If the Russians are so weak and incompetent then why is nearly every European country doubling their military expenditures? And countries that have been neutral through the second world war now rushing into NATO?
I fear that the Russians will be pushed into a more "traditional" warfare with heavy air campaigns against anything remotely "dual-use" and the massive civil casualties that would follow.
Also, Europe was depending on the idea that if you integrate Russian economy with the Western economy there wouldn't be reason to wage wars, just the way EU integrated historic enemies into completely peaceful union therefore there's no need to maintain large armies. Unfortunately, the method that works for EU countries doesn't work for Russia(too corrupt? too autocratic? too eastern mentality? who knows) and as a result European countries now increase their budgets for their defence.
I think it's tragic. Would have been much better if Russians sent their gas as Europe gradually transitions into renewables and Europe sent their produce to Russians and improve their lives as they diversify their economy as the fossil energy is phased out. It should have worked, EU definitely tried make it work.
I mean, who want to test how harmful a slingshot is if they can't retaliate?
Russia has an artillery based army and Ukraine doesn't have the long range weapons to destroy it, so Russia can just destroy city after city from a safe distance.
Much weaker, but not harmless indeed.
Plus, the US already send 25% of its Javelin and Stinger missiles to Ukraine and it will take many years to replenish those stocks.
Can all countries in the vicinity of Ukraine receive such numbers of missiles and support?
No, hence we need to ramp up military spending and production in case Russia gets even wilder ideas.
In general the method works, there were(are) deep economic ties growing between germany and russia for example to mutual benefit. And those sectors are devastated because of the war and were really not in favour of it.
But Russia is a bit bigger than slovakia for example, so some economic ties were apparently not enough.
Also, most of the russia population received an decrease in living standard after the soviet union fell, so democracy was off with a bad start. When your individual life is shit, it is a comfort knowing you are at least part of something great. The RUS empire. Only, that in reality it is just a brutal, rusty moloch, which more people are hopefully seeing now. And yes, it is tragic. We now have war and even if there will be peace eventually, a new iron curtain with mines will once again divide europe.
So once again we are in a "war of ideas". I hope we do not face a "new iron curtain" as you say, that would indeed be a shame.
I held so many hopes for the Russian people but foolishly thought they had escaped the prisons of thought that might bind them. So many outstanding people, some of the best writers, mathematicians, and scientists, generations of civilization and a history worth mining for gems.
I now see more clearly that the Russians (and other peoples in that region of the Earth) are neither Western nor Eastern in thought but have their own very different perceptions of the world. And unfortunately many of them seem to suffer an undeserved diminished sense of self-worth and a desire for recognition (some call it "thymos") that is perceived as not forthcoming from foreigners, whether truly present or not.
I have always believed that any Russian or "Eurasian" (if I may use that term to denote the broader groups of peoples in the region) person was as worthy or better, good or bad, strong or weak, kind, and good ... as any person whatsoever. But I fear b/c of the West's indifference and yes, the West's negligence of these peoples after the breakup of the Soviet Union, we have, as a group, not sufficiently shown the respect that is due them. We needed a "Marshall Plan" for the fall of the Soviet Union, if only to offer it.
Because they are going to besiege many cities and kill many people even if they end up losing a war, just like what happens in Ukraine right now.
If we were interested in defence, all the (small) spending would be on anti tank and anti aircraft missile systems, logistics, and training our national guard, firemen, police and other citizens. We (the west) vastly outnumber the Russians, have more advanced technology, and hugely larger industrial capacity.
This defence spending is obviously not about Russia, and not about defence, it is firstly and mainly about making money and creating jobs to get ourselves out of the current economic disaster, and secondly about preparing for war with our next official adversary, whoever the Americans decide to nominate for that.
[1] https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Monatsberichte/2022/0... (Ctrl-F "Ausgaben des Bundes nach Aufgabenbereichen", row title "Verteidigung")
Russia's was 6% of GDP , but EU easily outspended it with <2%
You deeply underestimate how much worse things could get.
After receiving tens of thousands of ATGMs, Ukraine still only destroyed a fraction of the current russian armor and equipment. Russia has many times over in storage. Sure, it will take a while to make that operational, but we shouldn't be taking any chances and just build overwhelming force to stop Russia, especially when it's so cheap for us, relatively speaking.
Plus you have to plan for the adversary being better than what you have evidence for, that's just prudent.
The mistake is that other countries are being bullied by Russia. NATO untill further escalation works.
