Rattling the U.S.’s longest standing alliances is starting to cost America’s military industrial complex.
U.S. arms-makers were shut out of the European Union’s enormous defense spending plan released Wednesday.
“We must buy more European. Because that means strengthening the European defense technological and industrial base,” said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The U.K. was similarly frozen out of the deal. Instead, the EU tapped South Korea and Japan to join the military program, which aims to spend more than $800 billion by 2030 as the bloc prepares for potential conflict with Russia.
“We need to see not only Russia as a threat, but also … more global geopolitical developments and where Americans will put their strategic attention,” said European Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius, according to Politico.
The sales pitch from American arms manufacturers simply isn’t as persuasive as it was under previous administrations. For decades, purchasing American fighter jets and weapons came with an added bonus of U.S. protection. But as global leaders have witnessed Donald Trump defy longstanding military treatises and aggress U.S. allies, that promise no longer feels like a guarantee.
Trump’s shocking hostility toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during critical peace negotiations, his nonsensical trade war, his threats to annex Greenland, his whiplash decisions to suspend and un-suspend military resources and intelligence with Kyiv, and his insistence on making Canada the nation’s 51st state have all called the reliability of American protection into question.
And European nations aren’t the only ones thinking of nixing their American contracts. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Wednesday that he was reviewing a $13.3 billion contract from 2023 for dozens of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters for “geopolitical” reasons, as well as “the possibility of having substantial production of alternative aircraft in Canada.” Portugal announced similar plans last week, apparently wobbling on whether it would replace its aging air force with American-made products.
“An important factor in the purchase of the F-35 by European governments was the idea that European defense would be built on a transatlantic basis in terms of strategy, institutions, and capabilities,” Gesine Weber, a Paris-based fellow at transatlantic think tank German Marshall Fund, told Politico Wednesday. Weber further noted that Trump’s intention to overhaul NATO makes the purchase of American arms systems “no longer have any added value for Europeans.”
Other defense experts that spoke with the publication were more candid.
“If you keep punching your allies in the face, eventually they’re going to stop wanting to buy weapons from you,” an anonymous Western European defense official told Politico. “Right now we have limited options outside of U.S. platforms, but in the long run? That could change in the coming decades if this combativeness keeps up.”
Foreign sales are crucial to the U.S. arms industry. Historically, two-thirds of EU defense spending has gone to American contractors. Losing that could have ramifications for the U.S. economy.
But despite the Trump agenda, U.S. arms makers are still hoping that the looming threat of war will leave foreign nations with few other options than to buy their goods. Countries that surround Russia, including Poland and Romania, are still rushing to scoop up as many rockets, artillery, tanks, and warplanes into their arsenals as they can.
In December, NATO chief Mark Rutte told the military alliance that it was time for Europe to “shift to a wartime mindset.”
“Russia is preparing for long-term confrontation, with Ukraine and with us,” Rutte said, urging NATO members to “turbocharge” defense production and spending. “We are not ready for what is coming our way in four to five years.”
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