The war in Ukraine has shifted thinking — both among politicians and the public — on the need to spend more on defense.
The European public and politicians are in agreement that EU countries should do more to increase weapons production.
That’s according to the results of the latest Eurobarometer poll, obtained in advance by POLITICO Playbook, and a draft of the EU’s Strategic Agenda seen by POLITICO.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago has dramatically shifted the rhetoric around defense spending, pushing it up the agenda across the bloc — often at the expense of other policy areas like tackling climate change.
ITT: People who can’t see forest, for trees.
It would be stupid not to.
Not only is there absolutely no guarantee the United States will be there to help them, but if a certain candidate wins, it’s a guarantee we won’t be helping them.
But beyond that it’s an incredibly stupid idea to outsource your national defense, even to an ally.Who’s “we” in this comment?
They’re American
We is the United States in this context. Not you or I, but the nation I’m part of and pay taxes to. And the majority of those taxes go to the military industrial complex.
So even though I don’t make any of the decisions and I personally don’t agree with many of them, I still have to help pay for it whether I like it or not.
So, I’m reluctantly part of the “we”.Hey, uhhh, this sounds an awful lot like taxation without representation.
Oh there’s representation, but it’s been co-opted by corporations paying for it, and the people are willing to accept that, either because they actually believe the propaganda, or since most people don’t vote, via sheer apathy.
I think we almost certainly won’t help them since Trump loves Putin and wants to pull out of NATO.
If Russia was threatening my country next, I sure would too.
They can barely take the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine, you really think they’re gonna invade the rest of Europe?
I think Putin is willing to try.
Putin clearly started to believe his own country’s internal propaganda. Despite being inside the Soviet Union, and actually being part of the systemic lies to project false power, he started to believe what he was being told. As if the systems built on had fundamentally changed after the fall ad his rise to power.
There were a lot of delays getting international supplies to Ukraine at the beginning of the conflict, yet Russia still couldn’t get close to their goal even with an extended timeframe. Once those supplies began to arrive, Russia was never going to be able to achieve their goal like they thought, but Putin’s ego won’t let him admit he was fooled by his own bullshit propaganda machine.
Good point.
Better sacrifice your housing, education, infrastructure, and medical budgets for Raytheon shareholders just in case.
And what makes you think Europe is going to do that?
Where do you think that money must come from?
Every dollar that is spent on bombs is a dollar that doesn’t go into feeding, housing, and educating the people.
Eisenhower said it well:
Rest of the quote is even more explicit about it:
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Yeah, great parting speech. Shame he spent his entire presidency letting MacArthur and Lemay do war crimes in Korea and propping up the military industrial complex.
They’re only struggling because the West is arming Ukraine. The Ukrainians fought hard from day one, but they’d have been overrun and at best operating a guerilla campaign without being given heaps of equipment. Look what has happened while America stopped sending stuff over, and’s while Europe was still sending stuff. Europe’s arms industry is substantial, pretty much on par with the US in terms of value exported, but it’s lacking things like the ability to supply an artillery war like the one going on in Ukraine. Since the US doesn’t seem to be very reliable, Europe is gonna have to cover that base itself if it wants to be able to deter actions like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
As a pacifist, I fucking hate this timeline 😮💨
Climate crisis is out of control and Putin ends up dragging us all off to war and weapons production. Absolute worst timeline.
O man if you hate that don’t think about how WW I basically happened the way it did because everyone spent the previous few years building up their militaries “just in case.”
I get your feelings. An arms race often lead to, well, wars. 😔
However we also need to stand up to bullies.
Sadly, pacifism only work if everybody agrees to it.
Not really. Defense is easier than offense at this point. And offense becomes a lot cheaper in a world where everyone is keeping the prices of weapons lower.
Don’t be an economist, be smart and look at data to see where it goes. America vs Afghanistan. Using a ten million dollar missile to take out a guy with a hundred dollar rifle. Or look at Russia unable to beat a country right on their border that they greatly outnumber.
War is expensive, offensive war more expensive. Everyone armed means arms cost less money. We don’t require that the entire world be pacifist to get peace just enough, just like we don’t need every single person to agree to not commit rape to enforce rape laws.
What do you actually think is causing Europe to build weapons?
Do you think they are planning a era of conquest? Or maybe they’ve got an aggressor on their border and they feel the need to defend themselves.
Which shouldn’t be too much to ask for since everyone agrees that war is awful. Just not hard enough not to constantly make up excuses for why it’s ok to keep murdering people.
everyone agrees that war is awful
That doesn’t appear to be the case in Ukraine.
You’re saying that the people of Ukraine are enjoying themselves right now? That’s not quite the impression I’m getting…
Putin you fuck. Putin doesn’t agree.
First of all, Putin isn’t in Ukraine, you fuck. He’s ordering people to murder on his behalf form a safe distance like the cowardly fascist he is.
Secondly, there’s other ways to deal with that sick bastard’s war than to indulge it all the way to WWIII. Turn the oligarchs against him and he’s not going to be in charge long.
Replace him with someone who isn’t a crazed expansionist who wants to be the tsar of pre-USSR Greater Russia and an end to the war is much more likely than the current tactic of just throwing lives and weapons at something that could go on for decades of needless slaughter at this rate.
Where is the war?
Are you really this obtuse in real life, or do you just play idiot on the internet?
He’s saying not everyone is in agreement on being pacifist because if they were there wouldn’t be a war going on in Ukraine. I can’t believe that needs to be explained to you.
If the US weren’t weapons dealers what would we have left to sell?
Other stuff.
This just in from the EU’s Department of Stating the Obvious
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago has dramatically shifted the rhetoric around defense spending, pushing it up the agenda across the bloc — often at the expense of other policy areas like tackling climate change.
National officials are finalizing it under the coordination of European Council President Charles Michel, and will meet again Friday.
And that starts with laying the foundations for an alliance-wide increase in spending on our collective deterrent,” U.K. Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said this week.
That’s something that EU finance ministers are already working on by tweaking the bank’s rules to make it easier to lend to defense projects.
The proposal doesn’t mention using cash from the European Stability Mechanism, which provides emergency financial aid for members of the eurozone.
The change in defense thinking was driven by the war in Ukraine, and the Barometer poll, taken in April, finds overwhelming support for helping Kyiv.
The original article contains 537 words, the summary contains 152 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
More guns! Bigger guns! I’ll take a snipex alligator please!
All we’re saying is give war a chance!
