Fit for war in decades: Europe’s and Germany’s slow rearmament vis-à-vis Russia

Guntram B. Wolff, Alexandr Burilkov, Katelyn Bushnell & Ivan Kharitonov

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INTRODUCTION

Europe must confront the reality that a long-lasting war of attrition is again on European soil. The war of Russia against Ukraine is now in its third year and many military experts expect it to last even longer. While initially the hope was that this war would be a short military confrontation, it is by now clear that it has turned into a long-lasting war of attrition. In a war of attrition, three factors are of central importance to its outcome: (1) the political willingness to sustain the war; (2) the production capacities to deliver the necessary military materiel for force sustainment and generation (alongside the ability to recruit and train soldiers, a topic not further considered here); and (3) the available fiscal resources and the cost of the purchased equipment.

As the war lasts longer, the United States is increasingly likely to become absorbed by other threat theatres and European responsibility for the support of Ukraine and for deterrence will grow. In this war of attrition, the build-up of European military capacity for deterrence, as well as the production of military stock at reasonable prices, will thus become more and more decisive. Germany’s actions and decisions could play the pivotal role as it is the largest European economy with the most fiscal resources and the greatest industrial base for the production of arms in the EU and Western Europe.