European NATO members have become even more dependent on U.S. weapons than before, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released Monday.
European arms imports shot up by 155 percent over 2020-2024 compared with 2015-2019 — a reaction to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.
While the U.S. supplied 52 percent of European NATO members’ military equipment between 2015 and 2019, the share rose to 64 percent in the subsequent five-year period.
Europeans are taking steps to boost their own industries, said Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher with SIPRI, “but the transatlantic arms-supply relationship has deep roots. Imports from the USA have risen and European NATO states have almost 500 combat aircraft and many other weapons still on order from the USA.”
The report comes as European countries are massively rearming, amid concerns that the administration of President Donald Trump is realigning with Russia and that America’s decades-long security guarantees to Europe are no longer reliable.
This has led to calls in European countries to limit reliance on U.S. weapons — for example, German economists recently warned against buying American F-35 fighter jets.
According to the SIPRI report, the other main sellers of weapons for European NATO nations are France, South Korea, Germany and Israel.
In the 2020-2024 period, Ukraine has become the world’s largest importer of weapons — with most of the arms coming from the U.S., Germany and Poland.
The world’s largest arms importers besides Ukraine are` India, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan while the largest arms exporters are the U.S., France, Russia, China and Germany.
