I'm sceptical. Recent movements in Germany point into the opposite direction or rather a continuation of wishful thinking. Yes, a lot of debt-funded defence investment is coming. They also promised some investment in "infrastructure". At the same time the debt increase will delay reforms that are overdue for 20 years and longer. There were already calls that, now, with all brakes off, we can increase rather than curb spending on the welfare state. As it currently looks, the productivity gap with the US and Asia will widen rather than shrink. A very disappointing development to say the least.
European manufacturing is more productive than US manufacturing. The US productivity advantage comes almost entirely from the US' strong tech (as in software) sector.
Tech (as in software) is what's being cut off to Ukraine, and tech (as in software, MEMS gyros, and GNSS) is how Ukraine keeps blowing up US$3M T-90 tanks with three or four US$500 FPV drones. So I think it's highly relevant to the question of sovereignty.
It's largely kind of an international open-source effort, but there is a lot of crucial hardware that is only available from China, yes. Until this week I think Anduril was in a good position to become an alternative to China in two to four years, but this move strongly undermines their credibility overseas.
(Might be just me but it took a couple reads to understand you don't mean US tanks that cost thee million dollars. For me, USD is the currency code I'm familiar with)
Germany has slightly higher productivity per hour worked than the US. There's a productivity gap between the US and European economies as a whole (which is a relatively recent phenomenon dating back to around 2005), but Germany is quite productive.
One example is pensions. For demographic reasons the state pension system is underfunded for years, a situation that is projected to become worse. One solution would be to increase contributions which are already sky-high and make working or opening a business a lot less attractive in Germany. Another is to freeze pensions. Guess what happened? Germany's old government increased the contribution level starting in January this year [1]. Additional, a pension raise [2] has recently been announced and the newly-found debt will provide funding for additional benefits for pensioners [3]. It more and more feels like a gerontocracy.
I hate to be the guy, but I find myself having to point this out to all of my doom-minded American friends. Yes, Trump is a criminal idiot, but one positive, probably unintended effect is that the world becomes more, in the words of Taleb, anti-fragile. As an American I am thrilled that Europe is becoming more united, more pragmatic, and more self-reliant. Our relationship is not over, it is just changing, and Europe is experiencing a long-needed renaissance.
Of course Europe always had some ability to defend itself, but I think it's clear that some of that ability was outsourced to the US(with reciprocal benefits for the US, but still). Yes, this introduces some redundancy into the Western sphere, but that's a good thing.
The American order that stood for decades was anti-fragile. Everyone outsourced their defense to some reasonable degree, so no one was strong enough to pose an existential threat to anyone else, so we could all afford to be off guard.
Now every actor needs to have the strength to deter all others, which means everyone gets stronger, which means everyone needs even more strength to deter others, or deterrence simply breaks down. We had a multi-polar world in the past, it went terribly and led to massive wars. Now we are returning to that system but with nukes.
England, France, Israel... They all had nukes the entire time. What you are claiming sounds good but does not align with reality. You are overstating both the degree to which things have changed as well as overstating the degree to which the alliances have changed (i.e. Europe is still Europe. Poland won't be arming itself to protect against Germany or France, etc).
The point stands that Europe needs to arm itself. Europe needs to be able to defend itself without the US.
Indeed there is slight toxicity to calling this 'manning up'. Especially towards men, where it signals that men should be strong enough to defend themselves. Which wronly reinforces the idea that capability in violence is a positive trait in men.
Thank you for that understanding and nuanced response. It actually gives me great comfort to see someone communicate so well in today's climate.
I of course agree with the point about Europe and you've beautifully captured the reason why the phrasing gave me an uneasy feeling. The line between the necessary reaction and over-reaction is terrifyingly small and I hope for the best for all of us.
I wouldn't equate defending oneself with doing violence to others. Building strong walls harms no one. Even if a sufficiently determined adversary pushes you to the point where the only effective remaining means of defense is to fight back, the ability to resist such oppressors is very much a positive trait in any person. If the only thing preventing you from doing violence is a lack of strength, that's a whole other issue.
The way current masculine norms (as I experience them) expects me to be able to defend myself, is by projecting a capacity for retalitory violence.
I have nothing against this at the level of international relations. I will fight if article 5 is invoked. And on this level, building walls also makes sense.
My issue lies at the personal level. Men on average are too violent at this level, and the masculine ideals are to blame for that.
It's reductive, essentialist and prescriptive and myopic. It's fine for someone to defend themselves but saying that "men should be strong enough" to do so gets quite murky. Would you say Stephen Hawking was less of a man because he was unable to defend himself? Is someone who defends themselves by de-escalating a situation through dialogue less of a man than someone who uses their strength? The above statement implies these things but I certainly don't think they're true.
