Analysis
Europe faces up to prospect US may be unable to arm Nato allies
Andrew Rothin Washington
Wars in Iran and Ukraine have expended stockpiles of sought-after missiles, leaving gap in military resources
There are growing concerns in Europe that the US defence industrial base is no longer providing the weapons pledged to Nato allies with US stockpiles depleted owing to the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, leaving allies to consider new avenues to arm and defend themselves
As Nato leaders including the US president, Donald Trump, convene in Ankara, Turkey, the US plans to address European defence spending and concerns over the Trump administration’s future commitment to the military alliance
The US this year has delayed or cancelled deliveries of a series of key arms shipments to countries in Europe, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, Himars mobile rocket artillery and desperately needed Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles, of which the US used an estimated 50% through April of this year during its war with Iran
They are crucial for countering the threat of missile strikes in Ukraine and would also be needed for the defence of Europe in case of an armed conflict with Russia
After a Russian bombardment killed at least 21 people and left dozens injured in Ukraine on Monday, the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the country had been unable to intercept about 23 ballistic missiles that were launched as part of a salvo alongside other missiles and drones
“The reason for this is precisely the insufficient supply of interceptor missiles,” Zelenskyy wrote. “It is very important that the world, especially America and our European partners, come out of the Nato summit in Ankara with strong decisions to support our defence of the sky, and hence, the protection of ordinary people’s lives.”
The shortages have also angered European capitals, which have quietly seethed while seeking to avoid direct conflicts with the Trump administration in order to prevent a broader collapse in transatlantic relations
“There are five or six problems at once contributing to this,” said one European diplomat, describing dwindling stocks from the war in Iran and the conflict in Ukraine, the effort to shift defence reerceptors being sent first to allies such as Israel. “We know that we are not customer number one.”
The US has demanded that Nato allies increase their defence spending to 5% for a second year running under Trump and that much of that money be ploughed back into purchases of American arms shipments. But there are now questions about whether further investments in US arms, including next-generation weapons, will be honoured in the future
“We’re going to have billions of dollars in announcements on the sidelines of the summit, I’m not here to preview those specifically but I think there’s a lot of really interesting co-production, building of factories, building of lines of production in Europe and the US,” an administration official said before the Nato summit on Sunday
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But, diplomats said, it will take an expected 5-10 years for Europe to develop new production lines, leaving a dangerous period of time before Europe can ramp up its own defence production while the US appears eager to pull troops and other capabilities sooner
About 20 countries are waiting in line for deliveries of Patriot missiles, and an estimate by the Center for Strategic and International Studies has said that it could take 42 months for the US to replenish just its own stockpiles of the missiles, which were estimated at 2,330 before the war with Iran and during which the US expended about half
“There’s a competition when you have a finite amount of something, someone gets it and someone doesn’t,” said Phil Gordon, a former national security adviser to the former US vice-president Kamala Harris, who noted that the Biden administration was also forced to delay deliveries of arms to allies owing to the war in Ukraine
At the Nato summit, he said, “leaders will want to underscore why they are the most important, but they’ll also be conscious there’s not a lot they can do about it”
When it comes to aborted plans to deliver Tomahawk missiles to Germany, for instance, the “US shot 1,000 Tomahawks in Iran, so like it’s not that they’re not prioritising [Germany], they don’t exist,” he said. “The real conclusion from this is that Europeans are going to have to be more self-reliant and reliant on others.”
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