The NATO and its general secretary, Jens Stoltenberg, created this week a serious diplomatic incident with Spain by excluding the Spanish defense industry of a meeting of the companies of the sector with the defense ministers of the Atlantic Alliance on June 15 in Brussels dedicated to increasing coordination and production. The broad North American and British representation at the NATO sectoral meeting and the exclusion of industry representatives from European countries, such as Spain and Netherlandsamong others, is part of the buried pulse initiated by the United States under the presidency of donald trump and continued by the Administration of Joe Biden to try halt the development of an indigenous military industry powerful in the European Union (EU) to avoid losing the lucrative European market for US arms exports.
The industrial plan, drawn up by Stoltenberg for the NATO summit in July, is a new mechanism to try to control the european defense industry and accommodate it to the interests of Washington. The exclusion of representatives of the Spanish military industry is surprising, given that Spain is the eighth world exporter of arms and the sixth in importance within the Atlantic Alliance, according to the Stockholm International Institute for Peace Studies (SIPRI). Spain concentrated the 2.6% of world arms exports in the period 2018-2022, a much higher percentage than other countries whose companies were invited by NATO to the meeting. Thus, the weight of Spain in the world arms export market is more than double that of Türkiyetriple that of Sweden (which is not even in NATO), nine times higher than that of Norway, 13 times higher than Belgium and even much higher figures compared to other guests (Estonia, Croatia, Finland, Czech Republic…).
The US is the world’s leading arms exporter, concentrating 40% of the total, with a substantial increase in its weight compared to 33% in the 2013-2017 period, indicates SIPRI. They follow you at a great distance Russia (16%), France (eleven%), China (5.2%) and Germany (4.2%). Europe is an important market for the US, where sold 23% of the total of its military exports in 2018-2022, more than double the percentage of 2013-2017 and where it wants to penetrate more to compensate for the weight loss of middle East. The EU countries, despite their successive plans, continue to depend on the North American industry, from which they acquire more than 50% of their annual military supplyand the war in Ukraine has accentuated that trend (planes, missiles, anti-tanks).
NATO’s requirement that its members spend 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense will be a large additional volume of military investment annual European sales and Washington hopes that most of it will go to buy North American equipment. Compared to the current situation, the 2% objective implies an increase in defense spending of 20,000 million euros per year in Germany, 12,100 million in Spain9,400 million in Italy and 3,000 million in France, according to NATO data.
European military industry plans
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The EU wants to take advantage of the renewal of European arsenals after the delivery of ammunition, weapons and equipment to Ukraine to expand and strengthen its own military industry. But Washington is trying to ensure that this renovation is done mainly with North American products. The EU began to developing the Europe of Defense in 2017, given the mistrust generated by Trump’s behavior at the helm of the United States. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has accelerated European plans to strengthen its military industry and the creation of the European Fund for Peace has financed the shipment of arms to kyiv for 3,600 million.
But European defense companies are demanding firm long-term contracts from governments to expand their production capacity and consider insufficient 500 million proposed by the European Commission. Regarding the renewal of European combat aircraft, The US is the sole beneficiarythe president of Dassault Aviation told the French Senate, Eric Trappier. Under pressure, Washington has already managed participate in internal meetings of the European Defense Agency and the new NATO military industrial plan tries to ensure that the European funds destined to supply the million howitzers promised to kyiv also serve to finance orders from North American firms.