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And just like that America lost that much foreign power.
Good work EU.
But they finally got what they've wanted - NATO spending their agreed amount. Let's see how it goes 🤷♂️
Maybe the US's collapse will be good thing long-term. Sucks that so many people have to suffer before that, though.
You could always invest in the European defense industry, rather than US stocks https://i.imgur.com/cUpqyJo.png . In any case I'm not looking forward to the US becoming Russia 2.0.
Trump is an asshole, and the US should absolutely be the leader in defending Ukraine given its stockpiles and technologies and the immediacy of the need.
At the same time, Europe was able to fund some pretty nice social programs by minimizing defense spending over the last few decades. They could only do that with aggressors on their borders by relying far too heavily on the US.
The US government spends more per total capita on healthcare than any country with nationalized healthcare, but in the US it covers less than a third of the population.
The US spends more on defense than anyone but it keeps fucking things up all around the world to justify those spendings.
The US can afford social programs, it decides not to, so give us all a fucking break.
Thanks for so passionately rallying against something I didn't write.
You're saying that Europe can afford social programs because it doesn't spend as much as the USA in defense, implying the USA can't afford those because they're defending Europe, I'm saying the USA has no excuse not to offer social programs even with their current spendings.
I'm 100% sure that Europe wouldn't have cut their social programs if their defense budget was higher, it's a governance choice to let your population eat shit and die and to waste money pretending to help it and that's the choice the USA made.
Europe can grow their military and keep social programs at the same level by increasing taxes.
The USA can increase social spending by decreasing military spending, increasing taxes, or increasing the deficit.
There are other options like cutting fraud and waste, etc.
I don't know why you were rude to me, but your audience approves.
Because the whole world is tired of people acting like the US is a victim in that and that's exactly what you did in your original message.
You might want to check your personal prejudices with how you treat other people.
I have only one correction and it’s a small one. The US spends more on healthcare but that spending isn’t all by the US government. Your main point still stands. The system sucks.
In 2022, the United States spent an estimated $12,742 per person on healthcare — the highest healthcare costs per capita across similar countries.
Healthcare spending is driven by utilization (the number of services used) and price (the amount charged per service). An increase in either of those factors can result in higher healthcare costs. Despite spending nearly twice as much on healthcare per capita, utilization rates in the United States do not differ significantly from other wealthy OECD countries. Prices, therefore, appear to be the main driver of the cost difference between the United States and other wealthy countries.
There are many possible factors for why healthcare prices in the United States are higher than other countries, ranging from the consolidation of hospitals — leading to a lack of competition — to the inefficiencies and administrative waste that derive from the complexity of the U.S. healthcare system. In fact, the United States spends over $1,000 per person on administrative costs — almost five times more than the average of other wealthy countries and more than it spends on long-term healthcare.
What you quoted doesn't say what you think it does... That's governmental spendings and then there's private spendings over that.
The eu sent $5b more in arms to Ukraine than the us did.
They need to increase that but also keep more for themselves.
I keep hearing this but I'm a skeptic at heart. You wouldn't happen to have some sources would you?
Lots of people are saying Trump is an asshole.
That is the only part of your comment that doesn't need additional sources
More than likely possible depending on how they came up with valuations on old stock piles from the cold war. Depends on if you value them based on their original cost, or the modern cost to replace them.
They could only do that with aggressors on their borders by relying far too heavily on the US.
Not true. They can always take money from their ruling class and give it to their working class.
That statement applies to minimizing defense spending. Of course you can raise revenues and spend more. If you spend less in other areas, you don't need to.
The US spends more per capita on healthcare than any country with socialised healthcare
You're the second person to write that, and it's entirely irrelevant to European military spending, Russia, and Ukraine.
It's completely relevant to your fallacious argument that other countries have social programs because the benevolent protection from the US.
The US could have the best healthcare systems in the world without reducing military spending. It only doesn't for the sake of the profit of insurance companies.
Your social programs don't suck because of your "benevoloent protection" (which has turned into a mafia protection racket now) but because American hyper-capitalist ideology is a barrier against being able to create effective social programs.
I feel like I'm responding to AI at this point. I already responded ad nauseum that I was not arguing anything about the US system. Now people want to use my comment as representing their favorite Boogeyman.
What I’m saying is that you can have those social programs that you say Europe has and the USA would actually be able to put even more money towards your military. Your current system is wildly less efficient because it’s setup to enrich middlemen (insurance companies).
The social programs existing have nothing to do with military spending in Europe
Your first point has already been made by others and is off-topic for the post.
European governments have budgets. With a set amount of revenue, they can spend more on social programs if they spend less elsewhere. If they want to keep their social spending and spend more elsewhere, they will have to increase their revenues. Not having the extra expense has made things better for them, and now that is going to end.
It's very simple, and maybe people should stick to the point and not feel triggered to respond against hyper-capitalist America.
Well put
They could also afford to make the disgustingly rich even richer. By a lot.
Can we just kick out Hungary already?
Hungarians; nothing against your hut until you got your shit together and rid yourself of the dictator wannabe, we can't have Hungary be the the saboteur of every good thing the EU is trying to do
UvdL is same as Orban, just much smarter and more evil. In general, requirement for unilateral decisions makes it the obvious suspicion that when Hungary vetoes something, in a different decision-making process it would be half of the member states, not just Hungary.
