President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday called for a substantial rise in France’s defence spending over the next two years, citing imminent threats, particularly Russia. “To be free in this world, we need…
Correct me if I’m wrong but couldn’t the EU part of NATO have halted Russia’s “special military operation” in the very beginning, if they had actually decided to go in Ukraine? I seem to recall they didn’t want to go in because of various reasons, but I don’t think lack of military capability was one of them. Instead they decided to trickle in weapons as to “not be involved.” Did anything of significance change so that Europe is suddenly super weak militarily against Russia? I guess Europe is weak against the US, but that’s not quite the framing used.
China has become a superpower surpassing the US and sells Russia an abundance of inexpensive high-quality goods and exchanges high-quality military technology. This allows Russia to fight with higher tech weapons in greater quantaties on their doorstep. The EU thought it was going to be another Iraq/Afghanistan where the US would do the heavy lifting, waltz in and then the EU would chime in by patrolling areas.
Hm. I guess that makws sense. So the Russians are in a better position technologically while probably weaker in manpower than in the beginning of the war. But the tech could probably offset that. Economically they’re probably overall benefitting from shifting directly to Chinese products that have much lower profit margins than what they used to pay for European and US goods that flooded in after 1991. So their PPP ratio is probably rising. Would be interesting to see if that’s borne out in data. If they’re able to make more missiles, drones and such for less, in a sustainable fashion, then I guess there is a reason for building up deterrent manufacturing in the EU to counter it.
Correct me if I’m wrong but couldn’t the EU part of NATO have halted Russia’s “special military operation” in the very beginning, if they had actually decided to go in Ukraine? I seem to recall they didn’t want to go in because of various reasons, but I don’t think lack of military capability was one of them. Instead they decided to trickle in weapons as to “not be involved.” Did anything of significance change so that Europe is suddenly super weak militarily against Russia? I guess Europe is weak against the US, but that’s not quite the framing used.
China has become a superpower surpassing the US and sells Russia an abundance of inexpensive high-quality goods and exchanges high-quality military technology. This allows Russia to fight with higher tech weapons in greater quantaties on their doorstep. The EU thought it was going to be another Iraq/Afghanistan where the US would do the heavy lifting, waltz in and then the EU would chime in by patrolling areas.
Hm. I guess that makws sense. So the Russians are in a better position technologically while probably weaker in manpower than in the beginning of the war. But the tech could probably offset that. Economically they’re probably overall benefitting from shifting directly to Chinese products that have much lower profit margins than what they used to pay for European and US goods that flooded in after 1991. So their PPP ratio is probably rising. Would be interesting to see if that’s borne out in data. If they’re able to make more missiles, drones and such for less, in a sustainable fashion, then I guess there is a reason for building up deterrent manufacturing in the EU to counter it.