Ttip and Transatlantic Defense Markets: Protectionism or Liberalization?

With European defense spending declining, austerity measures imposing further cuts in top-line defense budgets across Europe, and TTIP negotiations underway that might further shake up the transatlantic defense industry competition, what are the implications for the European and US defense industries and markets? In 2013, the European Commission included in their negotiating mandate the goal of targeting and weakening the "Buy American" clauses in US defense markets. How close is an opening of the US defense market to reality? Has this changed over time? What about the European defense market?  I argue that the US and European markets are highly unlikely to open up to a Transatlantic defense market anytime in the near future, primarily because the interdependence between governments and their defense industries is more intense than it has been in decades--on both sides of the Atlantic. I present original research for conceptualizing and measuring the relative degree of intensity in the business-government relationship in defense markets.