Toxic is your word and I'm not sure the EU is a "weak sausage." I think it's remarkable that so many people within the EU have been able to co-exist peacefully for so long and work together in developing systems that give them other options than the kinds of violence we saw for so much of the past. Could you really point to Russia and say that they're in a stronger position, that they're a "strong sausage(?)," because their leader exhibits some loosely defined manly ideals?
Stephen Hawking had a condition that he never wanted to have. Nobody would want it for oneself or to be promoted as a "new norm" for society.
> someone who defends themselves by de-escalating a situation through dialogue
If his only _personal_ defense is "through dialogue" then yes, it's a wimp, unless he's a very rare person that can really convince anyone.
> Could you really point to Russia and say that they're in a stronger position
In "Russia vs EU" war EU doesn't have a single chance, despite all fancy tech and gear. The only hope for EU is USA (not anymore), Ukraine and Poland that still have testosterone in their blood.
Where are you from? What did your country do over three years of full scale land war next to you to prepare for the next one? Aside of importing men from other countries to compensate for the lack of domestically grown ones, of course.
The fact that it demands violence off men. As my very next sentence states.
Demanding that a 'masculine man' is capable of violence is making men ... more violent. Men being too violent is a decently big societal problem. Hence, the idea that men should be able to defend themselves (and others) is harming society.
A man that can protect their family from a criminal or home intruder is harming society? Men with enough balls and sense of duty that join armed forces, so society is able to protect itself, are harming society?
If I was Putin or other adversary of the West, I would pour tons of money into promotion of this self-castrating idea.
They didn't say those things did they? They said "the idea that men should be able to defend themselves (and others) is harming society." The idea that they are duty-bound to these things by their manhood, not that they choose to do so. People should feel free to make their own reasoned choices.
I ging it sad and frankly creepy to think of the many great minds who have added so much to our society being sidelined or pushed down arbitrary funnels in their lives because someone had an obsessive idea that they needed to prove a biological tautology of "having balls" by going down a certain route towards militancy.
That's exactly what "they" said: "the idea that men should be able to defend themselves (and others) is harming society".
"Their" twisted logic is "man defends his family" -> "man gets more violent" -> "man gets too violent" -> "much violence is bad". I'm not sure if it's troll, stupidity or sincere and intentional self-castration.
You mean: European militaries haven’t done their historical norm, which is starting wars that kill horrific numbers of civilians. The only serious militarized power in that side of Eurasia is Russia, and what are they doing? Killing horrific numbers of civilians.
Seems like the reasonable goal would be to embargo Russia until they disarm like the other adults in the region.
What even is masculine/feminine energy? I was making reference to Zuckerberg saying Facebook needed more masculine energy as it seemed to chime with the idea of "manning up." But honestly it feels as disconcerting to see people respond as if this is an actual thing, in as much as it would if HN were to take a sudden interest in astrology.
Today, masculine energy means right wing and feminine or beta energy means left wing.
If you don’t believe me, go read up on the genderfication of politics in the last 10 years. Women are from Venus and men are from mars. There’s no reconciling them.
Why would I read up on this? If I told you politics had been astrolified in the past 10 years and that right wingers were behaving with Leo energy while left wingers were behaving with Gemini energy would you want to look that up or would you recognise the absurdity of it and move on with your life?
Yeah come on. Barroso, Draghi or Scholz were no better. Draghi maybe a bit better, Scholz way worse. But of course why look at facts when you have a simple narrative that allow you to not think.
You don't read books by women? What? Maybe if you did you would understand how big of a role the socio-political effects of European patriarchy had in whatever veracity the rest of your assertions had.
This is all pretty off topic and not the time to get into it but I find what you're saying pretty wild. Of course there's nothing wrong with being a man but it's still a good idea to listen to women's experiences and learn from books they've written. There are all sorts of unfair power structures in the world and it's good to learn about them, especially at this juncture in history, or else we run the risk of making the same mistakes again and again.
Of course I read books by women. I would only encourage you to research if the blood, sweat, and tears of your ancestors are the "socio-political effects of European patriarchy" or just people who build a home that attracts people from all over the world.
Also, according to Perun, if Europe collectively raises defense spending to somewhere near 4,5% (I think, check last Sundays episode) it will outspend not only US but US and China together.
Yet Russia has more brigades, more artillery and artillery shells, more nukes. The comment above is right. Europe needs to wake the hell up and increase military production 10X, even if temporarily.
If Russians take Ukraine, they will force their population to attack the next country. Just like it happened with men of Donbass.
lol Russia are barely making progress in Ukraine, and have effectively been in a stalemate since the 2022 invasion - while currently shipping back their wounded vets to the frontline on donkeys. Hadn't it been for Trump, Russia would effectively go bankrupt before being able to cross the Dnipro river.
The only real capability Russia has, are their nuclear weapons and other long-range weapons - and even with the latter, they have been struggling.
