Following on the Chaillot Paper on ‘Defence industries in Arab states: players and strategies’ published in March 2017, this multi-authored Report shifts its focus to the West’s two main strategic competitors – Russia and China. However different in their trajectory and ambition, both have recently narrowed the industrial and technological gap with the European armaments sector and are now openly challenging the West’s traditional superiority in this domain. This poses a number of fresh challenges – in both economic and strategic terms – that are likely to shape the prospects for war and peace in our time at regional as well as global level.

With this publication, coordinated by Richard Bitzinger and Nicu Popescu, the EUISS completes its mini-survey of developments in the international defence industry, in the hope of having offered a comprehensive critical overview of a fast-changing landscape (and market) which will inevitably have an impact on the future evolution of Europe’s own defence industrial and technological base (EDTIB). This is all the more relevant at a time when its hitherto relatively stagnant currents seem to have started flowing in a more cooperative and forward-looking direction.