EnglishEdward
Deity
Why bother, better to spend the money adapting to the inevitable climate change.
How is everything not collapsing in the US?
- Thread starter Narz
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Which has as "side effect" major geopolitical advantages contributing to the defence.
Once the EU is freed from buying, from importing fossil energy... the urge to export will decrease strongly and the EU cannot be blackmailed anymore by entities controlling fossil energy.
(is also one of the reasons why windmills + hydrogen have benefits as part of the energy big picture... not all eggs in batteries needing strategic minerals from contested global sources)
amadeus
Bishop of Bio-Dome
If I had to take a guess, I would say that soldier pay is lower than in the West so we’re going to be looking at slightly misleading figures.
Of course, it isn’t just a numbers game and comparing things like spending alone does not give an accurate depiction of actual or projected military power.
After all, Iraq had the world’s fourth largest army in 1990!
Yeah they are. You may not be doing that, but there have been innumerable times on this forum where people have said "so-and-so country manages to do this, so why can't other so-and-so country do it too?"
Because we aren't them. That's really the only answer to that question.
I've posted the answer to this several times in the past. Our entire military spending accounts for about 3.4% of our GDP. So not that much really. For comparison, during World War 2 military spending as a percentage of GDP in the US was at 40%.
amadeus
Bishop of Bio-Dome
I wouldn't compare it to wartime spending, though.
I'd put it this way: even the dovish Carter submitted a budget that ultimately raised it to 6% from a post-Vietnam low. And people that post that transcript of Eisenhower talking about the military-industrial complex? Spending was nearly 10% of the GNP at that time.
There's lots of room for argument about defense spending but historically 3-4% is pretty much where we've been since the original post-Cold War Bush cuts back in the 1990's and the economy has more room to absorb that spending than it would have in the past.
I just throw that out there to preempt the accusation that the US operates on a permanent war economy. That's not something I've seen anyone here say, but I've dealt with it in other places online so I just show right away that no, the US does not operate on a war economy.
Conventional warfare is still very much a real threat. To say that the days of conventional war are over and base military policy around that idea would be just as stupid as ignoring the threat posed by asymmetrical warfare. That's why the US military has adopted the policy of what they call "Full Spectrum Warfare" where the military prepares to fight any type of conflict it may find itself in.
They started that program shortly after I got back from Iraq and I spent the rest of my time in the Army training for everything from a World War 1 style trench fight to the counter-insurgency operations we were conducting in Iraq. Basically the US is trying to break the cycle most militaries fall into of being unprepared for the next war because they spend all their time training and preparing for the last war.
Kouvb593kdnuewnd
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Saying that conventional warfare is not a threat when it is still waged today is a redicolous way to justify the european military weakness, even more so when I have not really heard anything particular good about their assymetric warfare capacities. Saying that US lost wars don't justify european military weakness, Vietnam and Iraq was more or less destroyed and Sadam was purged, meanwhile US was largely unhurt because US enemy have hardly any chance to reach to US mainland.
I find it quite strange that europeans and americans tend to find all kinds of problems with US but ignore that many of these problems exist in Europe as well. Thinking that US, a country that have destroyed democracies in favor of dictatorships, have a different economic setup, have invaded countries and so on is trustworthy or care about Europe is very dangerous line of thinking. The only country US care about is US, all other countries are viewed as assets as potential enemies or as enemies.
During the cold war european nations had pretty decent militaries, but once Soviet collapsed, they started to dramatically reduce their military preparedness which seems to have fallen so low they now lack the capacity to build important state of the art equipment like 5th generations fighters.
I find it quite strange that europeans and americans tend to find all kinds of problems with US but ignore that many of these problems exist in Europe as well. Thinking that US, a country that have destroyed democracies in favor of dictatorships, have a different economic setup, have invaded countries and so on is trustworthy or care about Europe is very dangerous line of thinking. The only country US care about is US, all other countries are viewed as assets as potential enemies or as enemies.
During the cold war european nations had pretty decent militaries, but once Soviet collapsed, they started to dramatically reduce their military preparedness which seems to have fallen so low they now lack the capacity to build important state of the art equipment like 5th generations fighters.
It's also inaccurate to say the US lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We won both those wars easily. It was the occupation afterwards that wasn't successful.
Vietnam was a loss though. No arguing that. We lost though not because the NVA was stronger, but because they were more motivated and believed in their cause while the US sent an army of conscripts who didn't want to fight and we're only there because they didn't want to go to prison.
You could have the strongest military in the world, but it doesn't mean anything if the soldiers in that military don't want to fight.
Vietnam was a loss though. No arguing that. We lost though not because the NVA was stronger, but because they were more motivated and believed in their cause while the US sent an army of conscripts who didn't want to fight and we're only there because they didn't want to go to prison.
You could have the strongest military in the world, but it doesn't mean anything if the soldiers in that military don't want to fight.
