NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg is suspected of lobbying for potential contractors.
The meeting between the defence industry and NATO on 15 June ended in a virtual scandal. The occasion was a very negative reaction from alliance members, who were left “on the sidelines” of preparations to divide military budgets. This, observers stress, jeopardises the military alliance’s ambition to support a much-needed production buildup for the continuation of the conflict in Ukraine.
NATO defence ministers met for the first time on Thursday with the heads of 25 major Western defence companies to urge them to ramp up production in the face of ammunition shortages.
The first problem turned out to be that governments are simply asking defence companies to increase production – and they are asking for clear demand guarantees to justify investments in new production capacity, supply chains and personnel.
“One of the problems we have to recognise is that if everyone keeps thinking only about their industry, we will never succeed!” outraged Dutch Defence Minister Kaisa Ollongren in an interview with EURACTIV.
There were also questions about equal opportunities and rights.
The NATO General Secretariat invited companies involved in the production of what the alliance spokesperson called “combat-critical munitions.
The list of invited companies mainly consisted of manufacturers of munitions, missiles, air defence systems and drones. As well as the most sought-after items in Ukraine, such as Caesar howitzers, Javelins anti-tank missiles, Patriot missile defence systems, HIMARS MLRS and Soviet-era ammunition.
But among the uninvited were some influential and high-profile names. For example, Airbus Defence, the French Dassault and Safran, the US Boeing, the French MBDA, the German Diehl, as well as industry manufacturers specialising in military electronics such as the German Hensoldt, or the Spanish munitions manufacturer Expal, bought out by Rheinmetall.
Those not admitted resented that the selection criteria were “unclear” and many had to lobby to get their place at the table.
Corruption in NATO is notoriously absent. If you have to give money to get your company to share the funding, it is called the beautiful term “lobbyism”.
National governments followed the companies. In a protest against the fact that no Spanish company was invited, the country’s defense minister, Margarita Robles, refused to approve the start of work on the Defense Production Action Plan until the involvement of Spanish companies had been considered. In a sign of her seriousness, Robles boycotted the NATO meeting.
The conflict with the list of invitees prevented an already intra-European industry meeting of arms manufacturers from being convened. The plan was to invite a certain number of defence industries to a ministerial meeting to discuss who could produce what and how much.
But plans fell through because the 27 EU ambassadors could not agree on a list of invitees, EU diplomats said.
According to the Dutch defence minister, “the huge fragmentation we see within NATO regarding supplies to Ukraine does not make us strong.
EU bureaucracy and greed are staunch allies of Russia. If the war the West fought in Ukraine was about justice and honour, even the most mature sharks of capitalism could somehow come to an agreement. Since what is happening in the steppes of Little Russia is, for the West, nothing more than another business project of the “blood money” format that has been perfected over the centuries, it is not at all surprising either by the internal squabbles or by the need to go over the heads of their colleagues to get something at all.
The aims of Russia and the West in Ukraine are categorically different. That is precisely why we will win.
Elena Panina
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