The European Project: the future of the EU.

War economy can only lead to war - after you have sold what you could, you need to create more demand, which happens by rapid depletion of what you sold.

We will get there soon enough.
Who knows. But it's the kind of thing that can happen when you have a rogue dictator who won't back down from his imperialist ambitions.

Nobody's asking for NATO tanks to be sent into Russia. The most sensible option is to build a solid enough wall to decisively deter further delusions of military grandeur.

What's the alternative otherwise? WW2 could've also been avoided by endlessly appeasing Hitler, but can you honestly claim the resulting world would've been the same, let alone better than the one we ended up with?

Really think things through, as far as you can. Because empty, short-sighted pacifism benefits nobody but the aggressors who thrive on the inaction of supposed opponents.

As the saying goes, evil triumphs when good men do nothing.
 
So I am to suspect that you "thought things through" and have good reason to be of the view the massive forced rearmament through borrowing 800 billion euros, doesn't have to do with failing non-military factories in Germany.
It just magically lends itself to that issue.
By all means, "think things through" by sticking to "we are fighting new Hitler".
 
So I am to suspect that you "thought things through" and have good reason to be of the view the massive forced rearmament through borrowing 800 billion euros, doesn't have to do with failing non-military factories in Germany.
It just magically lends itself to that issue.
By all means, "think things through" by sticking to "we are fighting new Hitler".
I'm not sure what's your point by now. What are you even arguing for?

Am I supposed to believe the rise of a Fourth Reich due to German rearmament is a likelier threat than that of a new dictator currently and actively acting against Europe? Really?
 
Three years in an unprovoked invasion followed by countless and deliberate war crimes and probably north of a million deaths, and we still have the Putin cheerleaders trying to pretend that defending against his attempt at conquests is somehow bad and dangerous, because it would be the EU defending itself and they want it very hard to fail.

That's some impressive dedication to pettiness.
 
What does the rise of the fourth reich have to do with switching from civil goods to military factories :crazyeye:
Anyway, since we are not communicating, that should be that.
 
The inference was that Germany always lost the war against countries with vast resources.
But what you thought it meant also comes from somewhere; mass genocides tend to leave a bad taste.
Countries lose wars fighting coalitions – IF you're looking for some kind of pattern to this. Or it's just about Germany for you?
 
So I am to suspect that you "thought things through" and have good reason to be of the view the massive forced rearmament through borrowing 800 billion euros, doesn't have to do with failing non-military factories in Germany.

The defense industries of France, the UK and Italy are all substantially larger than Germany's, measured in sales. So, why don't you have a beef with their factories, since they'll likely see a healthy slice of those funds coming their way?
 
Countries lose wars fighting coalitions – IF you're looking for some kind of pattern to this. Or it's just about Germany for you?
When you are pro Putin, anti EU and anti NATO, one has to keep finding ways to make the west look evil.
 
The defense industries of France, the UK and Italy are all substantially larger than Germany's, measured in sales. So, why don't you have a beef with their factories, since they'll likely see a healthy slice of those funds coming their way?
I am. I originally would mention all of them, but went for the synecdoche, sorry ^^
 
Three years in an unprovoked invasion followed by countless and deliberate war crimes and probably north of a million deaths, and we still have the Putin cheerleaders trying to pretend that defending against his attempt at conquests is somehow bad and dangerous, because it would be the EU defending itself and they want it very hard to fail.
I apologize if this is too tangential but this message was the closest I think to if I have a relevant thought here, and that is that Ukraine had not been, prior to the war, offered a security guarantee via treaty, leaving the security of the non-EU states in the region in too ambiguous a position.

Now that war is there, I feel there has been an absence of a real discussion of what risks employing a guarantee would impose now after the fact. I’m not in Europe, of course, so the scope of how it has been discussed, I’m willing to admit ignorance. :)
 
I apologize if this is too tangential but this message was the closest I think to if I have a relevant thought here, and that is that Ukraine had not been, prior to the war, offered a security guarantee via treaty, leaving the security of the non-EU states in the region in too ambiguous a position.

Now that war is there, I feel there has been an absence of a real discussion of what risks employing a guarantee would impose now after the fact. I’m not in Europe, of course, so the scope of how it has been discussed, I’m willing to admit ignorance. :)
If we give Russia the right of a general veto on European politics, it might end...
 
Good

Kaja Kallas is ‘acting like a prime minister,’ critics of EU’s top diplomat say​

BRUSSELS — Kaja Kallas’ troubles started on her first day.

The EU’s top diplomat was on a trip to Kyiv when she tweeted: “[T]he European Union wants Ukraine to win this war” against Russia.

Some EU officials said they felt uneasy that the head of the European External Action Service, less than a day into her job, felt at liberty to go beyond what they considered to be settled language more than two years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“She (Kallas) is still acting like a prime minister,” said one EU diplomat who, like others quoted in this piece, was granted anonymity to discuss internal bloc dynamics.

