Defense industrial policy in a changing international order: rethinking transatlantic burden-sharing

ABSTRACT

Though it is a core function of a sovereign state, governments do not navigate defense policy free from outside influences and constraints. The provision of external security requires armed forces to be adequately equipped but the distribution of material resources - defense-industrial capacity – for such equipment is not even but rather concentrated in the international system. How do alliance politics and defense-industrial policy connect? Our contribution highlights the material resources for military alliance effectiveness and emphasizes a strategic view of the relationship between these material factors and alliance burden-sharing. The sudden surge in demand for materiel resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revealed the defense-industrial fault lines within the transatlantic alliance. We outline existing dependencies and interdependencies, identify trade-offs and connections between industrial policy and defense spending, and formulate policy recommendations based on our findings. Taking a political economy of security perspective, these recommendations are aimed at a better understanding of how industrial politics and alliance stability are intertwined. They suggest pathways to a new and more stable transatlantic defense-industrial bargain in an era of increased great power conflict.

KEYWORDS:

• Alliance
• defense industry
• industrial politics
• Hierarchy
• interdependence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jade Guiberteau

Jade Guiberteau is a master's student at ENSAE - Institut Polytechnique de Paris and a research assistant at Chair of Defense Economics - IHEDN (France). Her research focuses on defense economics, especially European and NATO challenges. She holds a M.A. in Armed Conflict Expertise and a B.A. in Economics from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Lucas Hellemeier

Lucas Hellemeier is a Ph.D. Candidate at Freie Universitaet Berlin‘s John F. Kennedy Institute. His research focuses on the political economy of security and defense. He was a Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow at the University of Notre Dame's International Security Center (2022-2023) and is currently a Research Fellow at the Hertie School‘s Centre for International Security. He holds a B.A. in political science from the TU Dresden, Germany, and an M.A. in North American studies from the John F. Kennedy Institute at Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany.

Kaija Schilde

Kaija Schilde is an Associate Professor and Jean Monnet Chair of European Security and Defense at the Boston University Pardee School of Global Studies. She studies and teaches courses in the global political economy of security, European Union politics, and comparative security interests and institutions. She is the author of “The Political Economy of European Security” (Cambridge University Press 2017).