Europe needs its own plan for Ukraine and for its own security or its future will be decided by other powers, the Polish Prime Minister said on Saturday.
Ok, my failure, I believed that if the problem was to spend your defense budget on US weapons, the option to spend it on non US weapons was evident. In any case, surely the French, Belgian, Spanish or British defense industry would be happy to have new clients
The issue with that is that the production of arms in the EU is next non-existent when compared to Russia and the US. Europe has been heavily de-industrialized and already has problems covering its energy budget. You can’t just throw money at that problem, because you don’t just need to rebuild factories, but infrastructure. Not to mention the brain-drain caused by academics moving to the US and China where actual research happens.
Do you have numbers for your first claim? I don’t think you are right with that. Many European countries just don’t keep the weapons they produce, like Germany for example. Germany is often among the world’s top 5 or even top 3 arms exporter. As far as I know France and Italy are also a big exporters.
I have not found data on arms production grouped by country, but I have found data on exports and this makes me doubt your statement. In any case, we do not have to face a war right now, considering R&D and industrialization as defense objectives could put us at the right level in perhaps a decade.
Just taking Germany+France+Italy+Poland+Spain already comes more than what Russia spends
Nor am I a military expert, I do not know how reliable they are that data or I will discuss the efficiency of the expense, but I am sure to have 27 army generates many inefficiencies that could be resolved by centralizing things
Ok, lets take a look at the IISS table because the sipri only uses estimates for Russia. When you look at the source of the IISS table you get to a graph which shows that while for all other countries expenditure, the one for Russia and China have been ppp adjusted, meaning that the actual expenditure is different. The adjustment tells you what worth of goods you could buy from I’m assuming US market. Why the wiki table shows only these recalculated values for just Russia and China is beyond me. I also found an actually accessible article version of the FT https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/russias-2024-military-budget-exceeds-total-eu-defense-spending-ft/ar-AA1yWN0u
To sum up the Russian expenditure DID exceed the european as in the FT, it only may be unclear what weapons they bought with it, but for the argument that EU outspends them, that is wrong.
The European Union as a whole already spends more on defense than Russia or China, it is just a matter of coordinating spending by unifying efforts
yeah spends it on US weapons. It’s a money laundering front to funnel european public money to private US investors
Luckily that is a problem with a solution as simple as obvious
I don’t see it
Ok, my failure, I believed that if the problem was to spend your defense budget on US weapons, the option to spend it on non US weapons was evident. In any case, surely the French, Belgian, Spanish or British defense industry would be happy to have new clients
The issue with that is that the production of arms in the EU is next non-existent when compared to Russia and the US. Europe has been heavily de-industrialized and already has problems covering its energy budget. You can’t just throw money at that problem, because you don’t just need to rebuild factories, but infrastructure. Not to mention the brain-drain caused by academics moving to the US and China where actual research happens.
Do you have numbers for your first claim? I don’t think you are right with that. Many European countries just don’t keep the weapons they produce, like Germany for example. Germany is often among the world’s top 5 or even top 3 arms exporter. As far as I know France and Italy are also a big exporters.
I have not found data on arms production grouped by country, but I have found data on exports and this makes me doubt your statement. In any case, we do not have to face a war right now, considering R&D and industrialization as defense objectives could put us at the right level in perhaps a decade.
Have a read through here if you’re interested https://hir.harvard.edu/untitled-2-ready-for-combat-the-future-of-the-european-defense-industry/
Everything in the west is just really fucking expensive, because defense industry is a racket meant to make profit not weapons.
And? Bying 1 152mm artillery shell at 4000$ doesn’t automatically mean it is better than the 1000$ one, it just means you got overcharged.
https://www.ft.com/content/93d44b5a-a087-4059-9891-f18c77efca4b source?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures
Just taking Germany+France+Italy+Poland+Spain already comes more than what Russia spends
Nor am I a military expert, I do not know how reliable they are that data or I will discuss the efficiency of the expense, but I am sure to have 27 army generates many inefficiencies that could be resolved by centralizing things
Ok, lets take a look at the IISS table because the sipri only uses estimates for Russia. When you look at the source of the IISS table you get to a graph which shows that while for all other countries expenditure, the one for Russia and China have been ppp adjusted, meaning that the actual expenditure is different. The adjustment tells you what worth of goods you could buy from I’m assuming US market. Why the wiki table shows only these recalculated values for just Russia and China is beyond me. I also found an actually accessible article version of the FT https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/russias-2024-military-budget-exceeds-total-eu-defense-spending-ft/ar-AA1yWN0u To sum up the Russian expenditure DID exceed the european as in the FT, it only may be unclear what weapons they bought with it, but for the argument that EU outspends them, that is wrong.