A bark-or-bite moment for European rearmament
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Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios
"European rearmament" is catchy, convenient, clean.
- But the truth, across many capitals, and in the minds and hands of those building factories and weaponry, is far more complicated.
Why it matters: The continent is at a crossroads. Unpredictability gnaws at the relationship to the west with the U.S., and stray Russian missiles and drones arrive on its doorstep to the east.
- While an influx of defense spending is a solid start, many bottlenecks remain, entrenched by regulatory, political, geographical and cultural differences.
Driving the news: This dynamic, and these observations, became clear over the course of several recent interviews, sit-downs and catch-ups, including on Zoom, at an embassy and in the twilight hours of a Washington defense conference.
What they're saying: "Europe no longer lacks money; money isn't the problem. It lacks the ability, I would say, to turn the money into delivered capability quickly," Tobias Billström, the former Swedish foreign affairs minister now at Nordic Air Defense, told Axios.
- "We lack factories and we lack skilled workers and we lack procurement," he said.
- "We have to think about what we mean when we talk about 'European independence' or 'European sovereignty.' It's one thing to use these words. But the reality shows a different picture."
Zoom in: A Morningstar report published last month found that defense markets are in the initial stage of "a new supercycle" and that European rearmament is a "long-term demand story," as "decades of underinvestment" have left militaries wanting.
Yes, but: The same report warned that the buildup "faces an uneven path" ahead.
- Some countries, like Poland and Latvia, already exceed NATO's 3.5% spending benchmark.
- Many others don't. (Spain last summer rejected the alliance's spending increase as unreasonable, angering President Trump.)
- "Four years ago, defense topics as a whole were much more difficult to get understood by citizens," Hervé Dammann, a Thales executive vice president, told Axios. "The trajectory is there."
Threat level: War in Ukraine and across the Middle East has forced a rethink of what frontline fighting looks like and what allies abroad are actually capable of.
- What was once effective no longer works; what was once cordial is now confrontational.
The bottom line: "I think people are saying the right things," but there "is less action than there are words," Joakim Sjöblom, the co-founder of SWEBAL, a TNT-making startup, told Axios.
- "To add another shift in your factory, it's quite low-hanging fruit, and most of the incumbents of industry have already done that. But to raise a new plant, within the bureaucracy of Europe, takes years," he said.
- "Finding the innovation is not necessarily the bottleneck, but reaching industrial manufacturing capacity is really hard."
Go deeper: Ukraine's Starlink woes spur Europe to look for Musk alternatives
