Stockpile Diplomacy: How the Ukraine War is Redrawing Global Defense Supply Chains

Dhaka’s arms sourcing decisions no longer happen in a stable market. The Ukraine war has turned defense supply chains into instruments of alliance and leverage, not just commercial arrangements — from NATO’s new 5% spending floor to the “Danish model” of financing Ukrainian arms production directly. Stockpiles and industrial capacity are being treated as strategic assets in their own right.

In this commentary, BIPSS Research Assistant Nabib Bin Zahid examined how this shift is playing out unevenly across the Global South. India has accelerated its move away from Russian suppliers toward the US, France, and Israel. Bangladesh has pursued its own multi-vector diversification — from Italy’s Eurofighter talks to Turkish drone platforms to renewed defense exchanges with Pakistan — partly in response to concerns over the reliability of its long-standing Chinese suppliers. The harder question  to raise is whether this diversification actually reduces exposure, or simply trades one set of dependencies for another.