Abstract
This paper addresses a topic that has taken on increasing urgency since the presidency of Donald Trump: how can the European Union member states insure strategic autonomy in military defense? One answer given by policymakers and academics alike is that an independent industrial-military base is central to achieving autonomy. In particular, the production and procurement of military equipment ought to be EU-internal. However, the US remains the most important provider of military equipment worldwide, and many EU member states continue to procure from the US. In this context, this paper asks why some EU member states procure fighter jets from the US while others procure from European sources. It hypothesizes that those countries with a security or economic dependence on the US are more likely to continue to procure from the US. The paper tests this hypothesis with a statistical analysis that seeks a relationship between indicators of security and economic dependence on the US and procurement decision. The results this analysis yields are mixed, but I find that on average European countries that decide to procure US-made fighter are more subordinate to the US.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial
- Introduction to the Proceedings of the 19th Jan Tinbergen European Peace Science Conference
- Letters and Proceedings
- Let’s Call their Bluff: The Politics of Econometric Methodology
- Winner of the 2019 Lewis Fry Richardson Award, Jean-Paul Azam
- Introducing the “Religious Minorities at Risk” Dataset
- Introducing the Human Rights Violations Dataset for the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey, 1990–2018
- The Civilian Side of Peacekeeping: New Research Avenues
- The Security and Justice Approach in Liberia’s Peace Process: Mechanistic Evidence and Local Perception
- Violence and Avoidance Behavior: The Case of the Mexican Drug War
- Four Ways We Know the Democratic Peace Correlation Does Not Exist in the State of Knowledge
- Israel’s Foreign Aid to Africa & UN Voting: An Empirical Examination
- Could the literature on the economic determinants of sanctions be biased?
- Trade and Military Alliances: Evidence from NATO
- The United States and European Defense Cooperation European Strategic Autonomy and Fighter Aircraft Procurement Decisions
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial
- Introduction to the Proceedings of the 19th Jan Tinbergen European Peace Science Conference
- Letters and Proceedings
- Let’s Call their Bluff: The Politics of Econometric Methodology
- Winner of the 2019 Lewis Fry Richardson Award, Jean-Paul Azam
- Introducing the “Religious Minorities at Risk” Dataset
- Introducing the Human Rights Violations Dataset for the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey, 1990–2018
- The Civilian Side of Peacekeeping: New Research Avenues
- The Security and Justice Approach in Liberia’s Peace Process: Mechanistic Evidence and Local Perception
- Violence and Avoidance Behavior: The Case of the Mexican Drug War
- Four Ways We Know the Democratic Peace Correlation Does Not Exist in the State of Knowledge
- Israel’s Foreign Aid to Africa & UN Voting: An Empirical Examination
- Could the literature on the economic determinants of sanctions be biased?
- Trade and Military Alliances: Evidence from NATO
- The United States and European Defense Cooperation European Strategic Autonomy and Fighter Aircraft Procurement Decisions