FWIW, I worked in the defense industry, and even before the invasion Russia has been viewed as a paper tiger. They're good at coming up with novel ideas and weaponry, but for whatever reason, struggle to successfully get things from the drawing board to operational weapons.
A front collapse can happen rapidly, as we saw with the russian front line in 2022. Russia, unfortunately, has massive military advantages over Ukraine. Ukraine is basically holding on because the people are fighting for their country, while russians are fighting either for money or to kill/invade.
Russians are slowly creeping in. I've heard ru-bankruptcy narrative for 3 years now, and it's not happening. They can buy lots of stuff with all the oil/gas/metals/minerals/lumber sales.
s/are/were barely making progress. The ~20% [1] reduction [2] in total supplies to the ukraine front line lead to the logical prediction that frontline dynamics would be impacted. Early indicators suggest this prediction is materializing. [3].
Is no one in Europe not skeptical of the increase in defense spending? Things have costs, that money is having to come from somewhere.
Is increasing traditional military spending the way to go in the 21st century? If the decision is left to military leaders,they might spend massive amounts of money preparing to fight yesterday's war.
If you set aside alarmist positions, it may very well possible that Russia has no interests in military conflict with rest of Europe beyond Ukraine.
In that case what is the best thing Europeans could do?
There is danger and risk in military over spending at this juncture, and Europe needs to be level headed about it.
We have opened for €800 billions in investments through the EU.
So, no.
Calling anything "alarmist positions" now is just uninformed; Putin has said Russia wants the USSR territory back, their entire industry is now turned to produce weapons, their schools are "Putin-Jugend", they are currently invested in the first "great war" since WW2.
And the US isn't just getting out of Europe - they have gone full turncoat.
This is an unmitigated disaster for both US (citizens) and EU, and the EU is trying to manage what they can.
If they succeed in Ukraine then they are free to re-arm. Meanwhile Trump has made it clear that article 5 is worthless, so the Baltics are there for the taking. As much as I'd like to say they can rely on the rest of NATO, I'm really unsure if the UK or France would be willing to sacrifice London or Paris for Tallinn or Vilnius.
I think the parent poster has a point. It's a good idea to pause for a moment and think about this critically: Why would Putin attack the EU? Just because he can? What's the gain?
> destabilisation operations
This might actually start to become more of a self-inflicted wound. The uprise of right-wing parties is already happening in the EU. Mostly voted for by people with less education and less wealth. If we spend more money on defense and less on social security, right-wing parties might get even more traction, which causes further destabilization.
> sabotage
Yes and it sucks. There's actually not much you can do about it, because of how international waters are treated legally. But you think rearming the EU will prevent sabotage in the future? I have my doubts.
The current narrative seems to be "Ukraine is almost an EU member state and if we do not defend Ukraine, the EU will be next". Another view of the situation could be: "Ukraine is a special case and Putin would be very dumb to invade the EU".
The gain is more resources to plunder. You're thinking of Putin from a western democratic mindset as an accountable leader who has to at least pretend to serve the interests of his country. It was also dumb to invade Ukraine if you think in terms of Russian interests. Leaders do lots of dumb things which are incredibly damaging for their country and often are driven purely by self-interest, especially dictators.
Re-arming is unfortunately the only answer to naked aggression from dictators and the US cannot be trusted any more as an ally. Putin has clearly stated his aims - to reconstitute the USSR (and if possible enlarge it) and to defeat the west.
It sounds like you're not keeping up on things. We know where the money is coming from. It's headline news daily in the financial press. What are you talking about? And yes, of course we need to defend ourselves.
Europe has benefited a lot from not having to pour tons of money into defense spending. Europeans will be hurting if their countries suddenly have to shift finances for this.
I think it’s much easier to just hunker down and appease the United States for four years and hope the next administrations are more merciful.
Maybe... but probably not. Having to divert investments from one part of the economy to another is not that much a big problem: Russia has been doing the same and they have an economy of war that works more or less (some say they are on the brink of collapse and yet, they are still there). So, Europe can totally rely way less on the US, they just have to change their priorities, and they'll adapt just as Russia has adapted. Thinking they cannot is really presumptuous, or even comptemptuous (and a lot of people have made the same mistake with Russia by the way). And yet, at the moment, the US think that way, not believing in soft power any more, but only in pure pressure or even blackmail. If history teaches one thing, it is that you always create your own ennemies (Versailles treaty comes to mind).
That is not what is happening. Listen to Ursula. She’s telling you what is happening. Eu countries are being “allowed” to go into debt without triggering eu debt procedures. It won’t be reinvestment. It will be dilution of currency though debt. Something all too familiar to Americans.
Correct. Interestingly enough, it will massively increase the supply of euro bonds, and probably pull in a bunch of cash that goes to US treasuries now.
If there's enough pan European bonds (which there won't be) then the reserve currency status of the dollar could be threatened.
