It may look like an alliance that is shaking, but in reality a redesign is underway that reallocates roles and costs. As production capacity and the stamina of deterrence become more important than clashes of rhetoric, friction is surfacing more openly. This shift creates opportunities for South Korea in defense industry and industrial cooperation, while also demanding greater precision in diplomacy and industrial strategy.

These days, the conflict among the United States, NATO, and the European Union often looks like an emotional collision. But at the center is not the question of whether they are on the same side, but rather, if they are on the same side, who will take on what, and how much. This is less a scene of an alliance collapsing than a scene of rewriting the alliance’s user manual.

This redesign cannot be explained only by disputes over defense-spending numbers. Going forward, the key yardstick will be not how much money is spent, but how quickly that money turns into real capability. Tension inside the alliance grows precisely in this transition. Someone says budgets have increased, while someone else feels warehouses are empty and factories are slow. The wider the gap between words and lived reality, the more openly conflict will appear.

Another feature is how easy it is to misunderstand louder conflict as a signal that the alliance is breaking. Yet in a recontracting phase, disputes naturally increase. The more demands are specified, the more backlash becomes specific as well, and the more responsibility descends into numbers and schedules, the more readily grievances rise to the surface.

The United States is not a country that looks only at Europe. Competition with China and the Indo-Pacific burden, Middle East variables, energy and supply chains, and domestic politics all pull at U.S. resources at the same time. Then the degree of attention devoted to Europe is adjusted depending on circumstances, and the adjustment itself is read in Europe as a major signal. What Europe is most sensitive to is not whether the United States is leaving, but whether it might be late in a crisis. The core of an alliance lies less in written promises than in the speed of response in an emergency.

Europe’s perspective has also changed. As the Russian threat has become protracted, Europe has come to look first at the stamina of deterrence rather than the alliance’s rhetoric. The more war hardens into a war of attrition, the more inventories and production become survival. At that point, Europe both accepts the reality that it must shoulder part of the burden the United States once provided, and also feels anxiety over how quickly it can actually pull it off. That is why the conflict looks bigger as differences in strategic priorities and industrial constraints become intertwined.

The language of U.S. domestic politics also amplifies anxiety. As expressions that describe alliances like transactions increase, Europe factors worst-case possibilities into its planning. From that point on, an alliance becomes not an automatically functioning device but a system whose conditions and speed must be weighed. As the system grows more complex, costs rise and decision-making slows, and that in itself creates another layer of anxiety.

Going forward, the central question inside the alliance is not defense-spending percentages but the speed of fielding capabilities. Even spending the same money, one country can see inventories rise while another can see only paperwork rise. In the end, an alliance is judged by how well it has prepared the ammunition, air defense, and maintenance systems that can be used in a crisis.

The areas where Europe is especially vulnerable are ammunition, air defense, and sustainment and maintenance. Artillery shells and ammunition are consumed quickly, and air-defense missiles and radars are hard to replenish in stock. Even with many platforms, if there are no spare parts and maintenance is slow, combat power weakens rapidly. So Europe has little choice but to pursue a fundamental shift toward expanding production, delivery schedules, and stockpiles rather than focusing only on purchasing.

This change makes NATO, in effect, not only a military alliance but also something closer to an industrial alliance. The longer war drags on, the more factories, contracts, and supply chains become decisive. Alliance credibility shows up more often in long-term procurement commitments, expanded production lines, and warehouse inventories than in summit communiqués. If this process does not go smoothly, conflict will inevitably continue to surface openly.

The most likely direction is a division of labor in which the United States maintains the key cards and strategic assets while Europe expands on-the-ground sustainment capacity. The United States seeks to hold on to decisive capabilities—its nuclear umbrella, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and large-scale reinforcement. Europe, meanwhile, is pushed toward taking on more of the day-to-day deterrence burden: air defense, ammunition stockpiles, ground-force operations, maintenance, and training. This change is not the same as a story in which the United States exits NATO. It is more realistic that the United States reallocates burdens and Europe absorbs them rather than the United States leaving entirely.

For this scenario to stabilize, Europe’s fielding of capabilities must actually gain speed. A virtuous cycle is needed in which plans lead to contracts, contracts lead to expanded factories, and inventories rise as a result. If that virtuous cycle forms, the alliance may become less romantic but more sustainable. The United States can lighten part of the burden in Europe while still maintaining NATO’s core, and gain room to adjust its global strategy. Europe, even without fully replacing the United States, can raise the quality of deterrence by increasing the time it can hold out in the early phase of a crisis.

