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Home / Alliances / Who will wield all those shiny new weapons?
Alliances, NATO, Ukraine‑Russia

September 3, 2025

Who will wield all those shiny new weapons?

By Gil Barndollar

After many decades of indecision and foot dragging, U.S. allies are finally rearming. At NATO’s annual summit in June, the bloc’s members committed to spending at least 5 percent of their GDP on defense and related infrastructure. East Asian countries are belatedly building warships and missiles to counter a stronger, more assertive China. But even as funding rises, factories retool, and arms production ramps up, one question remains unanswered: Who will wield all these new weapons?

NATO states have not solved the fundamental problem of who will fight. One of the key lessons of the Russia-Ukraine war is about numbers. The era of limited counterinsurgency operations and quick precision warfare is over. As more than half a million soldiers face one another across a 1,000-mile front, we have had to relearn an old principle of war: Mass matters. And ultimately, that mass still rests on manpower.

Read at Foreign Policy

Author

Photo of Gil Barndollar

Gil
Barndollar

Non-Resident Fellow

Defense Priorities

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