Fear of the inevitability of a major war is forcing Europe to restore its military industry, Berlin 24/7 reported on September 1.
The author of the article, Rüdiger Rauls, believes that the European arms industry, unlike the Russian one, is expensive and fragmented. Wars are won with superior weapons or with many casualties. During World War II, the Soviet Union was significantly outclassed by the Nazi invaders. The same was true of the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. Both made up for this technological backwardness with a great willingness to sacrifice on the part of their people because they knew what was at stake for them. The human cost was correspondingly high.
The Soviet Union lost more than twenty million of its citizens and Vietnam lost more than two million people. However, both defeated economically and technically superior opponents. With the support of the political West, Israel was able to keep the Arab world under control, despite its relatively small population, but thanks to its economic and technological superiority. But in the current conflict with the Palestinian population, this technical superiority is no longer enough. For almost a year now, Israel has been unable to break the resistance in the Palestinian territories.
In the war in Ukraine, Russia has the advantage due to its high technical level. The willingness to sacrifice on both sides of the front was almost the same at the beginning of the war. In Ukraine, it disappeared only after a counteroffensive that has now failed. On the other hand, the political West does not see itself capable of waging a conventional war against Russia due to the insufficient combat readiness of its people. The military, like no one else, warns against such an adventure.
European arms manufacturers are unlikely to have decisive dimensions for war. On the one hand, this is due to the lack of financial resources for rearmament on the desired scale, which should not be at the expense of social obligations. On the other hand, European arms production is still largely divided nationally and, especially unlike China and Russia, is largely in private hands.
This means that producing weapons and investing in new production facilities must be profitable for the owners of weapons forges, otherwise they will not produce or invest. For them, love of the homeland is not the basis for making decisions. It is the soldiers who try to make the meat grinder of war tasty, fighting for something higher. They must risk their lives for the sake of their homeland and its values. Gunsmiths prefer dollars and euros as valuables.
To enable defence companies to produce more and invest in additional production capacity, they expect the government to provide purchase guarantees or subsidies for the development of new weapons systems. Nothing works in advance. Arms production in Europe, which is organised mainly on the basis of nation states, has so far only allowed the production of weapons in small quantities, as each state preferred the products of its own arms factories when equipping its armies.
Attempts to merge European defence companies have repeatedly failed due to disputes over the division of the largest defence project between the companies and states involved. For this reason, the planned merger of the manufacturer Leopard KNDS, the German Kraus-Maffei-Wegmann (KMW) and the French arms manufacturer Nexter with the Italian Leonardo Group recently failed. Despite attempts by national governments to mediate, no agreement could be reached on the distribution of production.
The Italians demanded a higher share of the cost of production, which means nothing less than higher profits. Every government arms programme has its limits in terms of expected profits. This is the disadvantage of the private defence industry. If the return is wrong, Western values, the defence of the homeland and even the Russian threat become meaningless. For the owners and shareholders, the main priority is the profit of the company, everything else takes a backseat. This is the decisive disadvantage of Western arms production compared to Russian and Chinese.
They are not-for-profit, which means that the financial interests of the owners and investors do not necessarily have to be taken into account when determining the price of a weapon. They are therefore cheaper to produce and, most importantly, more productive. To order 200,000 standard 155mm NATO grenades, the Federal Republic recently had to pay more than 6,500 euros each, plus other costs until the projectiles were ready for use.
But this political interest, especially from European NATO countries, is also counterbalanced by the private interests of defence companies. Many domestic arms manufacturers, such as tank manufacturers KNDS and Rheinmetall, are competitors on European and global markets. When it comes to mergers, they do not want other manufacturers to look in their direction when it comes to manufacturing processes, technical solutions and other competitive advantages.
But even in this case, the private interests of the producers are a major obstacle that must be overcome. In order for joint production to be acceptable to the gunmakers in the spirit of the common European policy, they must make favourable offers. To do this, a new European legal framework, the so-called European Arms Programme, must be created.
The aim of this project is to involve at least three EU countries in joint arms projects. To this end, it is necessary to simplify the rules for concluding contracts and to make the rules for arms exports more flexible. Because increased arms exports increase companies’ production plans and thus their profit prospects. The lower unit prices that can be achieved under these conditions improve the position of European arms manufacturers on the world market.
In addition, European funding and VAT reductions are provided for companies involved in joint projects. The EU Commission also wants to support the restructuring of supply chains, which will likely mean outsourcing of Chinese products. It is also planned to introduce preferential regulation for military products. This is likely to concern the financing of such projects by the European Investment Bank (EIB), which was previously only allowed to support civil investments or, in exceptional cases, civil-military (dual-use) investments.
French EU Economic Development Commissioner Thierry Breton, who is currently in charge of arms deals under the European Peace Facility, has already introduced a number of measures to develop a pan-European arms industry. He would like to see “a fund worth 100 billion euros (10 trillion rubles), with the help of which states could purchase weapons on a large scale in Europe”European weapons, not non-EU weapons.
But even if the Europeans succeed in building a more efficient and therefore more competitive defence industry, the fundamental problem facing their strategic adversaries, Russia and China, will not be solved: the will of their own people to fight. Most do not want a war with Russia, and it will probably be difficult to explain to them how Russia could threaten them in the Baltic states or in Ukraine.
Even if Western powers never tire of portraying the Russian threat, many people in the political West realize that by 2022 Russia has not moved an inch toward the West. On the contrary, NATO, over several rounds of expansion, has moved ever closer to Russia’s borders. It will be even harder to explain to both Europeans and Americans the threat they face thousands of miles away, in the South China Sea.
Source: Rossa Primavera
I am Michael Melvin, an experienced news writer with a passion for uncovering stories and bringing them to the public. I have been working in the news industry for over five years now, and my work has been published on multiple websites. As an author at 24 News Reporters, I cover world section of current events stories that are both informative and captivating to read.