U.S. and Allied Burden Sharing: A Progress Report | All About the Base

The 2026 National Defense Strategy calls for US allies and partners to take greater responsibility for their own security and contribute more to collective defense. But what does that burden-sharing actually look like today? Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and amid growing strategic competition in the Asia-Pacific region, allies across Europe and Asia have significantly increased defense spending, expanded military capabilities, and invested in their domestic defense industries. European NATO countries and Canada have increased their defense spending by more than 50% since 2022. While the countries closest to Russia have moved particularly quickly to modernize and expand their forces. In Asia-Pacific, countries such as Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan are also increasing investment. While initiatives like AUKUS are creating new frameworks for industrial and technological cooperation. But spending more is only part of the story. As allies seek greater sovereign capabilities, they are also building production capacity, diversifying procurement, and expanding industrial cooperation with one another. Recent European procurement agreements and initiatives like AUKUS and the partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience or PIPR suggest that allies are beginning to think about burden-sharing not just in terms of dollars dollars spent, but in terms of what they can produce and contribute to collective defense. This creates an important opportunity for the United States. A more capable allied industrial base does not necessarily mean less US involvement. Instead, it could open new avenues for co-production, license manufacturing, technology sharing, and deeper partnerships between the US and allied defense companies. So, how is burden-sharing changing? And what does the rise of more capable allied defense industries mean for the United States? Let's look at the data and find out. As usual, I'm your host Jerry McGinn, and welcome back to another episode of All About the Base. >> [music] >> Now, let's start let's start by looking at our European allies and Canada. The data here is shows the tremendous dramatic increase in defense spending since 2022 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. You can see the hockey sticks all over this chart. The dramatic increases in countries such as Poland, Latvia, Estonia, even Canada, um and other uh countries, you know, you see these dramatic increases, almost all of them since 2022. Now, this spending increase is also continuing. So, that's through last chart I talked about through 2025. And here's the current defense budgets for 2026. And you see again these dramatic increases. That percentage change, for instance, in Denmark is almost 180%. Uh if you look at um uh Norway, 135%. Uh you look at Canada, 94%. Germany, 84% increase. You see these tremendous increases in um uh projected spending uh among our uh European allies. So, these numbers are compelling, but if you look at the map, you see that geography really matters. The the dramatic increases in spending are almost exclusively around where the conflict zone is in in uh Russia and Ukraine. So, the Baltics uh the Scandinavian countries, Poland, and even Germany, that's where you see really dramatic increases in NATO Europe. And [clears throat] so, where are they uh the um NATO allies getting their equipment? You see these trends that looks at arms transfers over the past um since 2019, and you see an increase uh um pretty much across the board from um NATO countries buying from other NATO countries, NATO countries buying from the US, and then NATO countries buying from non-NATO partners. So, um you see they're all kind of increasing, and last year there was a big dip in the amount of uh US um um equipment bought from the US, and a sharp increase from uh other regions. It's too early to say whether or not that's a trend, but you see they're diversifying their procurement services. They're buying more internal to to NATO countries um as well as um you know, as well as um uh outside such as buying equipment from uh South Korea, for instance. And this has been translated uh most recently in the discussion at the NATO summit earlier this summer. And they announced $50 in defense deals. Now, most of these um all of these deals, none of them are fully complete and signed, but they're some of them are very very close. And as you see, it's an interesting breakdown. Uh number [clears throat] one, there's an increase across the board in terms of investment in European capacity. And it's broken out by two ways. One is they're still buying stuff from from the United States. There's partnership between Lockheed and Rheinmetall. Rheinmetall is a German company to build ATACMS in Germany. So a new a new production line or co-production. Uh Northrop Grumman is um has a is has a deal with a number of NATO countries for the MQ-4C Triton on unmanned aerial vehicle. And then Lockheed Martin is also going to be producing PAC-3s in Europe. But then the other big deals announced were Saab, a Swedish company, is going to be building um the Global Hawk their aircraft for