Europe has almost doubled the purchase of weapons to stop Russia from invading Ukraine in the last five years, with the United States being its main supplier, which has reinforced this country in its leadership in the global arms trade, according to a report. released this Monday by the Stockholm International Institute for Peace Research (Sipri).
Europe’s demand for weapons increased after 2014, when Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. But the expansion of the Russian invasion to the rest of Ukraine has caused weapons acquisitions to increase by 94% in Europe between 2019 and 2023 and compared to the previous period (2014-18). This increased the continent’s dependence on its partner on the other side of the Atlantic: from 35% to 55% of the total volume acquired. In other words, American arms exports to the region have tripled.
Ukraine accounted for 4.7% of all US arms exports and 17% of those to Europe. European countries purchased “high-value weapons, including almost 800 fighters and combat helicopters,” details the Swedish institute, which highlights the increase in demand for air defense systems.
Eight out of ten European countries that have acquired aircraft in the last five years chose the American F-16 and F-35, according to the report, while only Greece and Croatia opted for the French Rafale fighters. “France still has difficulties selling its main weapons to European countries, especially due to strong competition with the US,” say the authors of the report. In any case, the French country has become the second largest arms exporter in the world after growing 47% compared to the previous period and catching Russia.
The European Union has increased its military spending in order to alleviate its dependence on the United States, even more so with the prospect of a possible re-election of Donald Trump as US president next November. The European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, recalled last week that currently purchases of war material from the United States made by EU countries to help Ukraine already represent 68%. Brussels’ goal is to acquire 50% of equipment within member countries by 2030, according to the European Commission.
While the United States has seen its dominance consolidated – it increased its arms exports by 17% and went from controlling 34% to 42% of the world total, supplying weapons to 107 countries – Russia, which needs all the weapons it produces for the war in Ukraine has regressed in the last five years. Although it maintains 11% of total world sales, the country led by Putin experienced a drop of more than half (53%) of its exports and a reduction in the number of recipient countries: from 31 in 2018 to 12 in the 2023.
China, a historical buyer of Russia, reduced its imports by 44%, although the vast majority continued to come from its Russian ally. “The decline in Chinese imports is due to China’s growing ability to design and produce its own major weapons,” the study states.
Although India is not immersed in any war, the South Asian giant remains the world’s leading arms buyer, with an increase of 4.7% and almost 10% of the world total, ahead of Saudi Saudi (8.4%), Qatar (7.6%), Ukraine (4.9%) and Pakistan (4.3%). However, Ukraine is, by far, the country in which imports grew the most in the last five years: 6,633% more, followed by the Atlantic Alliance (1,638% more) or the Netherlands (751%), which It shows once again that the Russian invasion of the European country in February 2022 has set the trend in the arms trade in recent years.
Despite the skyrocketing purchases in Europe, the continent represents the third region that purchases the most weapons in the world, with 21% of the total. On the other hand, the Asia-Oceania region remained the main world importer, with 37% of the total, followed by the Middle East (30%), and, far behind, America (5.7%) and Africa (4 ,3 %).
Unlike Ukraine, the war that Israel has waged against Hamas in the Gaza Strip since October 7 of last year has not led to a significant increase, just 5.1%, in its arms imports between the two periods analyzed. The United States and Germany continued to be its main arms suppliers at 69% and 30%, respectively. “Imported weapons, particularly fighter jets received from the United States for several decades, have played an important role” in Israel’s military operation against the Islamist group and its allies, Sipri states. In addition, the European institute detected that at the end of 2023, the United States rushed to deliver “thousands of guided bombs and missiles to Israel.”
