[Gomotono]

We can discuss if a society should have a certain amount of GDP invested into defense and i'm not necessarily against it.

I would think educating people properly is good, I also think the swizz model is good in sense of everyone learns to handle a gun and can have it at home (as long as high security standards are set and its taken very serious).

It could be used as a tool to strengthen societies responsibility, communication and combined with what the THW is doing (technical help org).

But my statment is still true:

We do not have to catch up. We are absolutly capable of defending ourselfs against the current biggest threat which is Russia.

[nradov]

While I support the individual right to keep and bear arms, it's ludicrous to think that a few assault rifles in private hands could ever be effective against drones. There has been a revolution in military affairs in just the last few years. The game has fundamentally changed.

[dijit]

I think that's less true than the media would have you believe.

We're undergoing a lot of propaganda about how effective Ukraine is against Russia, but that's despite most European countries practically immolating their own stockpiles of defence capability, and they're doing so somewhat unoformily (while Russia does everything they can to weaken the European homogeneity; see their funding into brexit and anti-EU seniment spreading bot farms on social media).

It's definitely not a given that we can stand up to Russia with our current capability, and it's also the case that we'd be throwing human capital at the problem because we failed to adequately invest.

I spoke to one person from Ukraine who was enlisted, he mentioned he was waiting for something from the UK, I asked how long does it normally take.. he told me that he doesn't measure time in weeks, but how many of his friends he he will lose.

.. that hit me hard, and it made me consider who incredibly naive and coddled I was to believe that investing in military or weapons things is a "right wing" or "bad" thing.

War always seems so far away until it's on your door.

[Gomotono]

Its not propaganda when you can see it. We know what Putin showes in his Military parade and we know the stockpile of tanks they have and had due to satelite images.

My statement still stands, we do not need to increase defence spending to beat russia.

You said something different though: "We need to increase defence spending to have as little as human risk as possible".

I wouldn't call it naive, more optimistic. And even before Ukraine, we do have military. EU has high tec military.

Even before Ukraine, the EU spend more in military than Russia.

And regarding resources for Ukraine: We do fight a proxy war. We are not fighting Russia directly. This means some people don't want to spend money and resources on this, we are nog aligned across europe and it is always very unclear how and how much we help. This would look differently if russia would declare war against the EU.

[dijit]

In nominal terms "we outspend them" is true, but it misses the forest for the trees.

Nominal spend is the wrong yardstick when one side builds at home for a fraction of the cost; Russian labour, steel and energy are far cheaper at the point of use, which is why PPP estimates put their real military output roughly level with the whole of Europe combined.

And spend isn't the binding constraint anyway: it's production. A budget line is not a full magazine, and we've spent years throwing our stockpiles into Ukraine while letting our shell and propellant lines wither instead of refilling them.

"We don't need to catch up" assumes the money on the page is already steel in the field. It isn't.

[Gomotono]

Russia is 3x poorer than germany and has half of our GDP.

Russia has power because of their nuclear arsenal which is unclear how well it is maintained.

But no we can fill up and build faster and better than russia.

And the war against ukraine is hurting russia now for over 1000 days. Russia even has to go so far to reduce mobile and internet. This alone hurts Russia as a whole.

[dijit]

"We don't need to spend more" isn't an observation, it's a bet. And you're betting with other people's lives.

We’ve already ran this experiment. After Crimea we set ourselves a 2% floor; three countries hit it in 2014, SEVEN by 2022, and we only all cleared it in 2025. A bar we set for ourselves, missed for eleven years. And the moment we finally hit it, what did we do? we admitted it was never going to be enough and moved the target to 3.5%. So spare me "we're already doing enough" by our own standards we've been in deficit for a decade.

that decade isn't free, someone always pays for it. It's why in 2024 ukraine was firing two shells for every ten russia sent back, and dying in the gap, while we sat in rooms talking about "factory capacity". "russia's poorer per capita" means precisely nothing to a man being outgunned five to one by an economy that actually decided to build consistently over decades.

Where we draw the line, fine, ok, that's a hard question and I'll happily argue it all day. From my comfortable computer chair, far away from seeing my home, my family and my friends being gunned down because an expansionist regime decided that they thought we’d be weak enough.

[sehansen]

The NATO 2% goal is quite a bit older than the Russian invasion of Crimea, dating back to at least the NATO summit in Riga in 2006. In any case ramping up our production of artillery shells and other munitions needed by Ukraine would definitely be beneficial to us in the rest of Europe. Both in order to end the war faster and get going rebuilding Ukraine, but also to stimulate the somewhat struggling EU economy.

[nradov]

It's not so much a matter of spending levels but what you get for that spending. Since the end of the Cold War, most European countries have treated their militaries as essentially government jobs programs. The money was thrown away to hold down unemployment, and any combat effectiveness was incidental. The current crisis is finally forcing a change in that mentality but it will take years to turn the situation around.