NATO to replace Boeing's their NATO AWACS fleet, um which has been around for many decades. And then also there was announced this um this deal to buy Airbus A400Ms, which is a airlift aircraft, a collective procurement effort by a number of the NATO allies. So that's where you see these deal the the spending turning into deals and building overall capacity. So let's turn now to Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific, you see increases, but it's a different trend. You don't have the dramatic hockey stick increase like you do in Europe, but you do have some significant increases in in the in Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan, and even Indonesia, where you've got you know, bright significant increases over time. Some of them started at low low low level, but the the overall trend is trending up across the Asia Pacific. And you see this and you see this geographically. It's not as stark as in the European case, but the threat is perceived in Asia Pacific as China and you see Taiwan has increased their defense spending by 56% in the past decade. Japan has increased their defense spending by 60% in the past decade. Singapore is up 48% in the past decade. So you have significant increases among countries in the region as well. Now [snorts] the trade in Asia Pacific 70% of the defense trade in Asia Pacific comes from outside of the region. So they buy from the US or they buy from other allies outside of the region. And you see here's the the dark darker blue is US transfers from the US and you see that's been been significant. It's you know from around 35% up to over almost 60% over the past 5 years and that's been pretty steady. And then interesting thing in in Asia Pacific is that South Korea has become a major defense exporter. This has always been a focus, but it's really really starting to have an impact as you can see in the last several years. And a lot of this comes from challenges in the US foreign military sales system in the terms of some of our we have backlog of a number of our systems and the Koreans build capable very capable systems that allies are buying that have a shorter backlogs and are quite a bit less expensive. So they are becoming a significant player in arms exports and they're looking to become the fourth um in the world um in a short in a short period of time. And they're also, [clears throat] as you can see, um taking strides to increased their um um their production in the region. Now, Japan has had long-standing co-production deals on a number on Patriots, on SM-3s, and on Sea Sparrow. But, they're also adding SM-6 capabilities and the glide phase interceptors. Uh as well as AMRAAM. In Australia, you have the the establishment of the G um the guided uh munition multiple launch rocket systems or GMLRS. Uh and they're getting ready to also start producing the Precision Strike Missile there in in Australia. And then finally, in Taiwan, you have um the um National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology is partnering with Anduril to produce the the Barracuda missile there in Taiwan. So, you've got significant um amount of deals happening in the Asia-Pacific region involving um US companies principally. As the data shows, US allies and partners are making meaningful progress towards taking on a greater share of responsibility for collective defense. Defense spending is rising across Europe in particular, but also in Asia-Pacific. Countries are expanding their military capabilities, and new initiatives are creating opportunities for greater industrial cooperation. Yet, this progress should not be measured simply by how much allies are spending. The more important question is what that spending is producing. Across Europe, allies are increasingly investment investing in domestic production and pursuing defense cooperation with one another. In Asia-Pacific, initiatives such as AUKUS and PIPER are beginning to build deeper industrial and technological ties. But many of these efforts remain in their early stages and significant gaps remain in production capacity, supply chain resilience, and the ability to scale rapidly defense manufacturing. Allies self-sufficiency and US leadership should not be viewed as competing objectives. And instead, the growth of allied capabilities creates an opportunity for the US to build a more resilient and integrated defense industrial base. Expanding co-production, license manufacturing, technology sharing, and industrial partnerships will allow allies to contribute more while continuing to strengthen US capabilities and sustain interoperability. Ultimately, burden sharing is becoming less about who spends the most and more about what the allies and the alliance can collectively produce, sustain, and replace in a crisis. The strongest alliances will be those that combine resilient national defense industries with deep industrial cooperation and interoperable capabilities. For US policymakers, the challenge now is to turn rising allied investment into industrial partnerships and a foundation for stronger collective deterrence. Thank you so much for watching today's episode. And we look forward to seeing you again soon. And remember, it's all about the base. >> [music]