Comment by Hilift | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Hilift | Hacker News Reader

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Completely impractical. Look at other countries. France and the UK are under enormous budget pressure, mostly due to the cost of funding the defense of the illegal war in Ukraine, but also due to other costly recent policy decisions. Both countries aren't considered poor, but they now have difficult decisions to make. That means anyone who thinks these investments such as these by any country can be from taxes or savings elsewhere are delusional. It would have to be loans.

Now look at Australia. It committed to a $368 billion ($1 billion per month for 30 years) submarine deal with the US. This program will never deliver any perceivable value to Australian people, it is more strategically beneficial for reviving a failing boat and ship building industry in the US. The US itself is supposedly building a new Columbia-class ballistic submarine at a cost of $110 each?

These are simply confabulated, made up numbers. And why is Korea building valuable, current generation facilities in other countries? It would make sense if it would result in for example, the sale of more Korean automobiles, but it isn't. It is basically a shakedown ("tribute").

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/15/aukus-will-cos...

France has spent about 3bn a year on aid to Ukraine (though some of this is in terms of transfer of military equipment rather than new spending, and some of it will be tied to loans funded by the income from confiscated Russian assets). France spends about 50bn a year on pensions (EDIT: Oh, wow, no, much more than that; that's a projected _deficit_), which is what's really driving its budgetary problems.

Curious question: how is a war illegal? Isn’t that just… war?

Or at least, most wars seem to be like that. Rarely is there the case where 2 countries consent to have war with each other. There always seems to be someone that aggresses and someone that is forced to defend. For if they wouldn’t then they face subjugation or worse.

Russia never sent a war declaration to Ukraine. It's not legally a war (that's why Putin and cronies call it 'special operation')

What the hell. Just because it's not called by a country like that doesn't mean it is one.

hence "illegal". A legal war have a war declaration and an explicit casus Belli (regime change, "removing terrorist", "protecting the civilians" etc)

>It committed to a $368 billion ($1 billion per month for 30 years) submarine deal with the US. This program will never deliver any perceivable value to Australian people

Ukrainians thought the same giving up nuclear weapons, and getting rid of a lot of other weapons, including old 300km range ballistic missiles, and selling off new missile development to Saudis or something like this - the kind of weapons mere presence of which would have affected the Russia's invasion calculations.

May be Australia would be better served by strategic weapons other than the submarines, yet i don't think Australia can avoid getting such strategic weapons or can get similar level of strategic defense cheaper.

Subs are definitely australia's best choice here. Subs are king of the ocean and are by far the best tool for enforcing territorial claims and warding off harassment of domestic vessels or harassment along international trading lanes at sea.

Thats not the primary budget issue in France and UK.

> mostly due to the cost of funding the defense of the illegal war in Ukraine

What is a "legal" war supposed to be?

War is illegal under the international law for all UN member states. The main exceptions are self defense or when authorized by the UN Security Council.

Of course, nobody really cares about that.

Was the idea here that because the UN declares that war is illegal, that no country will do war anymore?

I mean, wtf.

After WW1 and WW2 and with the threat of nuclear war, people were willing to try any amount of talking as a less horrific option.

A war would be legal when the _casus belli_ leading up to it would be a non-military action.

For example, Egypt might have casus belli if Sudan stopped the Nile's flow, a non military action with significant impact.

Pretty sure the cost of helping Ukraine is pocket change compared to the rise in welfare payments since COVID and the "triple lock" to keep pensioners minted.

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