend on US-supplied components, software updates and maintenance chains. Sustained high-intensity operations often require continued American authorization and technical support.

    Third, nuclear deterrence. With the partial exception of France (and with Britain now outside the EU), Europe relies overwhelmingly on US extended deterrence for ultimate strategic protection. Escalation control at the highest level remains, in practice, an American political decision.

    Fourth, financial infrastructure. Sanctions, payment systems, cloud services and data centers are now instruments of power as consequential as missiles. Much of Europe’s financial and digital infrastructure remains embedded in legal and technical frameworks governed outside European jurisdiction. These arrangements appear commercial in peacetime. In a crisis, they become strategic pressure points. A modern war economy, therefore, also requires financial resilience, secure digital infrastructure and energy security and not just shells and tanks.

    For decades, these arrangements appeared to be efficient alliance integration. In an era shaped by prolonged war and a more conditional US security posture, they increasingly appear to be strategic constraints.

• Europe’s Fragmented Defense Industrial Base

    Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Europe has published an avalanche of security strategies and defense road maps. Yet, the US National Security Strategy now adds pressure from the opposite direction: it links long-term security more tightly to political alignment, burden-sharing and domestic industrial priorities. Strategy without industry is an illusion on both sides of the Atlantic.

    Europe’s defense industry remains fragmented into national silos, with overlapping platforms and incompatible standards. The United States, by contrast, still benefits from a relatively unified industrial base capable of moving production across a small number of major contractors.

    The strategic result is uncomfortable but clear: Europe remains far better at buying advanced weapons than at producing them at scale. In a prolonged war, that imbalance becomes a structural liability.

    A genuine war economy would reverse that logic. It would prioritize continuous output over crisis-driven procurement. It would narrow production to a limited set of standardized systems produced in volume. And it would integrate defense production directly with innovation, energy, transport and workforce planning.

• US-EU Relations Are Now Transactional

    None of this means the United States is abandoning Europe. American forces, intelligence, logistics and nuclear guarantees remain the backbone of NATO. But the new National Security Strategy makes explicit what had already been creeping into US politics: alliances are no longer framed primarily as shared political destiny, but as contingent instruments of national interest.

    Burden-sharing is now a dominant theme in US domestic politics. Security commitments are framed more openly as transactions. Support is no longer assumed to be automatic, unlimited, or politically cost-free.

    For much of the post-Cold War period, Europe could afford industrial complacency because US commitments filled the gap. The National Security Strategy now signals that US power will be used first and foremost for US priorities. That turns European dependence from a comfort into a vulnerability.

• Europe Cannot Wait for a Post-Donald Trump Future

    A future US administration may again emphasize alliance leadership in the more traditional fashion. But Europe cannot build its security posture on hopes about American political cycles, especially when the current National Security Strategy already embeds a more conditional logic.

    Greater European industrial autonomy would make the transatlantic alliance more resilient across partisan shifts, not more fragile. Partnerships between near-equals are inherently more stable than relationships built on dependency. Strategic autonomy, in this sense, is not separation from the United States. It is the material condition for sustainable cooperation under changing US priorities.

    Europe now faces an interlocking set of risks: a grinding war in Ukraine, intensifying great-power competition and a transatlantic bargain whose terms are being redefined in Washington. Yet its defense economy still reflects post-Cold War assumptions that no longer hold.

    The danger is not a shortage of strategy papers. Europe’s real choice is not between two abstract options of “dependence” and “independence.” It is between remaining structurally reliant on external industrial, nuclear and digital power or investing in the material foundations of its own security.

    A war economy does not guarantee peace. But without one, deterrence rests on fragile assumptions about access, permission and political alignment. Ukraine has already shown what happens when those assumptions fail. Europe can remain a consumer of security. Or it can become a producer of security at scale.