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Politics

¿Quién está ganando la guerra en Ucrania?

Sep 16, 2022 Shlomo Ben-Ami

TEL AVIV – Pese a la impresionante contraofensiva reciente de Ucrania en la región de Járkov, la guerra con Rusia ha caído en un atasco prolongado. Aun así, hay un vencedor claro: la industria armamentística estadounidense.

Algunos ven a las empresas del sector como el «arsenal de la democracia», como denominó el presidente Franklin Delano Roosevelt al esfuerzo industrial estadounidense en apoyo de los Aliados durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Y es innegable el papel que han tenido en la provisión de apoyo a Ucrania para que pudiera repeler la ocupación rusa. Pero su afán de lucro y su influencia sobre la política exterior estadounidense plantean la amenaza de que el arsenal termine volviéndose contra la democracia misma.

La industria armamentística estadounidense (junto con otros grandes exportadores de armas como Rusia, China, Francia, el Reino Unido e Israel) lleva años cosechando los beneficios de largas guerras y alianzas militares duraderas. Los contratistas estadounidenses (que hoy controlan el 39% del comercio internacional de armas) empezaron a rearmar a Europa mucho antes de que Rusia invadiera Ucrania. Aunque las exportaciones de armas en todo el mundo se redujeron casi un 5% entre 2017 y 2021, Europa aumentó un 19% sus compromisos de rearme.

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Ukraine’s Coming Winter of Decision
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Ukraine’s Coming Winter of Decision

Richard Haass thinks the country’s leaders will have to use the lull in the fighting to weigh war goals and economic costs.

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Jag Patel Sep 17, 2022

The trend towards what is called economic nationalism, the belief that national security is compromised when a country’s military depends upon imported defence goods and services, is a worrying trend in the developed world. The EU27’s push towards a Europe-wide defence industrial policy is an example.

Of all the type of goods and services traded across national boundaries, none is more strategically important than the buying and selling of defence equipment. Consistent with its vision of a Global Britain trading freely with countries beyond the EU post-Brexit, the UK is a notable exception to this narrow belief system of economic nationalism. It has recently been joined by a courageous Australia which is seeking to share the burden of deterring an assertive China in the South China Sea and in the Pacific Ocean with its procurement of mature, tried-and-tested submarine technology offered by the UK and US.

Consider for a moment, recent military hardware procurements made by the UK. In the main, they have been acquired because of their commonality and interoperability with US armed forces which not only enables both countries to undertake joint operations seamlessly, but also offers certainty that replacement spare parts will be made available available to the front line via a common logistics supply chain – thereby reducing substantially, the burden of in-service sustainment costs, which can be in the order of four to five times the prime equipment costs over the whole life cycle.

But there is yet another, even more important reason.

The UK government has quietly revised its defence procurement policy to consider buying, as its first and foremost priority, new military equipment for the Armed Forces which automatically falls in the off-the-shelf category – specifically because an off-the-shelf equipment is a fully engineered and supported technical solution which satisfies the key user requirements at no additional cost or risk to the Exchequer, that is to say, it does not require any user-specified modifications or related development work laden with risk to be performed upon it, which everyone agrees has been the cause of persistent delays and cost overruns on defence procurement programmes for as long as anyone can remember.

The reason, which it will not admit in public, why the government has moved away from its longstanding procurement policy of buying equipment designed to a bespoke technical specification requirement set by the military customer is because, it is no longer confident in the ability of its own people to identify, manage and control technical risks inherent in a starting-point for the technical solution that requires development work to be performed upon it.

Whereas the government would want to look at indigenous defence equipment manufacturers as the first port of call for entirely good reasons, the undeniable fact of the matter is that, after decades of unwavering support lavished upon them by political parties of all persuasions, none of them are in a position to offer suitable off-the-shelf equipment, because they simply haven’t got any – not least, because they have not been investing in product research & development or innovation which has resulted in them becoming seriously uncompetitive, both in the domestic market and in export markets.

In addition to the five off-the-shelf purchases which are currently well under way – namely, the P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, Apache AH-64E attack helicopters, MQ-9B Protector armed drones, E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft and BOXER armoured vehicles, the government has recently signed contracts to buy H-47(ER) Chinook heavy-lift helicopters and has made known its intention to acquire the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle for its Multi Role Vehicle-Protected (MRV-P) requirement – the last three, after first conducting a comprehensive market survey and then a comparative analysis of existing, in-service platforms. All of this equipment, except BOXER, is being sourced from US-based manufacturers and is identical to that operated by US armed forces.

It is believed that a quarter of the equipment budget is currently being spent on buying off-the-shelf equipment. This slice is set to increase dramatically by the end of this Parliament, as more and more projects which involve significant development work are side-lined, in favour of off-the-shelf purchases.

Furthermore, in an extraordinary turn in transatlantic relations, the UK and US governments have agreed to collaborate in key technology areas so that they can develop future capabilities for their armed forces. They have decided to align their equipment procurement activities to not only narrow the technological gap between UK-US forces during joint operations,* but also mutually benefit from the network effects of economies of scale.

Such is the goodwill between these two firm allies that this US administration, sanctioned by the unreserved consent of the US Congress, is willing to go out of its way to help the UK close the technological gap between UK and US armed forces by offering it open access to off-the-shelf equipment of its own choosing.

As for the UK’s relations with the EU27, the consensus view among observers is that it has fallen to a new low, precipitated by the manner in which the UK exited the EU, evidenced by ongoing disagreements over the operation of the Northern Ireland Protocol. The pace at which the relationship with France in particular has been fractured is a salutary reminder of how quickly bilateral relations with individual countries can deteriorate. This experience does not bode well for relations with other European members of NATO because many of them are also members of the EU.

On the other hand, some members of NATO have followed the example set by the UK and started to buy off-the-shelf equipment from the US, so that they can maintain commonality and interoperability not only with the UK, but also the EU27.
@JagPatel3

* UK Ministry of Defence news story, Defence Minister and Head of the US Army sign Modernisation Agreement, 14 July 2020. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/defence-minister-and-head-of-the-us-army-sign-modernisation-agreement
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Ron Batten Sep 16, 2022

The most interesting thing to China about Putin's war is probably how effective Western arms technologies and tactics are, with a view to their own ambitions vs-a-vis Taiwan.
- Ian C Sep 19, 2022
  
  The economic sanctions are one aspect of the war that China care about. The more important aspect is the geopolitical implications. Essentially, China wants the war to drag out. As long as Russia is fighting Ukraine (and by proxy the NATO), there is no possibility of reconciliation between Russia and the West in the foreseeable future. The nightmare situation for China would be what John Mearsheimer proposed, the US reconcile with Russia to form an anti-China alliance.
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¿Quién está ganando la guerra en Ucrania?

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