Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Forgot about those.........
The European Project: the future of the EU.
- Thread starter Hrothbern
- Start date
Verbose
Deity
She, and not a few other of us, are pinning our hopes on something as quaint as European solidarity here.
Belgium should get a move on out of solidarity with fellow nations less fortunately placed by accidents of historical geography – perhaps?
Otherwise one can extend that kind of logic, and end up going all Orban and Hungary here...
Thorgalaeg
Deity
Selfishness and shortsightedness go usually hand to hand which is extremely dangerous. Not only in politics but all aspects of life.
Akka
Moody old mage.
The "unequal" part is why it's about % of GNP and not absolute numbers. I don't see why Belgium should have a special privilege on defense spending here.
Maybe it's time to raise the "artifical country created by the British" thing and let Holland and France discuss how to share it, so that the threat feels a bit closer to home rather than comfortably shielded by neighbours and hanging the ones on the frontline dry ?
Everyone should have 72 hours worth of 'war supplies', EU warns citizens
"The idea is not to scare people, but to give EU citizens peace of mind."
www.brusselstimes.com
Calling upon hundreds of millions of people to "prepare 72-hours emergency supplies in case of war".
Welcome to the third world, formerly the first.
Snowygerry
Deity
Not at all, the cost of an army is not proportional to GNP, naturally a large nation state with comparatively low GNP will spend a larger % than a small one with high GNP.
Switzerland for example, commonly considered one of the best defended nation states in Europe spends less then 1% of its GNP on its military.
An army is limited by other things, the size of your territory that needs to be defended, threats nearby, and the number of citizens that want to join the army, obviously.
Belgian GNP was 644 billion in 2023, 2% of that is roughly 12 billion per year, that is hard to spend on an army of 25K soldiers.
We can spend on the navy, but we have no coastline to speak of, so that is not very practical either, airforce, but not every recruit is suited to be a pilot..
So our PM will go to the next NATO council with what is essentially a shopping list, 14 additional F-35s, an additional frigate, heavy transport helicopters, anti-aircraft defense, special forces aircraft, additional logistics equipment (trucks, mobile repair stations...), additional howitzers, unmanned aerial vehicles for sea warfare, air drones and systems for protection against the drone threat, medical evacuation means and field hospitals.
None of those things will matter to the war in the East, because the mission of the Belgian army is to protect the territory of the state of Belgium, not to fight foreign wars in Eastern Europe.
What should be done, is to design a method whereby the rich Belgian citizens can contribute to to defence of those nations that are actually threatened and need all those things above more than we do.
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amadeus
Apply directly to the forehead
French Guyana, which is technically part of France proper and not a colony.
Snowygerry
Deity
See my reply above.
Is that a Napoleon quote ? Seems a bit out of date, Belgium as it currently exists was created in spite of the Brits, they wanted a united Netherlands under the house of Orange as an ally for their struggles with France.
When the Belgians rose up in rebellion in 1830 it was a French army that drove the Dutch army into the citadel of Antwerp, and decided the affair, were you sleeping during history class ?
Siege of Antwerp (1832) - Wikipedia
No need to discuss btw. you can have them for 1 €
Youth wing of Flemish party offers to sell Wallonia to Trump for €1
US president can’t get his hands on Greenland, but what about southern Belgium?
www.politico.eu
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amadeus
Apply directly to the forehead
If it was a quote it would have to be from Napoleon III, where by that time Britain was ready to accept Belgium as a “buffer state” to French ambitions.
Snowygerry
Deity
Seems to be more of an internet meme than an actual historical quote :
www.quora.com
Is Belgium an artifical nation with no history created by the British?
Answer (1 of 15): The history of Belgium is not blank. No region in Europe has “no” history. I would refer to the history of all the other countries in Europe and ancient maps of Europe to put a lot of nuance on your questions implication that Belgium and its history did not exist. As with every...
EnglishEdward
Deity
I could argue that if Britain wanted one buffer state and got two, it was a double success !
Verbose
Deity
If things go badly – worst case scenario – and Ukraine is lost, then Kaja Kallas is still correct that Belgium, just like everyone else, does not have four years to prepare. IF is intends to try to be a moderately useful ally, that is.
Estonian overriding problem remains that being avenged at some later date does them no damn good at all – they want help and support to save themselves before that.
Estonian overriding problem remains that being avenged at some later date does them no damn good at all – they want help and support to save themselves before that.
Snowygerry
Deity
A patriot battery protecting the port of Antwerp will do them no good either, we should put them where they matter, which is currently in Ukraine.
www.brusselstimes.com
Antwerp Mayor calls for air defence around port
"Of course, I hope that the war in Ukraine ends as quickly as possible, but I believe that we in Antwerp need to be prepared," De Wever said.
www.brusselstimes.com
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Verbose
Deity
Obviously. Which is why coordinated action needs to be taken.
It's why the Baltics focus on ground forces that can hold ground – because they will be right on the spot from the word "go". Naval forces and even airforce is going to be of relatively less use, if priorities are to be made, since allies can fly in at short notice. Provided said allies have the requisite airpower, and are actually coming.
It's why Finland goes heavy into ground troops and artillery, while Sweden dumps way more into navy and airforce. Not just because that's what geography relative Russia indicates, and not just because of the kind of old and a bit tired "joke" that the Swedes are prepared to fight Russia to the last Finn... – but also because the force structures are complementary like that.
