NATO, led by new Secretary General Mark Rutte, raises the level of minimum defense budget expenditures to 5% of GDP, from the previous 2%. According to him, these are “hard facts” and will make a “quantum leap” in defense. Among these are the purchase of 700 F—35s, an increase in spending on air defense systems by 400% from current ones, thousands of tanks, armored vehicles, as well as an increase in the production of missiles and projectiles.
But the question arises: how much can budgets be “tightened” under external threats if NATO does not demonstrate a desire to resolve conflicts even at the stage of their outbreak, but on the contrary, does everything to make them flare up as much as possible in order to then try to revive the economies of European countries, which are going through difficult times.
Actual headline: Spain rejects Nato plan for member states to spend 5% of GDP on defence
Where is the “dialogue” in the original title? Is this a propaganda piece by a .ml account?
What’s up with
lemmy.mlif I may ask? I recently got banned from several communities in quick succession there, clearly a reaction to a warning post I made about archive.(is,md,today etc.) usingmail.rujavascript. Criticism or disagreement is ok, but the attacks were something to behold.lemmy.ml is an instance that has a large number of so-called Marxist-Leninists, who in addition to being an authoritarian socialist ideology support the USSR, China and basically any “anti-west” country for just being anti-west. They don’t take criticism of Russia lightly, even though modern-day Russia is not even close to MLism. But it’s anti-US, which is good enough for them.
Oh, so that’s what .ml stands for! That explains it. I guess even my profile pic is too much for them.
That’s not what the .ml stands for, fwiw. .ml, the ccTLD for Mali, was previously given away for free.
I’m sure it’s entirely a coincidence that the Marxists that created Lemmy decided their personally run instance would end with .ml
I think it’s entirely a coincidence, yes.
It’s not likely they lean towards subtlety when it comes to naming things in their ideology, having named their more explicit auth-left instance Lemmygrad.
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Instance bans look like that. You’ll get ban reports from a whole list for some reason that I’m sure made sense at the time but seems a bit confusing to users.
Fixed
Of course.
The post’s title match neither the headline nor the article.
If you’d like to share your analysis I’d suggest adding text to the post or a comment as it’s a good way to add one’s analysis. But please avoid replacing headlines, this is a bit misleading.
I understand that there are real threats in Europe. But… 5 fckn percent as a (!) minimum? None NATO country spends more than 3.5% on research and development (the only countries that do are South Korea and Israel). And that is everything from new medicines to new bombs to 5G to anthropology to climate science research. And now each and every country is supposed to spend more on tanks and guns and drones only? Play it smart, not hard, please…
And now each and every country is supposed to spend more on tanks and guns and drones only
Nope, 3.5%.
The other 1.5% is infrastructure and stuff that has both peacetime and wartime benefits, such as roads and rail that can be used for military transport in case of war, cybersecurity, I’d even argue that energy independence can be shared under this.
Good point. For reference, from the OP article:
Mark Rutte, in response to Donald Trump’s demands for a 5% target – suggests member states agree to raise defence spending to 3.5% of their GDP and commit a further 1.5% to wider security spending.
I can totally see Trump agreeing to get his 5% if part of it will be spent on climate adaptation and mitigation, or infrastructure in the “hostile and abusive” EU.
BTW: 3.5% is still more than any NATO country spends on R&D, maybe except of the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_research_and_development_spending
Did you know that our military has now so much money in the Netherlands already they are unable to spend it now…
This is the same story we had yesterday, and I still don’t understand how one covers a story about that without even mentioning the reason for the EU’s rearmament and calling out Russia as the aggressor of the Ukraine war.
The Spanish PM is also a close ally of China as we know, the country which has been labeled as “decisive enabler” of Russia in its war against Ukraine.
Mr. Sanchez nor anyone else in this article mentions that Russia spends 7.1% of its GDP for military (according to SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), and officially ~40% of its annual budget.
How would this “dialogue” work with Russia? Putin has been attacking Ukraine for years, and is preparing new attacks against Europe. This article is pure Russian propaganda.
