Europe’s imports of weapons produced by the United States have risen exponentially in the past five years, raising serious questions about whether the continent can achieve its much-wanted goal of achieving defence autonomy without US support.
New research released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a leading defence and armaments think tank, reveals Europe’s increased reliance on US imports of weapons two-and-a-half times over in the past five years compared with the previous five years.
The continent’s ability to build high-quality and workable weapons will materially affect how well it can defend Ukraine after a US arms cut-off, Matthew George, director of the SIPRI Arms Transfers Programme, told reporters.
He said, “On one side, you have states increasing arms to counter the ‘Russian threat,’ but on the other, states will need to figure out how they rearm and build up while also transferring stocks to Ukraine.”
The majority of the EU nation’s members did not begin boosting their domestic weapons production until last year, the third year of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine.
Additionally, there has been another interesting development India has become the world’s second-largest weapons importer after Ukraine.
Meanwhile, China in recent times has boosted its weaponisation programs and has fully relied on indigenously developed defence technologies and is not in the top ten importers anymore.
The report said, “China’s arms imports fell by 64 per cent and accounted for 1.8 per cent of the global total in 2020–24, compared with 5.1 per cent in 2015–19. China was not among the world’s top 10 arms importers for the first time since 1990–94.”
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China’s increasing ability to design and produce its own major arms means that it is far less reliant on arms imports than it was previously.
Its arms imports will probably decrease further as the capacity of its domestic arms industry grows.”
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