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Comment by meindnoch | Hacker News Reader

Time for us in Europe to man up.

Thankfully it seems to be uniting the EU rather than dividing. Remains to be seen if they can get their act together though.

I'm sceptical. Recent movements in Germany point into the opposite direction or rather a continuation of wishful thinking. Yes, a lot of debt-funded defence investment is coming. They also promised some investment in "infrastructure". At the same time the debt increase will delay reforms that are overdue for 20 years and longer. There were already calls that, now, with all brakes off, we can increase rather than curb spending on the welfare state. As it currently looks, the productivity gap with the US and Asia will widen rather than shrink. A very disappointing development to say the least.

European manufacturing is more productive than US manufacturing. The US productivity advantage comes almost entirely from the US' strong tech (as in software) sector.

Tech (as in software) is what's being cut off to Ukraine, and tech (as in software, MEMS gyros, and GNSS) is how Ukraine keeps blowing up US$3M T-90 tanks with three or four US$500 FPV drones. So I think it's highly relevant to the question of sovereignty.

As far as I know all cheap drone tech is provided by China (to both Russia and Ukraine).

It's largely kind of an international open-source effort, but there is a lot of crucial hardware that is only available from China, yes. Until this week I think Anduril was in a good position to become an alternative to China in two to four years, but this move strongly undermines their credibility overseas.

(Might be just me but it took a couple reads to understand you don't mean US tanks that cost thee million dollars. For me, USD is the currency code I'm familiar with)

Apologies. Around here people commonly write "U$S" but I'm not resigned to that yet.

Germany has slightly higher productivity per hour worked than the US. There's a productivity gap between the US and European economies as a whole (which is a relatively recent phenomenon dating back to around 2005), but Germany is quite productive.

I should have more precisely referred to the "productivity growth gap" (https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD000000000053...)

> There were already calls that, now, with all brakes off, we can increase rather than curb spending on the welfare state.

I'm curious: Where can I read more about this? Which parties (and how many) are saying this? Is there any pushback from Merz?

One example is pensions. For demographic reasons the state pension system is underfunded for years, a situation that is projected to become worse. One solution would be to increase contributions which are already sky-high and make working or opening a business a lot less attractive in Germany. Another is to freeze pensions. Guess what happened? Germany's old government increased the contribution level starting in January this year [1]. Additional, a pension raise [2] has recently been announced and the newly-found debt will provide funding for additional benefits for pensioners [3]. It more and more feels like a gerontocracy.

[1] https://www.deutsche-rentenversicherung.de/DRV/DE/Ueber-uns-... [2] https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/rentensteigeru... [3] https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/innenpolitik...

I hate to be the guy, but I find myself having to point this out to all of my doom-minded American friends. Yes, Trump is a criminal idiot, but one positive, probably unintended effect is that the world becomes more, in the words of Taleb, anti-fragile. As an American I am thrilled that Europe is becoming more united, more pragmatic, and more self-reliant. Our relationship is not over, it is just changing, and Europe is experiencing a long-needed renaissance.

Of course Europe always had some ability to defend itself, but I think it's clear that some of that ability was outsourced to the US(with reciprocal benefits for the US, but still). Yes, this introduces some redundancy into the Western sphere, but that's a good thing.

The American order that stood for decades was anti-fragile. Everyone outsourced their defense to some reasonable degree, so no one was strong enough to pose an existential threat to anyone else, so we could all afford to be off guard.

Now every actor needs to have the strength to deter all others, which means everyone gets stronger, which means everyone needs even more strength to deter others, or deterrence simply breaks down. We had a multi-polar world in the past, it went terribly and led to massive wars. Now we are returning to that system but with nukes.

England, France, Israel... They all had nukes the entire time. What you are claiming sounds good but does not align with reality. You are overstating both the degree to which things have changed as well as overstating the degree to which the alliances have changed (i.e. Europe is still Europe. Poland won't be arming itself to protect against Germany or France, etc).

Multi-polarity isn't anti-fragility. Multi-polarity is bad with no redeeming qualities, you get more war and more nuclear proliferation.

How much of the last 40 years have we been without a major war or "police action"? I don't think the world was as stable as you thought it was.

More self-reliant like North Korea?

Is no one in Europe not skeptical of the increase in defense spending? Things have costs, that money is having to come from somewhere.

Is increasing traditional military spending the way to go in the 21st century? If the decision is left to military leaders,they might spend massive amounts of money preparing to fight yesterday's war.

If you set aside alarmist positions, it may very well possible that Russia has no interests in military conflict with rest of Europe beyond Ukraine.

In that case what is the best thing Europeans could do?

