Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-25

[Norgy]

Our local factory dumped unused ammo and shot Sidewinder missiles right into our drinking water.
Ah, the 50s.

[Iormlund]

The block is entirely financial.

Europe has a humongous heavy-industry sector that could start churning weapons in a matter of months.

Our automotive overcapacity alone is more than enough to drown Russia in burning metal bits. Tanks, shells, missiles, drones. Whatever it is, we can make it. And in much, much larger volumes that most people realize.

Again, it is just a matter of money.

[Jacob]

Money and political will, I reckon.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Money and political will, I reckon.

I think this is spot on.  The impression I get is that European governments are already stressed financially from the ever-increasing costs of their social welfare programs.  To find the money for expanding their militairies thus requires either increasing taxes or further decreasing benefits (which is going over so well...).  Compound this with needing to wrangle a couple dozen independent governments, many of which can't MMT YOLO money into existence by borrowing in their own fiat currency, and you're looking at a herculean political task.

I don't think the people of the countries that don't directly border Russia or Belarus care enough about the threat to stomach the sacrifices.  I think the first step is getting them to care, then selling whatever financial approach is necessary in order to make arms industry expansion happen.

[crazy canuck]

I don't think it is much of a money problem.  Collectively the military budgets far outstrip requirements.  The principal problem is political.  All of that money is being spent in a fragmentary way.  If the Europeans could agree on some form of centralized procurement and manufacture the current money would be more than adequate.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Edit: I mean with gas - it will never happen but I sort of wonder if it's worth considering ending the bans on fracking - because it is really important, especially for heavy industry and European energy costs are 2-4x what they are in the US, Russia or China.

If Europe wants to remain a player internationally, or even worse, maintain or regain its capability to act independently to safeguard its interests it'll need to accept that it needs to extract resources from the earth. It'll need to abandon its dogmatic green-ideology-induced-insanity. Does that mean you need to screw the environment? Obviously not, but net-zero is worthless if you're a vassal of the Russians or Chinese.

[Tamas]

Yes the last bit is a key hypocrisy. We are oh so proud of how green we are, but in a lot of ways we have just outsourced the polluting bits.

[Sheilbh]

Money and political will, I reckon.

I think this is spot on.  The impression I get is that European governments are already stressed financially from the ever-increasing costs of their social welfare programs.  To find the money for expanding their militairies thus requires either increasing taxes or further decreasing benefits (which is going over so well...).  Compound this with needing to wrangle a couple dozen independent governments, many of which can't MMT YOLO money into existence by borrowing in their own fiat currency, and you're looking at a herculean political task.

I would add to that that over 10 European countries are in "excessive deficit procedures" with the Commission - lots of fiscal rules were waived for covid. They have now returned. This doesn't matter so much for countries outside the Eurozone (like Poland) but is a challenge for those in the Euro - most importantly France, Spain and Italy.

But Europe does not live in the same world as the US on fiscal policy. So if European countries are going to increase defence spending, as pledged at NATO summits, that either means higher taxes or spending cuts elsewhere.

A solution would be common debt issuance and I have some hope that might be possible but I think it's still very divisive and politically difficult. There has been some common debt over covid and recovery as well as Ukraine so the taboo has been at least partially breached - but I think getting that for ongoing current spending will be a challenge. This was the issue that almost drove the Euro to destruction.

Also CC is right, but this is where I think risk perception is really important and it is radically different across Europe. What France or Spain, say, want to procure is very different from Poland or Estonia. It's geography leading to different ambitions and perceived security needs. To which I'd add that they also have national champions. France is the world's second largest arms exporter, Germany is fourth, Italy and Spain are both in the top ten. So common procurement will need to be shared around - and Poland, for example, is requiring industry to be built in Poland and choosing a deliberately diverse sourcing policy to avoid reliance on any other single country (so they've awarded contracts to American, British, French, German and Korean companies). My suspicion is this is why the solution will end up being minilateralism - so the French have built very tight security and defence relationships with Greece and Romania as they have similar needs and threat perceptions and it works together also basically covering the Eastern Med. You'd hope to see something similar with Germany and Poland (but that's a very challenging relationship) which would cover Germany. And possibly something similar with the UK, the Nordics, Netherlands and other non-EU partners like Norway over the North Atlantic and the Baltic.

So I think political will can have lots of angles. It's why for now I think the most important is simply Merz doing the €500 billion on defence spending (plus another equal amount for infrastructure) which I think would be transformative on its own.

[Iormlund]

I don't think the people of the countries that don't directly border Russia or Belarus care enough about the threat to stomach the sacrifices.  I think the first step is getting them to care, then selling whatever financial approach is necessary in order to make arms industry expansion happen.

Good luck with that.

I very much doubt anyone is willing to sacrifice to any degree for the sake of those who were calling us lazy pigs not so long ago.
If there's free money we will build shit. Otherwise ...