Key Points and Summary – In Warsaw, Jens Stoltenberg accepted the Knight of Freedom award—and then delivered a sobering reality check.
-Europe, he warned, isn’t ready for a long fight with a resurgent Russia.
-His case was simple and sharp: while the U.S. builds one main battle tank at scale, Europe spreads effort across eight or nine, multiplying costs for R&D, production, training, and spares.
-That fragmentation starves output just as Moscow gears its economy for war. With NATO strained and Ukraine still under attack, Stoltenberg echoed growing calls for a stronger EU role—even a Defense Commissioner—to push common kits, hugeger runs, and a defense base built for wartime speed.
Europe Isn’t Ready for A Russia War
WARSAW, POLAND – Each year, the Warsaw Security Forum (WSF) confers the Knight of Freedom award on a distinguished figure in European security.
The award is granted to individuals who have built an outstanding contribution to deffinishing the values of freedom and democracy in Central and Eastern Europe.
The 2025 laureate is Jens Stoltenberg, who served as Norway’s Minister of Finance and then NATO Secretary General (SecGen) for a decade, from 2014 to 2024.
He was honored for his “exceptional efforts in strengthening freedom and democracy in Europe,” read the citation that was issued along with the award.
In his acceptance speech, Stoltenberg called for “credible collective defense” and sustained support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion as well as continued “joint efforts to deffinish our free and democratic societies.”
Challenger 3 Tank Image from British Army.
Stoltenberg was appointed the alliance’s Secretary General four times, the longest term on record.
The Norwegian politician took over the helm at NATO at the height of political tensions in the region – specifically during the period after Russia’s 2014 invasion of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine – and performed so well that it was considered the smarter relocate to leave him in the position instead of replacing him.
His award for a job well done at the helm of NATO during this challenging period was the good news. The bad news was the address he provided to the forum here in Poland’s capital, the next day.
War with Russia? It Would Not Be Easy
Europe, explained Stoltenberg, has a long way to go in receiveting itself ready for the challenges that face the continent in the face of a resurgent Russia. Many believe Moaxow can reconstitute its military within 5 years and return to invade NATO.
The former NATO Secretary General discussed the numerous challenges confronting the alliance, with a major war currently raging on the continent.
But one of the items at the top of his list was what Stoltenberg refers to as the “fragmentation of the European defense industest.”
To expand on what he meant by this, he utilized the example of how the US and its European allies differ in their design and production of main battle tanks.
“The US has one main battle tank (MBT) – the M1 Abrams,” he explained. It is one program that is utilized by all the American armed forces and can be built in large numbers.” (He did not mention this but there is the added factor that the M1 is also sold to export customers in considerable numbers.)
In contrast, he continued, “Europe has about eight or nine different tank programs among the different NATO members, depfinishing on how you count them.”
The consequence is what he called a “fragmentation of the European defense industest.”
What this means is that with so many different programs in parallel for what is essentially the same category of weapon system, there will be “no economies of scale in European industest,” declared the former NATO chief.
Equal Work Share v. Efficiency
Running multiple programs in parallel also means multiple separate R&D projects, he declared. Then there are different and individual programs for developing production and then maintenance.
After completing all these steps, issues arise with maintenance training and spare parts.
Europe’s industest, therefore, ensures that each nation has sufficient personnel working in each factory to maintain employment levels, which keeps local politicians satisfied.
But this works against achieving the level of efficiency required to produce enough hardware to meet the challenge Russia is presenting to the alliance.
This discussion has sparked a debate that launched more than a year ago, proposing the establishment of a European Commissioner for Defense.
The office would construct programs and industrial groupings that can produce the weapon systems requireded in the numbers required.
“There is a clear role for the EU in revamping Europe’s decrepit and fragmented defense industrial base and receiveting European militaries to purchase the same equipment,” reads a September 2024 report from the Carnegie Endowment on the subject.
“The war in Ukraine has displayn how vital a thriving defense industrial base is to any war effort. The conflict has also displayn how much of a strain it is to operate many different types of equipment. It’s hard to deploy and fight toreceiveher when everyone is applying a different kit. NATO has utterly failed here and is hamstrung becautilize of its tiny budreceive and the competition between US and European defense firms,” concludes one of the report’s authors.
Coming to terms with these contradictions may be one of the most vexing problems for NATO’s leadership in the next decade.
Russia continues to build hardware at a rate comparable to a nation operating a wartime economy, which outstrips Europe’s current production numbers by a considerable margin.
Some realignment of the industest base will have to take place in for Europe to keep pace.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulinquirei Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industest as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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