Rebuilding Europe’s Defence Industrial Base

The return of large-scale war to Europe has exposed the fragility of the continent’s defence industrial base and its structural dependence on a globalized economy optimized for efficiency rather than endurance. For three decades, Europe treated armaments production as a residual function of the Cold War, sustained only through limited procurement cycles and technological prestige projects. The sudden need for sustained supply to Ukraine revealed that stockpiles were shallow, production lines mothballed, and coordination among member states minimal. European industries could not match the pace of consumption imposed by high-intensity warfare. The problem is not simply one of scale but of philosophy: peacetime economics had replaced strategic redundancy with market logic. Rebuilding the industrial base therefore requires a systemic reversal, where security becomes the overriding criterion of economic planning. The capacity to deter now depends less on technological sophistication than on the ability to produce and replenish—continuously, rapidly, and collectively.