So, to be fair there has been some increases in defense spending and production. Ammo producer Rheinmetall for example has received contracts to start boosting production of 155mmm shells to replenish EU (and Ukraine) stocks reduced by the Ukraine war. They are/were shooting for a production capacity of 700,000 shells/year for 2025 increasing to 1.1 million/year by 2027, which is a massive increase from pre-war rates which were way less than 100,000/year.
Countries like France (before the government collapse) were boosting defense spending a bit. They’re back over the old 2% goal now, Sweden is looking at 2.6%. And modernization programs like France’s Scorpion program still continue to chug along.
But I fully agree with your larger point. It’s a matter of scale and only Poland (and much more modestly, Sweden) of the larger countries are seriously expanding their militaries, rather than just modernizing what they have. That may change as this year gets gloomier and gloomier depending on governments, but right now European NATO alone is not the powerhouse it could be and it will be some times, if ever, before it can become one.
you seem to forget that there is an IMPORTANT LAYER in between countries and weapons …
that is the defense industry companies (DIC) - which are profit oriented companies, many of which publicly traded with shareholders, just like nestle and Netflix or Toyota.
(all numbers must be considered evacuated from my rectum)
Just b/c you as Country X want buy 237 units of weaponX, the DICs will not run and set up a brand new factory or factory line that takes years to construct, costs billions to do so and hire 1000s of workers that might take months to train for the job. After all you might be dealing with explosives and all other kinds of dangerous goods, and the laws apply for DICs as well - let alone all the secret-shit.
The DICs, just like Toyota will run scenarios and find out that type of investment will only be profitable above 6.666 units and hence no such factories/capacities will be built. Come again, when there is a collective need for 7.000+ need for weaponX and the DICs will run their scenarios again.but come quickly, as new environmental standards will push the break-even number into the 8.000 starting january 2026
And even then, it might be years from committing in writing to purchase 7.000+ units to being deliverd the first dozen or so (in case of heavy mobilized assets).
Case in point:
if its not profitable for them, the DICs will tell Poland “sorry, but…”
there is no such thing as the european defense industry, those are all individual companies that optimize for themselves and their shareholders, and not for the country of poland or europe.
just like in the USA at state-level, you will also have countries trying to usher purchases to “their” defense industry, b/c jobs and investments
it will take a long and committed (-> $$$) path to growth to change that scenario and make it financially interesting to produce for the DICs
the whole “the way we do war has changed tremendously in the past few years”, as seen in UKR ($800 drones busting $80,000.000,- tanks) … which is ANOTHER LAYER of relevance in the DI … Do I purchase 800 tanks over the next 10 years, or better only 80 and spend the saved $$$ in new, cheaper weapons systems, e.g. 100.000 armor piercing drones, to get better milage for my tax-euros?
I don’t dispute what has happened. But what *is* happening is that the Trump administration has basically switched sides in this conflict – repeating Putin’s propaganda verbatim, and using increasingly threatening language against Ukraine.
And Vance’s speech and the follow-up basically told Europe that the alliance is over.
All this has been the rocket up the butt that would cause Europe to massively rethink its defensive policy. Whether Europe will be quick enough, or organized enough, that’s to be seen. But the need for change seems clear to all.
MAGA has already screwed over lots of American industries, and now they dance to Putin’s tune. So there will be voices; Vance, Miller etc that will be saying that the US should be selling to Russia instead of the EU, or at least putting more focus on selling to the likes of Saudi Arabia. If the US brokers a “deal” with Russia, and Europe wants to continue supporting Ukraine in breach of the terms of the deal, yeah I think it’s feasible that this administration would like to block all weapons sales to Europe.
However, note that I said on balance that I don’t think this will happen, not any time soon anyway. It’s too much money, being lost by too many significant American voices.
I also believe Putin has made it clear that Zelenskyy has to go as IIRC, he was elected in a free and fair election, defeating a Putin hack president previously in power.
And Zelenskyy has just said he’d be willing to give up the presidency in exchange for peace - or membership of NATO.
If I were him I might suggest that, yes indeed, there could be new elections, for which an end to the conditions justifying martial law is required, under impartial international supervision, provided of course that they included the disputed regions in the Donbass and Crimea - and that the same happenedin Russia.
