A forensic analysis of Russian weaponry has revealed that up 64% of parts are supplied from one country: the United States of America. ⬇️

Foreign Policy has produced some insightful analysis of the Defence supply chains feeding the Russian war machine. It also highlights that the expected ability to choke off Russia through sanctions and economic warfare hasn’t rendered the expected results.

“In his 2007 book Producing Security, scholar Stephen G. Brooks argued that mature democracies’ dominance of key dual-use technologies would render wars of conquest obsolete…

Under Brooks’s hypothesis, great powers’ dependence on complex supply chains would have a pacifying impact, deterring would-be revisionist states such as Russia or China from acting on their worst impulses. This vision of a pax technica was compelling because it echoed the West’s experience during the late Cold War.”

It is clear that Brooks was incorrect. Not only did globalised supply chains fail to deter wars of conquest, many of the suppliers of the Russian war machine reside within the free world. The Foreign Policy article contains detailed analysis revealing the US, Europe and Asia provide the majority of components in key Russian missiles.

The Ukraine proxy war has also shown that Russia’s retention of much of the Soviet era Defence Industrial base and cold war style war stocks has rendered a far greater resilience against Western economic warfare than expected.

The next question to ask who really has the leverage now so much of the West is dependent on complex global supply chains for not just Defence and National Security but the wider economy? China is yet to wield its might as the world’s dominant manufacturer in any large scale retaliation against the West after all.

Australia needs to accelerate and expand initiatives designed to increase the surety of critical capabilities for our Defence and National Security. The West has run down war stocks and disassembled the Defence Industrial base – now we need to resurrect the arsenal of democracy.

🖼️ via Foreign Policy