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Comment by petcat | Hacker News Reader

At this point I think it's obvious that EU is in turmoil. They're struggling to come to grips with the idea of a Russian invasion on their eastern borders, and simultaneously USA pivoting to Asia and not willing to front their defense after 40+ years of imploring them to do so themselves.

They've outsourced nearly every critical component of a large sustainable society to the rest of the world: Russia, USA, China, India.

But at the same time, their politicians can't do anything because the minute they suggest that they might have to start cutting pensions and public welfare, and all of these different things in order to start supporting national industry and defense, they lose support immediately.

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>They've outsourced nearly every critical component of a large sustainable society to the rest of the world: Russia, USA, China, India.

The EU is about twice as industrialized as the US is, In the town of Unterlüß of four thousand people Germany produces about half as many artillery shells as the entire US does (and nationally alone now produces more) and Ukraine and Europe have, for the last 18 months, defended Ukraine without about any support from anyone else. Where do you get your information about Europe, on twitter?

EU has quite successfully decoupled from Russia already, we aren't heavily dependent on Russian energy or other natural resources anymore.

Also, EU countries in Eastern Europe do already have a high military spending, and even Western European countries are improving.

The situation is less than ideal but not hopeless.

It's hopeless. Enormous amounts of money is flowing out of Europe into China and the US. Europe has dogshit to offer. You already see it with gdp not growing. Whereas rest of the world did grow. Even Russia has higher GDP growth than Germany. Euro leadership is not smart.

> Also, EU countries in Eastern Europe do already have a high military spending, and even Western European countries are improving.

I would really challenge that idea that increasing military spending will create a solid and useful military force.

Most of the money you inject within the military industrial complex is wasted and stolen. At some point it can become counterproductive, we can see it with the US military where recently Iran’s $30k shahed drone destroys $300M US radars.

Note that today's politician never state goals in practical military terms but rather in billions and trillions spent. So they are always victorious. I do not remember Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte or Genghis Khan stating their objectives in terms of money spent.

>I would really challenge that idea that increasing military spending will create a solid and useful military force.

Germany is the EU proof of that. It outpends France at defense spending but its military is massively smaller and less capable, and also non-nuclear to boot. So they're getting a very poor bang for their buck. Mostly because of bureaucracy and corruption are eating most of their money before it gets spent on the troops.

>Most of the money you inject within the military industrial complex is wasted and stolen.

That's why I'm not holding my breath at the whole "German rearmament" propaganda. Most of the money will go to boost the stock of Rheinmetall and friends, not boost the troops.

Whoa, where do you get your news from - Fox?

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