The aforementioned diplomat and nine other EU diplomats and officials pointed to what they viewed as a series of missteps during Kallas’ first few months on the job, from floating heavy proposals without buy-in to taking liberties with foreign policy statements, they told POLITICO. (Kallas still has her defenders among the EU’s northern and eastern states, including Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. A second diplomat said: “Overall, we are very happy with her.”)

As Kallas put her stamp on the job, pressuring EU countries to give more military aid to Ukraine, several diplomats chafed at her leadership style, complaining of what they described as a lack of consultation on sensitive matters. In subsequent months those concerns have only grown, including regarding Kallas’ hawkishness on Russia, which has left her out of step with Spain and Italy, who do not share her assessment of Moscow as an imminent threat to the EU.

“If you listen to her it seems we are at war with Russia, which is not the EU line,” one EU official complained.

Haters gonna hate​

As Kallas returned from the Munich Security Conference in February, she put together a proposal for EU countries to provide billions in urgent military aid for Ukraine after U.S. Vice President JD Vance dismissed Russia as a concern.

The Estonian politician reacted as a prime minister might — by circulating a 2-page document to rapidly compensate for a potential U.S. shortfall, asking the bloc’s 27 member countries to find at least 1.5 million rounds of artillery ammunition, among other requests.
The proposal landed on a Sunday evening, without warning, ahead of a foreign affairs gathering set to take place in the days ahead, and it ruffled feathers. Even more damning to some recipients was the way Kallas had structured her proposal: It required each country to make a contribution proportional to the size of their economies.

The rationale was that this would force larger EU countries such as France, which have contributed less per capita than Northern or Eastern European countries, to dig deep. To some, however, that felt like coercion. Criticism reached a fever pitch last week when Kallas agreed to downgrade the ambition of her plan to seek just €5 billion worth of artillery shells as a first step.

Two diplomats, from Eastern and Northern Europe, noted that Kallas had failed to obtain buy-in from major countries such as France before tabling her proposal. “This sort of came out of nowhere. The process could have been better managed to avoid taking people by surprise,” said one of them, adding in Kallas’ defense: “If she’d done the perfect process they would have hated it anyway.”
An EEAS official downplayed the criticisms, saying member countries had chosen Kallas because they wanted a wartime leader.

“They hired a head of state for a reason, not to moderate quietly and find the lowest common denominator but to push things forward,” the official said. “Many people argue we are in 1938 or 1939. It’s not the time to hide behind processes. European leaders keep calling for more Ukraine aid, ok cool, time for deeds not just words.”

‘Jury is still out’

It’s the bookend to a bumpy start for the former Estonian prime minister, who took over the EEAS, the EU’s diplomatic arm, at a time coinciding with a proposal to slash its staffing and funding.

Hailing from a small country (at 1.4 million, Estonia’s population is smaller than that of Paris), as well as from a liberal party that fared poorly in recent Europe-wide elections, Kallas is an outsider in a EU now dominated by conservative leaders, and where national leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Chancellor-to-be Friedrich Merz are increasingly setting the pace on defense policy.
The failure of the Kallas plan came on the heels of a canceled rendezvous in late February with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who spiked the meeting in Washington, D.C. at the last minute.

A fifth EU diplomat and a former senior EU official both agreed that Kallas hadn’t properly set the groundwork for the meeting by offering a clear deliverable to the U.S. side.

“She went with her hands in her pockets,” said the former senior EU official — an assessment that Kallas’ spokesperson disputed, stating that the meeting had been confirmed and “well-prepared.”

Then came the infamous exchange by Vance and U.S. President Donald Trump in an Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Amid the widespread shock at the vitriol aimed at Zelenskyy, Kallas tweeted that “the free world needs a new leader” — a comment that may have matched the mood of indignation in many parts of Europe, but also irked countries adamant about maintaining a bridge to the Trump White House.

“Most countries don’t want to inflame things with the United States,” said a sixth diplomat. “Saying the free world needs a new leader just isn’t what most leaders wanted to put out there.”

It’s still early days for Kallas in her new post, some of the diplomats concede. And as Brussels has seen, a lot can happen in a short time.

“The jury is still out,” a senior EU diplomat added.
 
We need more like her.
 
She'll have to learn that in the EU you cannot force anyone to do anything, diversity is our strength, tell her..


Sure we have, we have 400 years too, We have time and we have watches :D
She's not wrong though – since it clearly also is not Belgium that is setting the pace for what needs to be done.

All Belgium can do is respond in a timely fashion, or not, and pay the price in the latter case.

But since she's Estonian she knows it is she and her countrymen who will end up paying well before the Belgians are directly discomfited.
 
The further west you go, the more irresponsible the countries become. Therefore, Spain is the worst.
 
She's not wrong though – since it clearly also is not Belgium that is setting the pace for what needs to be done.

All Belgium can do is respond in a timely fashion, or not, and pay the price in the latter case.

But since she's Estonian she knows it is she and her countrymen who will end up paying well before the Belgians are directly discomfited.
She should understand that not all European nation states are created equal and to suggest they should all spend an equal % of GNP borders on insanity.
 
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