5 hours ago
For all the noise, Trump is ever less relevant on Ukraine
BAE Systems is quietly ramping up production of 155mm artillery shells at Glascoed in rural South Wales. Output will have increased 16-fold from 2022 levels by the end of this year.
Two months ago the defence group opened a new factory in Sheffield making gun barrels for the M777 lightweight howitzer, to be supplied directly to Ukraine.
Poland is now producing a million bullets a day, up five times from pre-war levels. Annual output of Grot rifles will have risen six times to 100,000 by next year.
Germany's RheinMetall will soon be making 1.1 million howitzer shells a year, up from pre-war levels of 70,000. It is in talks to make armoured vehicles at Volkswagen's surplus plant in Osnabrück. The weapons company is now worth more than VW, Munich Re or Deutsche Bank on the German bourse. A sign of the times.
Europe's missile conglomerate MBDA is building a plant with Raytheon in Germany that will produce more American Patriot air defence missiles than America itself.
Production of the Franco-Italian SAMP/T – Europe's answer to the Patriot – has risen fivefold compared to the original 2022 plan. The SAMP/T has largely closed the technology gap, lifting the range to 93 miles.
And about time too, you might say. Europe should have rearmed after Vladimir Putin first attacked Ukraine in 2014. It should have put its economy on a war footing the moment he tried to take the whole country in 2022.
But rearmament is at last happening – minus the usual free-riders. The wheels were set in motion before Donald Trump returned to office. The pace is not warp speed but it is already changing the Atlantic balance of military power, and that is the larger story behind this week's slapstick theatrics at the White House.
While Trump still commands the daily news cycle, he no longer commands the West and no longer commands the fate of Ukraine.
'With each month that passes, America is losing its strategic leverage,' said Professor Alan Riley from the Atlantic Council, a US think tank. 'Trump cannot dictate terms to the Europeans or to Kyiv.'
While I think the European Union in its current structure is largely a nuisance, the great nation states of Europe still pack a punch. Europe as a whole has 33 million manufacturing jobs, while the US has fewer than 13 million.
When push comes to shove, it is Europe that has the skills, factories and industrial infrastructure for massive military expansion. It is Europe that is becoming the new arsenal of democracy, though few yet realise it.
Trump is certainly not in a position to force Ukraine to commit strategic suicide by giving up its unconquered 'fortress belt' in the Donetsk oblast, the defensive line built up over 11 years that protects the towns of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Kostyantynivka, as well as the military-industrial ecosystem close behind the front.
