War requires industry. But we've deindustrialised and outsourced the manufacture of almost everything to China.
They're trying to avoid any conflict since they have no energy and hard power to counter any confrontations, so they smile and nod to anything happening worldwide or push some stern words about "monitoring the situation" to social media, depending on the situation.
EU spends 33% of World’s military spending, once you exclude US. EU spends more on military than China.
How much do you need to spend to defend yourself, 60% of the world?
Mind you, many western weapons, like stinger and javelin, cost more than their weight in silver. Sounds like a scam
From force projection capability, the EU is toothless and lacks the spine to twist some arms in order to see its interests represented on the world stage. It's a pushover despite all that military.
The reality is that you need to be willing to drop some bombs every now and then or at least threaten or blackmail those who threaten your interests and way of life, to be taken seriously and for other countries to never fuck with you. For example the Ukraine virtually admitted to blowing up Nordstream pipeline and sending Germany's manufacturing into the storage, just to disrupt Russia. Now do you think Ukraine or any other country, would ever dare to blow up a US pipeline or piece of their infrastructure? Probably not, because they'd get carpet bombed in retaliation and their leaders shot or kidnapped by delta force.
And since the EU never plays hardball like that it always gets taken advantage of by more ruthless and unscrupulous nations with smaller and weaker militaries because both its citizens and its leaders are too afraid to ever use force.
The rhetoric right now is just bizarre. Why should the EU force countries against their will using military? Do you have zero idealism or regard for internationally agreed upon rules? Do you want a world where might is right?
Internationally agreed upon rules don't come from first principles, they're downstream from power. The world was, and will always be, might makes right.
Your rules in your country are real because you have judges and police to enforce those rules.
But internationally, there's no planetary police force(other than the US when it wishes to act like one), so solving disputes is dependent to how strong your military is, or on you capability to inflict pain on the offending country through other means like economy or trade.
That why the US walks away unscalved from international conflicts and the EU keeps getting buried further.
Did we though? At least in Germany a bunch of anti-climate-change projects and changes have been and are being canceled and we're going back to coal and diesel. It seems we're optimizing to have no results and negative progress at the moment.
Yes, interesting that the People dropping bombs did not anticipate blowing up.
Our elites have revealed many flaws recently, but one I did not expect is that they have surprisingly limited intelligence.
This law didn't open a phone case factory in europe, it just made the 1eur case cost ~5euros (vat is paid on customs too). The only alternative is to go to a local mall and buy a case there for 10-15euros, and it's the same chinese case, just more expensive, but the reseller pays a lot less tax, since they can buy 100 cases for 1eur and still pay just 3eur of customs on them.
So I, the consumer get 300% customs on that 1eur case (+vat on huge customs fee), while the mall kiosk gets 3% customs fee, how is that fair? And how will that build a phone case factory in europe?
Why not build the factory first instead? Have it make 2eur phone cases, and then the price raise would make me buy the european one, but for now, it's just makes me pay more for the same chinese stuff, and I can't spend the leftover money for a local beer at a local bar anymore, so stuff actually made in europe.
And once the chip fabs have been bombed, civilisation is set by by decades, and may end up fighting a lower-tech war.
Beyond this, if you start attacking neutral fabs you lose out on anything from them. Your expectations are quite a bit off if you think striking fabs stops a conflict.
By WHO?! Russia is still stuck in 1/4 of the Ukraine and fear mongers make it sound like they're about to reach Paris any day now.
This does not even make sense as a conspiracy theory.
Had "EU" wanted to hurt Russia there were was a thousand ways to do that. But they didn't. Instead they traded and built infrastructure. Most EU countries saw Russia as a partner before they invaded their neighbour in the most gruesome way possible.
If anything, the EU should have reacted sooner. It was shameful they didn't. You can't really pretend like nothing while an all out war is taking place on the same continent.