A dangerous scenario is one in which, even if the alliance endures, automaticity weakens. The moment crisis-time intervention starts to look like a matter of political bargaining in terms of speed and intensity, deterrence turns into a probability game. If Europe feels that probability has declined, it buys bigger insurance by paying bigger costs, and the alliance becomes slower and more expensive. Another danger is the weakening of cohesion inside Europe. If threat perceptions diverge between Eastern and Western Europe, and plans are shaken by frequent changes of government, long-term contracts are delayed and production slows again. If such delays accumulate, the alliance’s gaps can widen.

As the alliance is reorganized around capabilities, the value of a country like South Korea—able to design production and delivery schedules—rises. What Europe wants is not a single piece of equipment, but steady volumes and a stable sustainment system. That demand opens the door to shifting defense exports from one-off deals to long-term industrial cooperation. The longer war lasts, the more inventories are depleted, and the process of refilling them continues on a multi-year timeline. This structural demand can become a long-term partnership opportunity for South Korea, beyond a short-term boom.

In particular, the biggest opportunity lies in operations rather than purchase. Once equipment is deployed, breakdowns and wear accumulate immediately, and if spare parts and maintenance lag, combat power weakens quickly. The more South Korea can provide packages that include sustainment, maintenance, training, spare parts supply, and ammunition resupply, the more its role becomes not a thin sale but a thick operational partnership. As demands for co-production, localization, and building maintenance systems grow, South Korean firms can design contracts that go beyond one-off delivery and connect into local industrial ecosystems. What matters then is not only price competitiveness but also delivery reliability, quality management, and long-term support capability.

Another axis of expansion is the maritime domain. Europe is likely to strengthen deterrence and surveillance capabilities at sea as well. Naval power is not completed by construction alone; maintenance, upgrades, and spare-parts supply create long-term stamina. South Korea’s shipbuilding and maintenance capabilities can become a new pillar of industrial cooperation as Europe expands its maritime forces. This pillar can extend into materials, electronics, communications, sensor supply chains, and deepen the layers of cooperation.

But as opportunities grow, burdens also grow. As European demand expands, allocating South Korea’s production capacity becomes harder, and pressure to meet overseas deliveries can unsettle domestic force-maintenance and stockpiling plans. Expanding exports must therefore go together with a production expansion strategy that satisfies domestic needs in parallel. Defense exports are economic contracts but are also read as diplomatic signals, so risks arising from political change must be managed as well. As demands for localization rise, if the balance between protecting core technologies and securing mutual benefit is not clarified in contracts, the industrial base could weaken over the long run. That is why South Korea’s strategy should not be mere expansion, but a path that separates risks by area and builds a production expansion structure that can meet both domestic demand and exports.

Practically, it is important to institutionalize delivery competitiveness and to bring sustainment and follow-on support to the center of exports. A sale should be the beginning, not the end, and systems for spare parts, training, and maintenance should be designed together. Technology cooperation should be built up from clearly defined tasks rather than thrown open broadly at once. Areas such as supply-chain stabilization or the parts ecosystem tend to involve relatively less political friction and offer large practical gains. By accumulating such tasks, South Korea can secure opportunities steadily within the larger currents of European rearmament and the reallocation of U.S. burdens.

Deployments and exercises reveal change before rhetoric does. If you look at which missions the United States maintains in Europe and which missions it adjusts, the substance of recontracting becomes visible. If you look at the speed at which Europe turns plans into contracts and whether those contracts lead to expanded factories, you can see the true progress of fielding capabilities.

You should also watch how quickly long-term procurement commitments are institutionalized within Europe and how much bottlenecks in procurement improve. From South Korea’s perspective, what matters is whether co-production and maintenance systems become institutionalized beyond one-off deliveries. If such structures are created, opportunity shifts from one-time exports to the expansion of industrial ecosystems.

As alliances become more calculating, that very calculus becomes an opportunity for capable partners. In an era when Europe must take on more responsibility and the United States must manage a broader set of theaters simultaneously, a country like South Korea—able to provide production capacity and operational capability as a package—can occupy a larger position than many might expect.

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Polish Institute of International Affairs PISM. Poland and South Korea Should Further Develop Security Cooperation. (Oct 28, 2024).