That's what they're already doing. Except it's not with air power, because theirs is kind of a joke ( using commercial off the shelf phones and GPS to communicate and navigate), but with artillery. And it's not "anything remotely dual use", it's bomb everything, even obviously civilian targets.
2. NATO military was not really tested in full scale combat and can perform worse than expected too.
NATO has had plenty of logistical failures but it doesn't narrow it's planning to total top-down so those failures are dealt with and worked around by elements in the middle and on the field.
Moreover, lots of proper military research projects have been done. It's the actual production where they run into the corruption bottleneck: that could be solved and the giant might awaken.
Russia was/is spending something like 17% on military. Obviously they planned to use it at some point, I can't believe we were this dumb not to see it.
Russia can’t make special stuff if it can’t make boring stuff.
They can try import substitution from China but it would be difficult to move goods as the Trans-Siberian Railway is already at capacity trying to replace other goods, and even China may not be able to provide suitable replacements for parts manufactured in Europe.
2) Nukes.
3) Even though the Russian military appears increasingly incompetent, they are still capable of creating immense damage and destruction.
We badly need new trucks. I have a driver (I'm lieutenant), but have no truck, because my truck was used in Chornobyl, so it's not operable now because of 30 years of out of service at conservation. If I have a truck, I can swap my cabin from Chornobyl truck to new truck and create a working communication station, but I cannot find a cheap truck to buy.
If you have a barely working truck, please, sent it to Ukraine, Rivne, Ukrainian Army, 55 OPZ, 1 battalion.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/03/why-second-han...
Basically long bombing campaigns targeting everything from military targets, to TV-stations, to train stations, while the opponent was unable to respond, leaving them broken and demoralized.
1. The latest Russian invasion was a wake-up call. Much bigger than in 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea and East Ukraine. Especially Germany and France have been attempting to reach a lasting peaceful relationship with Russia through trade and agreements. Any hope anybody in Europe might have had of that has evaporated now.
2. Fear that the US will not be there to defend Europe in the future (Trump threatened to leave NATO - and might be re-elected). One of the (fair) reasons behing Trump's threats were European NATO countried not paying their fair share (2% of GDP in 2014 agreement).
For all my life I've opposed defense spending and supported reduction of defense spending, but not anymore. As long as Putin rules Russia, Russia is a real threat to any neighbouring country. Even if my own country is relatively safe, I think it's important we help other countries to defend themselves against this threat.
I would still strongly prefer friendly relationships with Russia, but Putin has made that impossible. We need to stop buying Russian gas as soon as possible.
Even being not very good at war they've been able to do a lot of damage and war crimes.
Plus, some of those countries have had pretty terrible militaries themselves; the head of the German army admittedly recently that their capability as a fighting force is very limited. A lot of Europe was basically coasting militarily because they thought war in Europe was over forever.
Plus Russia could probably do some damage and would be difficult if not impossible to completely take out due to the size of their land mass.
Active personnel 1,014,000
Reserve personnel 2,000,000
Europe hasn't had an army to speak of for decades (and for a good reason). So "doubling military expenditures" for most of Europe is "going from nearly zero to slightly more than zero".
> air campaigns against anything remotely "dual-use" and the massive civil casualties that would follow.
They don't have to be "pushed". They have been basically doing that since the war started.
That is sheer numbers. The EU has 1 million active military personnel on paper. Of that, less than 30k are "land troops prepared for deployed and sustained operations" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Security_and_Defence_Po...
If only I was discussing that, right?
> And Ukraine have been conducting mobilization since the war started
Yes, but the original question was, "Why is Europe increasing defense spending". The sum total of Europe's deployed forces is smaller than Ukraine's was before this war.
Russia's defence budget is ~50 billion dollars per year.
The combined defence budgets of all of Europe is ~200 billion dollars per year, which is four times as large as Russia's. And that's from before the Ukraine invasion. The bulk of that defence budget belongs to NATO members who already have decades of experience in working together and having a shared command structure. We outspend Russia four to one, and if all European NATO members bump their defence budgets to the 2% requirement, we're gonna outspend Russia seven to one.
Going from four times the defence budget or Russia to seven times the defence budget of Russia is nowhere near going from "nearly zero to slightly more than zero".
> Active personnel 1,014,000
Oh no, a million demotivated peasants with rusty Soviet-era weapons! Whatever shall we do? Best we roll over and let Russia invade and take whatever they want!
You're also stuck in the cold war mentality that Russia is still as big and strong as the Soviet Union was, and it's just not true anymore. Europe has three times the population, four times the defence budget, and ten times the GDP of Russia. Russia has had three decades of unparalleled corruption and decay, and we're supposed to feel threatened?!?
