4w ago

Ukraine has broken the EU. Now they're out of weapons, they cannot make more, and the US is leaving

kdwalmsley.substack.com

Bullets:
The war in Ukraine consumes vast quantities of arms and ammunition, supplied almost entirely by the US and the EU.
Battlefield demands in Ukraine far outstrip the combined production of the entire Western bloc.
Arsenals across the EU are empty, and the United States is far more reluctant today to supply the Ukraine war effort.
But Europe faces severe problems in their efforts to rearm, and to make good their public support and promises to Ukraine.
Despite having a far smaller economy than either the US or the EU, Russia easily produces more ammunition and war materiel than the NATO countries, combined.
Meanwhile, Russia's close ally China has the world's most productive industrial sector, and monopolies on the supply chains necessary to build armaments.
Last year, China cut off exports of antimony, a critical component of explosives, and antimony prices have more than quadrupled in less than a year.

8 comments

The Russian economy is less than a tenth the size of the United States or the European Union
I wish I had the self-confidence to pontificate on Russian domestic arms production while apparently being unaware of something as basic as purchasing-power-parity adjusted measurements.
- But he only talks in real values, why is ppp relevant? Note I dont necessarily share his point, I'm just not sure what you mean.
  
  Right, I should make myself clearer. I'm no expert in economics, I just try to build a reasoning based on what I know.
  The context of his statement is that Russia is outproducing the West in ammunition, specifically artillery shells. Earlier he states Russia is producing 4 millions shell a year compared to .5 for the US. So without qualification, the statement implies Russians are somehow 80x superior as they produce 8 times more with an economy a tenth the size.
  I feel he should have qualified his statement to improve reader understanding:
  in general domestic production for domestic consumption should be compared using PPP, in which the Russian economy is "merely" a fourth of that of the USA (hence my PPP comment)
  the sanctions Russia is under distort the nominal picture since they restrict trade
  weapons production is hard to put a number to, since they are very "custom" goods that can't be easily compared or traded, and even moreso for Russia which has a huge domestic arms industry
  granted, that last point is is much more true of things like fighter jets than artillery shells
  still though, there is some Western focus on quality over quantity that also explains the discrepancy (or at least there was before countries realized their entire inventory wouldn't last more than months in Ukraine)
  Because he didn't provide this context to the number he is giving, I thought that either he wanted to misled or he was not sufficiently informed, and assumed the more charitable option.

Lmao god forbid there's a real war that requires production of weapons
- This is very much a real war
  
  One that involves everyone. NATO actually fighting
- This is just Russian propaganda. Ukraine has not "broken" the EU. They have been slow to ramp up production, certainly, but it's happening and more money is being thrown at it, and Ukraine, than ever during this conflict.

8 comments