There is danger and risk in military over spending at this juncture, and Europe needs to be level headed about it.

We have opened for €800 billions in investments through the EU.

So, no.

Calling anything "alarmist positions" now is just uninformed; Putin has said Russia wants the USSR territory back, their entire industry is now turned to produce weapons, their schools are "Putin-Jugend", they are currently invested in the first "great war" since WW2.

And the US isn't just getting out of Europe - they have gone full turncoat.

This is an unmitigated disaster for both US (citizens) and EU, and the EU is trying to manage what they can.

This conflict may be a disaster for Ukraine, but how is this conflict a disaster for Europe?

Is Europe going to ratchet military spending at Putins's bluff?

If they succeed in Ukraine then they are free to re-arm. Meanwhile Trump has made it clear that article 5 is worthless, so the Baltics are there for the taking. As much as I'd like to say they can rely on the rest of NATO, I'm really unsure if the UK or France would be willing to sacrifice London or Paris for Tallinn or Vilnius.

10 month old account with a handful posts calling Putin's actions in Europe a "bluff"... spidey sense is tingling.

Because Putin will take whatever he can of Europe, starting with Ukraine and the baltic states.

Putin’s Russia is already at war with Europe - assassinations, destabilisation operations, sabotage.

I think the parent poster has a point. It's a good idea to pause for a moment and think about this critically: Why would Putin attack the EU? Just because he can? What's the gain?

> destabilisation operations

This might actually start to become more of a self-inflicted wound. The uprise of right-wing parties is already happening in the EU. Mostly voted for by people with less education and less wealth. If we spend more money on defense and less on social security, right-wing parties might get even more traction, which causes further destabilization.

> sabotage

Yes and it sucks. There's actually not much you can do about it, because of how international waters are treated legally. But you think rearming the EU will prevent sabotage in the future? I have my doubts.

The current narrative seems to be "Ukraine is almost an EU member state and if we do not defend Ukraine, the EU will be next". Another view of the situation could be: "Ukraine is a special case and Putin would be very dumb to invade the EU".

The gain is more resources to plunder. You're thinking of Putin from a western democratic mindset as an accountable leader who has to at least pretend to serve the interests of his country. It was also dumb to invade Ukraine if you think in terms of Russian interests. Leaders do lots of dumb things which are incredibly damaging for their country and often are driven purely by self-interest, especially dictators.

Re-arming is unfortunately the only answer to naked aggression from dictators and the US cannot be trusted any more as an ally. Putin has clearly stated his aims - to reconstitute the USSR (and if possible enlarge it) and to defeat the west.

Europe now stands alone against that.

If you,Europeans believe that Russia is such an existential threat,why not attack preemptively ?

George W. Bush showed the world what "preemptive defense" leads to.

"Speak softly and carry a big stick" seems to be a better plan for stability while keeping aggressors in check.

Nuclear retaliation.

It sounds like you're not keeping up on things. We know where the money is coming from. It's headline news daily in the financial press. What are you talking about? And yes, of course we need to defend ourselves.

The money is coming from increased debt.

Are you arguing against spending money on armies at all, or do you want Europe to spend money on more effective weapons?

Europe has benefited a lot from not having to pour tons of money into defense spending. Europeans will be hurting if their countries suddenly have to shift finances for this.

I think it’s much easier to just hunker down and appease the United States for four years and hope the next administrations are more merciful.

Maybe... but probably not. Having to divert investments from one part of the economy to another is not that much a big problem: Russia has been doing the same and they have an economy of war that works more or less (some say they are on the brink of collapse and yet, they are still there). So, Europe can totally rely way less on the US, they just have to change their priorities, and they'll adapt just as Russia has adapted. Thinking they cannot is really presumptuous, or even comptemptuous (and a lot of people have made the same mistake with Russia by the way). And yet, at the moment, the US think that way, not believing in soft power any more, but only in pure pressure or even blackmail. If history teaches one thing, it is that you always create your own ennemies (Versailles treaty comes to mind).

That is not what is happening. Listen to Ursula. She’s telling you what is happening. Eu countries are being “allowed” to go into debt without triggering eu debt procedures. It won’t be reinvestment. It will be dilution of currency though debt. Something all too familiar to Americans.

Correct. Interestingly enough, it will massively increase the supply of euro bonds, and probably pull in a bunch of cash that goes to US treasuries now.

If there's enough pan European bonds (which there won't be) then the reserve currency status of the dollar could be threatened.

"Europe has benefited a lot from not having to pour tons of money into defense spending."

I'd say spending so much on American weapons has hurt it's own domestic capabilities if anything.

Bold of you to assume there will be a next administration in the United States in four years.

"hope"

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