Kouvb593kdnuewnd
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US don't need to put boots on the ground to be dangerous to europe, it could use its airforce and navy to blockade and destroy vital infrastructure if europe don't accept US demands. US could even threaten to withdraw its military support or even support a Russian aggression and as far as I know Europe is not keen to put themself under Chinese hegemony or anything like that.
amadeus
Bishop of Bio-Dome
This is neither realistic nor good cost-benefit analysis; pulling American soldiers out of Europe would save us very little in expenditure and cost us an intangible forward logistical infrastructure that neither the Air Force nor Navy could support themselves. Plus, the planes need to land and ships need to dock at some point.
Russia would not be in any position to mount a prolonged ground war in Europe against the conventional armies of the continental NATO powers. For you who often deals in population and GDP statistics, look at Europe vs. Russia on the numbers and you’ll see on that alone that something so implausible is limited only to war-room theoreticians tasked with writing what-ifs for defense ministers.
Kouvb593kdnuewnd
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Keep in mind how quickly Germany was able to build up its army in preperation for WW2. Russia may not look much of a threat right now but that don't mean it could not become one very quickly. You also have countries like China and India as potential future threats.
Yeah, back when all the stuff in the Ukraine started popping off, I looked at it and just based on military numbers alone, NATO minus the US is still way more than Russia can handle.
Kouvb593kdnuewnd
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It was the same during cold war, the nato side was always the stronger one but still the european countries took military much more seriously that time. The only chance Soviet had was limited to nuclear weapons but that was also an area in which Soviet lacking in the early phase.
EgonSpengler
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Regarding conventional forces, I remember these articles from a few years ago. I don't know what the current state of affairs is, though.
BBC News, 2 March 2017 - "Sweden brings back military conscription amid Baltic tensions"
BBC News, 15 January 2018 - "RAF intercepts Russian bombers near UK 'area of interest'"
The latter article notes that it was just the latest of four such incidents. iirc, in one of the incidents, the Russian bombers turned off their transponders and then entered UK airspace. The problem with that, if I understood correctly, is that civilian air traffic control "radar" isn't actually radar at all, it's a network of radio transponders. The military uses genuine radar, so the RAF was able to tell the civilian controllers and pilots where the bombers were and redirect traffic away.
BBC News, 2 March 2017 - "Sweden brings back military conscription amid Baltic tensions"
BBC News, 15 January 2018 - "RAF intercepts Russian bombers near UK 'area of interest'"
The latter article notes that it was just the latest of four such incidents. iirc, in one of the incidents, the Russian bombers turned off their transponders and then entered UK airspace. The problem with that, if I understood correctly, is that civilian air traffic control "radar" isn't actually radar at all, it's a network of radio transponders. The military uses genuine radar, so the RAF was able to tell the civilian controllers and pilots where the bombers were and redirect traffic away.
Socrates99
Bottoms up!
By "scenario" I mean lay out a reason the US might do any of this to benefit itself. The EU is the US's number one export market. Why smash that, or allow it to get smashed?
EU soldiers will indeed have now and the coming 2-3 decades higher salaries.
We will I guess also be in much less need for foot soldiers because we do not intend to occupy foreign territory.
And then we are back at the question: "what kind of military defence does the EU need to defend its relative more value based society".
As I indicated the original post and the post before defence starts with being less dependent on foreign influences and foreign resources that could bring you into problems when that dependency is used against you.
That's a gliding grey scale.
A month back or so the EU intended a bit more moral attitude on Saudi Arabia, and the King of SA (not the Prince) told the EU that he would withdraw investments in the EU if that would happen and the EU caved in.
Recent news from Africa was that with the Covid crisis many nations uttered critcism on China for not helping them for free... because of the debt trap they are in helped by infra & vanity projects of China they had less room themselves.
Recent news from Estonia was that they said no to a Chinese proposal to build a tunnel from Estonia to Finland. Stay clear of such Chinese projects.
It's not only pure military:
Where BTW ranged weapons do quite well when defended themselves from attacks by footsoldiers. Just like the archers of ancient era are the asymetry and later artillery, airplanes, rockets.
Here an article on how China is creating a Chinese alternative to the US Dollar... you can see that also as a long distance weapon.
That depends on time. In 70-s - early 80-s, USSR had serious conventional superiority in Europe and NATO had to rely on nukes to maintain balance.
At least that's what I read from American military analysts. Today the situation is reversed.
US can support Russian aggression all they want, but without Russia's participation.
Trump.
Edit: I don't mean him personally, but you can't always rely on counterpart's rationality. Better to judge by their capabilities.
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And I remember watching a documentary on the Cold War where they interviewed a former Soviet general and he said they just did a very good job of fooling NATO into believing the USSR was stronger than it actually was. In reality though, Soviet officers were terrified of the prospect of a conventional war with NATO because they were not confident they could win such a war.
