Why generals need economists to win long wars

RealTime Economics | Elina Ribakova

The Trump administration published a National Defense Strategy in January 2026 contrasting the economic scale of non-US NATO members with Russia. Economic metrics often fail to predict the outcomes of attrition warfare, as demonstrated by protracted conflicts involving Ukraine and Iran. Economists and military leaders must integrate economic management directly into defense strategy.

Resource generation, technological adaptation, economic warfare, and domestic political survival constitute the core pillars of wartime economic mobilization. Historical precedents and contemporary conflicts show that productive capacity and financial resilience determine how long states can sustain armed conflict before reaching negotiated settlements.

Comment

Protracting military operations exposes the friction between capital-intensive defence procurement models and rapid wartime innovation cycles. Legacy contractors in major industrial economies often struggle to pivot away from complex bespoke platforms when asymmetric conflicts demand low-cost attritable systems.

This structural rigidity mirrors the challenges faced during early twentieth-century rearmament efforts, where large corporate incumbents resisted supply chain simplification. Consequently, operational resilience depends less on gross domestic product ratios and more on industrial agility.

Strategic Question for Discussion

What structural factor determines whether a defence industrial base can successfully transition from capital-intensive production to rapid technological adaptation during protracted conflicts?

The available evidence points toward procurement flexibility and the presence of non-incumbent manufacturing alternatives as primary determinants. Systems with entrenched prime contractors consistently experience longer adaptation lags when sudden attritable demands emerge.

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