this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
69 points (96.0% liked)
World News
33414 readers
1328 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
yeah spends it on US weapons. It's a money laundering front to funnel european public money to private US investors
Luckily that is a problem with a solution as simple as obvious
I don't see it
Ok, my failure, I believed that if the problem was to spend your defense budget on US weapons, the option to spend it on non US weapons was evident. In any case, surely the French, Belgian, Spanish or British defense industry would be happy to have new clients
The issue with that is that the production of arms in the EU is next non-existent when compared to Russia and the US. Europe has been heavily de-industrialized and already has problems covering its energy budget. You can't just throw money at that problem, because you don't just need to rebuild factories, but infrastructure. Not to mention the brain-drain caused by academics moving to the US and China where actual research happens.
I have not found data on arms production grouped by country, but I have found data on exports and this makes me doubt your statement. In any case, we do not have to face a war right now, considering R&D and industrialization as defense objectives could put us at the right level in perhaps a decade.
Have a read through here if you're interested https://hir.harvard.edu/untitled-2-ready-for-combat-the-future-of-the-european-defense-industry/