No. Stop. Re-evaluate. Russia is no longer an existential threat to Europe.
> Russia is no longer an existential threat to Europe.
If only I ever said anywhere whether I thought Russia was an existential threat to Europe. Stop. Re-evaluate. There's a specific point I was replying to.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Security_and_Defence_Po...
That's some goal post moving. You were explicitly talking about military expenditures, and your claim that Europe's military expenditures doubling is insignificant is completely laughable given that the current level is already 4x Russia's.
The only reason you pivoted to active troops, pretending we were talking about that all along, is because that's the only number that's bigger on the Russian side of the equation.
Where do you get these claims? Most European countries are part of NATO which demands a modernized standing army as part of its membership requirements.
While it's true that most countries don't spend the ridiculous amount of their wealth on arms as USA does, the armies of European countries are far from not existing.
I couldn't be bothered to look beyond Wikipedia, so going by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Security_and_Defence_Po...
1. Most countries spend significatly less than is required by NATO. Nato requires 2% of GDP to be spent on defense. In the EU, only 7 countries are at that threshold, or above it, and of those Finland is not in NATO.
2. France has the largest active military personnel at 200k, and of those, 17k are "prepared for deployed and sustained operations".
At this point all of EU couldn't get an army to respond to Russia's current force engaged in Ukraine.
This is not strictly true and there’s no such legal requirement, only a political one. Case in point id Iceland, which is a NATO member but has no armed forces to speak of.
Also the larges part of any military are non combat support personnel. Weather its people building things or transporting them or fixing them. Also manning various stations. Providing security for military installation. Military police. Military intelligence. etc.
So out of 1m people russia only has around 250k combat troops. 190k of which are currently engaged in Ukraine.
And one of the reasons we see all this logistical problems is that Russia has too much combat troops (or too little support) for its support force. In other militaries its usually from 6 to 9 support people for every combat role.
Also remember SU was over 300M (and that without Warsaw pact nations). Russia is less than 150m.
So no Russia does not have endless supply of troops, unless they start mobilization.
Europe and the countries bordering Russia have a lot of personnel. Sweden even reactivated military duty.
There's a big benefit in decentralized warfare that the NATO has been doing that Russia can't emulate.
Countries bordering Russia have very few actively deployed forces. Sweden has 750 ground troops "ready for deployment and sustained operations". Seven hundred and fifty. Finland has ~1750.
> benefit in decentralized warfare that the NATO has been doing that Russia can't emulate
Those decentralized troops have to get to the conflict zones first.
Wartime strength is 280 k.
Reserves train yearly.
That's a lot more than 1750...
Actie personel is 24 k, reserve = 31.8 k and Paramilitary = 22 k. - https://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-de...
That's way more than 750 people too...
Where did you even get those numbers?
And an ill-maintained tank from the Soviet/ww2 era is still a tank.
I remember reading somewhere, maybe the Guardian, that:
- just 9% of the total russian forces are now deployed against Ukraine
- they thought it will be an easy victory so they sent the lowest grade troops they had.
Contrary to the lowest grade, it seems that many elite forces were used : https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/04/destination-disaster-r... unfortunately they were deployed in an amateur way using a reckless plan. If the reinforcement strategy had come off then everyone would say that it was utterly brilliant, but gambles like this happen in war all the time. We like to venerate the ones that work and to talk about brilliant generals and the glamour of battle. In reality, as in this case they mostly fail and the troops get bogged down and killed.
The Russians have done a surprising and smart thing, which shows that someone in Moscow has the light on still. They've pulled out of the north and completely changed strategy - this shows a strategic flexibility that's really quite impressive, and unusual for a totalitarian regime. The problem that they have now is that the situation in the south is much more difficult than it would have been if they had gone for it at the outset. They don't have much of a reserve because Russia is so vast and the Russians have serious commitments at the border with China and North Korea and so on.
They were unable to effectively resupply troops in the North, who were out of food, low on fuel, and lacking supply trucks. Ukranians blew up bridges and local railroads and attacked their lines of supply and communication. Belorussians kept sabotaging rail lines. Russians never got control of large cities where major roads pass, and couldn’t control the airport enough to fly in supplies. At the point they retreated they had been completely stuck with no progress for more than a week, and it was only a matter of time before they were surrounded.
They chose (mostly) orderly retreat over waiting a few more weeks and getting routed and destroyed.