Addition:
More than 350 Russian drones, missiles blast Kyiv killing at least five
Russia launched 352 drones and 16 missiles overnight [June 22/23] in a new “massive” attack on Kyiv killing at least five people and injuring about 20 more, after Ukraine said it would increase the “scale and depth” of its operations against Russian energy and military infrastructure.
The Spanish prime minister is a Chinese plant and the Guardian is a mouthpiece for Russian propaganda. What the actual fuck.
Some of you are becoming reverse tankies and the paranoia is starting to become annoying. Europe doesn’t need McCarthyism.
There is two fundamental problems on the European side.
Spending 40%, or even 50% of your budget, which the 5% GDP would mean for many countries, on defense is not sustainable without fighting a war to plunder other nations resources and reserves.
Thanks to Israel and the US we are looking at another wave of strongly increasing energy costs. This has the more and more probable chance of EU countries going back to Russian energy, bankrolling Russias strained war chest. Alternatively, or rather a mix of both, this also causes a recession as people cannot spend on other consumption and the industrial outputs will be more expensive and less thought after globally.
So we see increasing spending on the one side facing less income on the other side and no “return on investment” unless using those weapons. Aside from the social unrest that comes with rising prices, we just got kneecapped financially by Israel and the US and would be limping into whatever war comes next while Russia gets a financial relieve.
It would be much smarter to streamline defenses, mainly ensure anti-air abilities, focus on economic sanctions against Russia and develop a sovereign foreign policy independent from the treacherous US. Following Trumps dream of buying all the weapons from his MIC buddies instead will further cement our dependence on the US and being used as an expendable pawn by them.
I think Sanchez is having a much clearer view of what is going on than Merz, Macron or Starmer.
‘All of Ukraine is ours’ — Putin on Russia’s territorial ambitions in Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin said “all of Ukraine” belonged to Russia in a speech on June 20 at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, amid increasingly aggressive official statements about Moscow’s final territorial ambitions in Ukraine.
Putin’s claim was based on the false narrative often pushed both by himself as leader and by Russian propaganda that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people.”
The narrative has long figured prominently in Putin’s rhetoric, often brought up as justification for its aggression in Ukraine.
In July 2021, just half a year before the full-scale invasion, the Russian leader stoked fears of a larger attack when he wrote and published an essay on the “historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”
[…]
So do you think German, French and British boots will be on the ground in Ukraine soon? Do you support the natural resources of Ukraine to go to these countries as a reward or do you want them to stay with Ukraine? If the latter that means the armies will need to march until Moscow and seize control of the Russian resources to finance themselves. Aside from the Russian nuclear deterrent this will mean millions of people needed to be drafted to be able to occupy western Russia properly.
These armies need to be financed. And that means going to war. If Ukraine will not be paying for these armies, then it will require invading another country. Aside from Russia, other options would be countries in North Africa such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Maybe seizing Egypt would be good for taking control of the Suez channel and using these revenues.
You cannot sustain putting half the budget of a nation into the military without going to war, or maybe enslaving your population to finance the military, which is not economically sustainable though.
What is this community’s policy on Russian propaganda?
It is explicitly allowed as far as I know.
The Guardian is a Russian propaganda mouthpiece now?
No but OPs frame of it might be
And my grandmother might be a trolleybus. Do better.
I guess we will see
5% is really really a lot. Also we weren’t on 2% for 10 years. So let’s start with just 2 or 3%.
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Dialogue would be less costly…
Not really. Putin’s negotiations have consistently been in bad faith and leads to more aggression.
While I would love for actual diplomacy to work, it seems to be viewed as weakness by folks like him.
Man, I wish talking would work.
No, no, no! I wasn’t making any statement about effect. Only about cost
Oh, up front costs are less, long term costs would be much more.
Russia violated about 400 international treaties since 2014
You’ll find a lot of sources in addition to my link on that subject.
Yes, doing something useless is often cheap.