Anyway, this is not even about decisions, just "shows of unity".
I think European defense companies are going to make a lot of money, though. Rearmament is a word that even aesthetically invokes images from German 30s, or Soviet 30s, with those production lines making tanks and field artillery pieces faster than they make cars today. Of course, IRL the game mechanics have changed and they are going to produce different things mostly.
Shore up aid how? With UK’s nonexistent SPGs (they sent basically their entire SPG fleet into Ukraine) and Poland’s SPG fleet that has already been gutted in half from SPG deliveries to Ukraine? Or Germany’s 1 trillion euro aid package proposal to Ukraine which nearly won the horrendous AFD party the election?
I presume by... making things? with the 800 billion euros?
Outrageous. Pish-tosh! Argylbargle!
No way dude! But with what industry though?
In all seriousness, Russia was producing 20-30 T-90Ms per month (or 240-360 per year) in 2024 going off of monthly deliveries. The entirety of Europe cannot even match this. The only country I am aware of that can produce this many tanks per month is South Korea and China. This has likely increased since then but due to increased OPSEC, there have been no videos of batches of T-90Ms (or even T-72B3s) being delivered. But missile production has doubled since 2024 so I would not be surprised that tank production has also doubled to 40-60 per month (480-720 per year).
I have been keeping track of T-90M deliveries for a while now:
It was always around 20-30 per month last year. This means Russia produces more tanks than the amount the entire German military has in a single year. And as I stated, this likely has doubled but it is impossible to verify as OPSEC means we have not seen any deliveries on video for half a year now. Europe can't even produce their own ballistic missiles which have been a game changer in Ukraine as shown by the effectiveness of ATACMS and Iskander-M.
Russia is producing more shells than the entirety of Europe combined who struggles to supply Ukraine with even a million shells (while Russia was producing 3 million per year in 2024).
You must not have been paying attention much, because all the quantity Russia can produce is only managing to hold them in a stale mate.
Except most of the Russian military is not in Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine is mostly fought with irregulars who are not given the best of equipment. Why waste good equipment on poorly trained irregulars?
Russia had 170 BTGs fully composed of professional soldiers at the start of 2021 but only sent in 64-69 of them in 2022. Russian BTGs were also sent into Ukraine at half strength. This is similar to what happened during the war in Donbas with BTGs keeping half of their strength at home, again similar to War in Donbas.
The majority of forces in Ukraine are from irregular volunteer formations recruited from regions across Russia. There is a reason why losses for professionals are so low. Aside from these formations, there is also 51st GCAA and 3rd GCAA made up of former Donetsk and Luhansk units. There is also 3rd AC which is a irregular volunteer formation that was formed during the Ukrainian offensive in Kharkov where Russian professionals withdrew under the cover of 3rd AC who was thrown into the meat grinder to stem the tide.
Motorized Rifles: 6,457
VDV: 3,257
Naval Infantry: 1,305
Tank Crew: 1,806
Artillery: 851
Special Forces: 736
Engineering: 291
Navy: 291
VVS: 265
Other: 957
Total: 16,216
Source: MediaZona
For comparison:
US losses from 2003-2005 mainly against insurgents: 5175
Source: Defense Casualty Analysis System
MediaZona also proves that the majority of losses now are volunteers from irregular volunteer formations. These are irregular volunteer formations by the way:
These irregular volunteer formations rely on their local regional government to supply them with weapons and equipment not the federal government. This is well shown by the Tuvan volunteers who come from the poorest region in Russia which shows in their equipment:
They also rely heavily on donations:
Thankfully Chechnya has recently taken on the burden of training and equipping them (why you see them being shipped from Chechnya) as shown here:
Chechnya training and sending more batches of volunteers from across Russia to the SMO zone:
Russia us on a wartime economy and struggling with 1 European country that is using a portion of peacetime stocks from the rest of Europe.
If Europe wants to take this seriously, Russia doesn't have a chance.
Russia does not have a wartime economy. They are only spending 6% of their GDP on their military which is comparable to the US or Poland in terms of percentage of GDP. EU has given up far more than just a portion. UK has supplied Ukraine with all of its SPGs. Poland supplied Ukraine with half of its SPGs. The US has supplied Ukraine with 15% of its entire ATACMS stockpile (a missile which is no longer produced and does not yet have a viable alternative due to PRSM still being in low-rate production) as of six months ago. The EU has given up a significant portion of their ammunition to Ukraine. The only thing they did not give is tanks because Ukraine already had a thousand tanks at the start of the war (half of which were modern) which is more tanks than the amount that France, Germany, and the UK have combined.
Most of the Russian military is not in Ukraine per my other comment.
Are you missing the part where Russia has to produce so many tanks because Ukrainians keep blowing them up?
Ukraine has also had a lot of success with Storm Shadow missiles. I'll let you google where those are made.
And of course Ukraine on it's own is now producing about 50% of the number of shells Russia produces. And there's a lot of drones that Ukraine is producing, which have proven to be very effective against the Russian military.
Russia will soon be broke from this war. It will take a decade for Russia to have the military strength to take on the EU and that can only begin when Russia ends it's war with Ukraine. In that time the EU can build a strong force to counter Russia.
The free world doesn't need the US, and it certainly doesn't need Russia.
Well they better figure it out real quick, now that they finally woke up. Better late than never.
About fucking time
