INDUSTRIAL RESPONSEResourcing the Ramp-Up: NATO and the Challenge of a Coherent Industrial Response to Russia's War in Ukraine
Near the top of the new NATO Secretary-General’s in-tray will be an urgent question: why are efforts to mobilize the alliance’s industrial base and ramp up production still yielding underwhelming results, over two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine?
In July, NATO leaders gathered in Washington to unveil a raft of new initiatives at the alliance’s 75th Anniversary Summit. These included NATO taking over the coordination of aid to Ukraine—now described as on an “irreversible” path to membership—and an Industrial Capacity Expansion Pledge to boost production of arms and equipment, both to support Kyiv and to replenish depleted Western stockpiles after decades of low investment.
But near the top of the new NATO Secretary-General’s in-tray will be an urgent question: why are efforts to mobilize the alliance’s industrial base and ramp up production still yielding underwhelming results, over two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine? As allied leaders head home from the latest summit, a new RAND report shows that decades of fragmented and lackluster investment in the industrial base and its underlying workforce skills, production lines, and supply chains will not yield to quick fixes.
Playing Catch-Up
Such has been the scale of bilateral and multilateral support to Ukraine that it has become increasingly difficult to track. The Kiel Institute currently assesses U.S. bilateral aid to be in the region of €75 billion, of which two thirds is military aid and the rest financial or humanitarian. Donations from EU institutions exceed €33 billion.
This is in addition to significant bilateral support from European states, most notably Germany and the UK, taking the European total to over €100 billion of aid allocated so far. Tens more billions have already been set aside for future allocation, with NATO leaders at the Washington Summit pledging €40 billion in military aid for Ukraine this coming year.
But this belies a stark reality: Many countries have emptied the store cupboard in their support for Ukraine. They now face a dual challenge.
On the one hand, their own security depends on continuing to equip Ukraine to win in a costly war of attrition against a determined Russian adversary. The Kremlin is able to draw on vast stocks of Cold War equipment, augmented by North Korean, Iranian and increasingly Chinese support, and with the Russian industrial base mobilized onto a war footing in defiance of Western sanctions.
