The war in Ukraine has shifted thinking — both among politicians and the public — on the need to spend more on defense.
The European public and politicians are in agreement that EU countries should do more to increase weapons production.
That’s according to the results of the latest Eurobarometer poll, obtained in advance by POLITICO Playbook, and a draft of the EU’s Strategic Agenda seen by POLITICO.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago has dramatically shifted the rhetoric around defense spending, pushing it up the agenda across the bloc — often at the expense of other policy areas like tackling climate change.
It would be stupid not to.
Not only is there absolutely no guarantee the United States will be there to help them, but if a certain candidate wins, it’s a guarantee we won’t be helping them.
But beyond that it’s an incredibly stupid idea to outsource your national defense, even to an ally.I think we almost certainly won’t help them since Trump loves Putin and wants to pull out of NATO.
Who’s “we” in this comment?
We is the United States in this context. Not you or I, but the nation I’m part of and pay taxes to. And the majority of those taxes go to the military industrial complex.
So even though I don’t make any of the decisions and I personally don’t agree with many of them, I still have to help pay for it whether I like it or not.
So, I’m reluctantly part of the “we”.Hey, uhhh, this sounds an awful lot like taxation without representation.
Oh there’s representation, but it’s been co-opted by corporations paying for it, and the people are willing to accept that, either because they actually believe the propaganda, or since most people don’t vote, via sheer apathy.
As a pacifist, I fucking hate this timeline 😮💨
I get your feelings. An arms race often lead to, well, wars. 😔
However we also need to stand up to bullies.
Climate crisis is out of control and Putin ends up dragging us all off to war and weapons production. Absolute worst timeline.
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If Russia was threatening my country next, I sure would too.
They can barely take the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine, you really think they’re gonna invade the rest of Europe?
I think Putin is willing to try.
Putin clearly started to believe his own country’s internal propaganda. Despite being inside the Soviet Union, and actually being part of the systemic lies to project false power, he started to believe what he was being told. As if the systems built on had fundamentally changed after the fall ad his rise to power.
There were a lot of delays getting international supplies to Ukraine at the beginning of the conflict, yet Russia still couldn’t get close to their goal even with an extended timeframe. Once those supplies began to arrive, Russia was never going to be able to achieve their goal like they thought, but Putin’s ego won’t let him admit he was fooled by his own bullshit propaganda machine.
Good point.
Better sacrifice your housing, education, infrastructure, and medical budgets for Raytheon shareholders just in case.
And what makes you think Europe is going to do that?
Where do you think that money must come from?
Every dollar that is spent on bombs is a dollar that doesn’t go into feeding, housing, and educating the people.
Eisenhower said it well:
Rest of the quote is even more explicit about it:
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Yeah, great parting speech. Shame he spent his entire presidency letting MacArthur and Lemay do war crimes in Korea and propping up the military industrial complex.
All we’re saying is give war a chance!If the US weren’t weapons dealers what would we have left to sell?
Other stuff.
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This just in from the EU’s Department of Stating the Obvious
ITT: People who can’t see forest, for trees.
