- cross-posted to:
- pravda@rss.ponder.cat
- cross-posted to:
- pravda@rss.ponder.cat
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Isn’t 5% a lot? IIRC even the US aren’t that high. And what are we supposed to use all those soldiers and weapons for? Surely that’s overkill, even for Russia? Is this actually about China?
Edit: It’s 3.5% on the military and 1.5% on dual use infrastructure like roads, for a total of 5%. That’s high but quite a bit more sane.
Watch us get in a war and see where that percentage goes, along with inflation.
It’s about war with the US. Well, probably other places too. Writing’s been on the wall for a while.
Until the USA goes full dictatorship (admittedly less hypothetical than I’d like) that’s not going to happen. Democracies don’t fight like this.
Also the US is who is pushing hardest for higher NATO defence spending. So that makes no sense.
So, you’re right that higher NATO spending is bad for the US. That’s why historically they haven’t pushed for it. But now the US is im the grip of nepo baby morons that have no understanding of anything. They think army guys & bombs are le hecking epic & that’s the extent of the reasoning. See also: like every hereditary monarch ever.
European democracies obviously do understand the long term implications which is why they’re taking the opportunity to arm up.
Until the USA goes full dictatorship (admittedly less hypothetical than I’d like)
I have bad news for you.
I’m not trying to exaggerate the situation, but they’re imprisoning journalists, kicking random people out of the country or keeping them in conditions so bad that it sometimes kills them, they just bombed a random country ignoring the system that’s supposed to make that illegal without authorization, and so on and so on. They just assassinated a Democratic politician.
It’s all a spectrum. People are still in the streets without being shot, they’re still backing down or being forced to free some particular people. But the standard of “going to war without authorization” is a guard-rail that fell years ago, and more are falling every week now. If you’re waiting for the moment to fight back against the dictatorship, this is it.
5% is, in fact, a whole shitload.
The US is at about 3%, which is an insane amount a lot of which gets allocated to random domestic pork-barrel projects, or basic scientific research which is just getting funneled through the “defense” department for basically no reason. Upping it to more than the US spends per capita on its military is bonkers.
That being said, I get it. These are bonkers times. Russia is doing for-real military invasions and bombing whole cities and shows no signs of wanting to stop, and the US is no longer a reliable partner for defense and deterrence. It might be fine, but it might not. It’s time to get ready to look after our own safety again, after a long period of not really having to worry as long as you were white and Western. I get why they’re doing it.
5% is about what the UK spent up to 1985. It was 7% in 1960.
France spent 3% in 85, and 5% in the 60s, but they count “defence spending” differently.
The UK in 1985 was being run by people who grew up getting their cities bombed out and not having enough to eat because of the war, or having friends and family members dead because they were in the infantry and didn’t come back.
I posted a chart elsewhere in these comments; all during the modern era it’s been hovering around 1.5%, and then suddenly in the last few years people are invested in paying more, what with the US and Russia collaborating to make them nervous about their safety again.
Do NATO members expect America to honour it’s side of the alliance if they get attacked?
At this point, they certainly shouldn’t be counting on it
NATO is a sham anyways, just disband it!
Instance checks out.
Yes, you should check it out, you might start cracking through the programming
People on every other instance are able to say whatever they want, they can have open discussion, they can criticize .ml or NATO or Trump or the Democrats. Which is as it should be.
The mythology that .ml enacts its insane level of censorship because it’s helping people “crack through the programming” by expressing viewpoints and arguments that are also allowed everywhere else, and the censorship is a necessary part of making that possible (by banning any disagreement shielding it from the commonsense arguments that generally can debunk it), is some Karl Rove shit.
Funny to say that about a place that’s desinged to radicalise you towards supporting the enemy
Disband .ml
I think it’s fine that the crackpots have their own instance. And anyway it’s possibly good that there’s a counterbalance to the right wing MAGA/Orban shitheads, although a stronger center would ofc be best. I just wish there was a way to block the ibstance so I wouldn’t have to listen to their inane opinions.
For what? For trying to help people see the truth for once?
I’m a good fish I tease but you won’t catch me.
Hasn’t that been the target for decades? Or whatever the number was, almost no country has been meeting it.
It’s been 2%. Historically a lot of NATO wasn’t meeting that, but in the last few years people have been taking it a lot more seriously.
Whoa. Poland sure decided to show up for the party in 2024. I wonder why…
Bad neighbors require good fences, or something like that.
Or at least paying the bill from the security company
I don’t like this analogy. It’s more like insurance premiums. We’re doing risk pooling, in a way.