If the Ukraine situation is settled or cease fire, three predictions:
1 in about 6 month russia will be able to fight a local war with a neighbor
2 in 2 years Russia will be ready for a regiaonal war
3 in 5 years Russia will be able to fight a large scale war
Granted, there has been some increases, but as you acknowledge it’s a matter of scale. There is a major war in Europe that has been going on for three fucking years.. The time to think about slightly pushing over the 2% peacetime goal has long since left the station. That the UK is still planning on reducing its ability to fight a modern conventional war defies all reason. Imagine if this was the extent of France and the Commonwealths rearmament three years after Munich 1938. Yes, I know, a very imperfect analogy, but I’m sure you can see my point. In the face of the actual threat that emerged full blown on the world stage three years ago, the response of the defense budget of those NATO nations not close to the Russian border has been indifferent to piss poor.
You haven’t been reading what I’ve been writing or have a very good understanding of how the defense industry works if this is your takeaway. The European defense industry should have been taking off three years ago, with governmental contracts and subsidies from the nations they are located in. Saying that the defense industry is only profit driven is as ignorant as saying other vital government services like the police and firefighters are profit driven. They’re not. France, Germany and the UK were all very capable of churning out vast amounts of military hardware to support their own and other NATO nations militaries during the Cold War. These industries were allowed to wither and starve by their governments deciding they would never again face a threat in Europe and massively slashing their defense budgets, while at the same time taking the massive stockpiles of armaments they had built up and disposing of them by selling them at pennies on the dollar or simply scrapping them.
No one being able to see the future, doing that was understandable and excusable at the time. What isn’t excusable is the scale of the reaction over the past three years. The “DICs” as you chose to call them didn’t tell Poland “sorry, but…”, Poland didn’t even ask them in 2022 because they were in no position to provide for its needs. That three years later they are in no better of a position to provide these needs for NATO countries is a both a disgrace and has nothing to do with “DICs” being entirely profit motivated. “DICs” aren’t anything like Toyota, they don’t have their decisions on the number of tanks/aircraft/rifles/shells/bullet/boots/etc. to produce dictated by how they read market demands. Rheinmetall doesn’t produce 100 tanks a year based on projected market demands like Toyota does with cars and then see how many of them sell and adjust production accordingly. It only produces tanks when it gets contracts from governments to build them. And it maintains the ability to restart production at accelerated levels by the government subsidizing them during lean years.
I take it back. In light of TFG openly siding with Russia at the UN vote condemning the invasion of Ukraine, I no longer think there’s anything too psychotic for him to do.
So now we’re in the lovely company of countries like Iran, North Korea and Belarus in voting “no” to the resolution. Not even abstaining, actually voting that “no”, Russia wasn’t the aggressor. Another interesting new member of this disgraceful club is Israel. I guess Bibi owes him a favor for his ingenious plan to bring peace to Gaza via ethnic cleansing.
The 16 that voted against Monday’s resolution alongside the U.S. and Russia were Israel, Haiti, Hungary, Palau and the Marshall Islands; the African countries Burkina Faso, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Niger and Sudan; and Belarus, North Korea, Syria, Eritrea, Mali and Nicaragua, six countries that voted against the 2023 resolution:.
I like that for now Europe is standing up to Donimir Trumpin.
The UK’s PM just announced hugely increased defense spending…I know at first glance this is doing exactly what Trump asked for, but this is in the context of pledging continued support of Ukraine, including increasing the sanctions on Russia and with more voices in parliament casting doubt on NATO. And more discussion of the russian frozen assets. This is not a Britain about to sign off on Russia’s annexation.
And Macron’s repeated fact checks. I think peppering the fact checks with expletives about Trump would have been nice, but I understand statecraft involves speaking as though Trump is someone deserving of respect.
I hope it’s nothing like the deal as initially suggested by Trump. That is: “give us 3x as much money as we gave you* to pay us back for you being the front line in stopping our geopolitical rival”
I mean, any resource deal is sickening but Trump’s suggestion was insane.
* “Actually it wasn’t money, it was our old weapons. So it was, at worst, economically neutral. Anyway, you owe us times 3”
FDR had his analogy of lending your neighbor your garden hose when his house was on fire. TFG has his ‘Biden gave you lend-lease, now pay us pack several times the value or we’ll send the thugs to beat you with hoses’. Utterly morally bankrupt. Sasuga TFG.
If Europe were willing to spend the money, they could set up a Russian brain-drain initiative, offering a financial stipend and resident status in the EU to support any talented Russians who are willing to flee: STEM masters’ and PhDs, engineers, cybersecurity experts, doctors, nurses, prominent mathematicians, programmers, prominent scientists, etc. This doesn’t require any effort on behalf of the European defense-industrial complex. And it would arguably pose a greater threat to Russia’s future than nearly any other sanction that the West could levy, if done well.
