France is the world’s second largest arms exporter
They’re not suggesting this out of some noble urge or profound intuition. They just want to move more product through Europe.
Incidentally, the US insisting that Europe should rearm itself is driven in large part because America is the first largest arms exporter.
Their argument would, in your opinion, hold more value if they suggested (and did themselves) buy, for example, korean weaponry?
Their argument would hold if they recognized national defense as a public good rather than a profit center. As it stands, a continent fixated on juicing sales figures is not going to formulate an optimal security strategy. Its just going to become a new ballooning budget hole that feeds into the pockets of middlemen.
There’s a huge difference between addressing a security concern and following a perverse incentive. And when politicians can profit from a crisis, you’re going to see new existential threats to Europe springing up as fast as business leadership can engineer it.
Suuure, it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that France is the biggest arms manufacturer and exporter in the EU ;)
Industry and logistics are an integral part of an army. It doesn’t stop at soldiers.
That’s exactly what’s happening in Ukraine: EU lacks (military and other) industry to support very capable soldiers.
The fact that France still has an industry is because they understand the above and value defense. If others did too, Ukraine would be in a better military position.