And the timeframe doesn't change. Belgium still doesn't have four years – worst case...
NATO Europe sans US has an immediate shortage of strategic airlift capacity, IF Belgium is specifically looking into how to be helpful to its alllies, fx?
Snowygerry
Deity
Like this ?
As you can see the delivery takes +/- 20 years, that's far from 4 years. Does not cost 12 billion either.
They recently flew aid into Gaza, but this is not very helpful to Estonia.
www.vrt.be
As you can see the delivery takes +/- 20 years, that's far from 4 years. Does not cost 12 billion either.
They recently flew aid into Gaza, but this is not very helpful to Estonia.
Belgium flies emergency aid out to Gaza | VRT NWS: news
A Belgian military aircraft has left Melsbroek military airbase outside Brussels bound for Jordan. The aircraft is carrying emergency aid for the people of Gaza. The aid will be dropped in the Gaza Strip by the Belgian military plane in conjunction with the Royal Jordanian Air Force. The plan is...
www.vrt.be
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Verbose
Deity
Yes. Hence Kaja Kalla's comments. No one can count on having 4 years, much less more. Not sure why Belgium in particular would take umbrage at getting this pointed out?Like this ?
As you can see the delivery takes +/- 20 years, that's far from 4 years. Does not cost 12 billion either.
They recently flew aid into Gaza, but this not very helpful to Estonia.
Belgium flies emergency aid out to Gaza | VRT NWS: news
A Belgian military aircraft has left Melsbroek military airbase outside Brussels bound for Jordan. The aircraft is carrying emergency aid for the people of Gaza. The aid will be dropped in the Gaza Strip by the Belgian military plane in conjunction with the Royal Jordanian Air Force. The plan is...
More transports are a good thing. Estonia is closer than Gaza anyway. It might need something like Swedish airforce escorts on the way in, if we are going to have to this in actual anger, though. And some Patriot systems ringing Talinn.
Otherwise we can just count what we actually have for war-fighting, and assess how it stacks up against Russia, since that is what we will have to use if things end badly.
It is a problem. Time is running out and from the manufacturing side it is currently being pointed out that major orders for the complex, expensive systems, that take time to produce, are just not incoming. Lots of much talk of numbers among politicians as yet. Very little concrete action so far.
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Ordnael
Emperor
Another of your @Kyriakos stance that makes little since to me!Everyone should have 72 hours worth of 'war supplies', EU warns citizens
"The idea is not to scare people, but to give EU citizens peace of mind."
Calling upon hundreds of millions of people to "prepare 72-hours emergency supplies in case of war".
Welcome to the third world, formerly the first.
Been hearing since my youth time with the scouts and from general information provided by Civilian Safety authorities and even Red Cross advice, that it's very basic survival and a sensible thing to do to have in your pantry canned goods and other long shelf life foodstuff for 3 days...in the event of a natural disaster and such. I've been dragging my feet around to build up such emergency supply since forever...maybe I should really do it...and AFAIK Portugal is not a 3rd world country.
Snowygerry
Deity
As a general rule, we don't like foreigners coming over to tell us what to do
That is a problem indeed - the overemphasis on the mythical 2% of GNP may even be counterproductive, because the patriots (for example) delivered to Belgium are not delivered to Talinn or Kiev.
Something similar happened just before WWII with Europe arming itself all over, there were no fighters available for Belgium to buy to withstand the actual German invasion. We had pilots but not good fighters, many of them ended up joining the RAF before the war was over.
That is the crux of my argument, rather than insisting that each nation state separately meets a specifc flat criterium, we should pool resources to see to it that available weapons are where they are most useful.
Also - the money in Belgium does not sit with the federal government, that is permanently broke - the wealth of Belgium lies with its private citizens, they are among the richest in the world - and to a lesser degree in the regions (specifically Flanders) that are not counted in the 2 % federal spending norm.
What we need from the EU is a mechanism to activate that wealth and make it work towards the defence of Eastern Europe.
PM De Wever to examine how NATO’s 2% defence spending target can be reached sooner rather than later | VRT NWS: news
Prime Minister Bart De Wever (Flemish nationalist) expects Belgium will be able to meet NATO’s 2 per cent of GDP norm for defence spending without inflicting too much damage on other policy areas. He spoke the words on arriving at today’s European defence summit in Brussels. The plan proposed by...
www.vrt.be
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Akka
Moody old mage.
If it's hard to spend more money on a low-manpower army, Belgium can produce ammunitions and weapons, or invest into european defense conglomerate, or whatever. Or just increase the size of the standing army. Options are available. The point is to reach an common treashold of investments for a common defense.
I don't think anybody disagrees with that. "pooling resources" requires resources, and what is asked is that everyone invest at least 2 % of their resources in the pool.
Snowygerry
Deity
You cannot just increase the size of a standing army at will, first people need to volunteer, and then they need a specific talent for actually fighting.
www.brusselstimes.com
specialforcesgroup.be
Belgian Army misses target after only recruiting 615 reservists
Despite the high interest with 2,141 Belgian nationals applying, only 615 were recruited.
www.brusselstimes.com
Military recruitment | Special Forces Group
Become a member of The Special Forces Group? On this page, you can find the conditions of recruitment for military personnel.
specialforcesgroup.be
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