Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, several European countries have indeed been increasing their defense spending over the past few years.
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The only major European country that has been serious about rebuilding their military capability is Poland.
The UK, France, Germany, Italy have all made token gestures. The UK isn't producing any new tanks, France isn't producing any new tanks, Germany alone can make, at best, 100-150 tanks PER YEAR - most of which are slated for foreign contracts, not German service. That's the entire old, non-US NATO capacity. 100-150 tanks per year. Turkey, Spain, and Greece all have as many Leopard 2's as Germany has (~350).
Poland, when it's all said and done, will have 1,000 K2 Black Panther thanks compared to ~350 Leopard 2's for Germany.
Europe has much the same problem the US has, but only so much worse. They de-industrialized, especially their military capacity, and scrapped most of the cold war material that they had. And what they didn't scrap - a lot of it has already been sent to Ukraine.
So, increasing military spending from 1.5% of GDP to 1.7% of GDP isn't going to help a whole lot when there isn't sufficient capacity to build tanks, IFVs, artillery tubes, artillery shells, drones, explosives, ammunition, etc.
The entire German army is down to 63,000 people. The UK Army 74,000. The French army 121,000. The Turkish army has close to 300,000, but you are lying to yourself if you think they are going to attack Russia to defend Ukraine.
So the entire German, French, and UK armies have 1/2 the manpower a not-fully-mobilized Russia has on the Ukraine front.
Surveys of Western European countries of how many people would fight to defend their country show numbers in the teen percentages. What do you think a European mobilization to fight in Ukraine is going to poll at? Meanwhile, the EU has thrown open it's borders and is enduring a migrant invasion. Ireland now sports a higher foreign born population percentage than the US has (and for the record, the US foreign born percentage is the highest it's ever been).
Europe has become Turkey in reverse. The sick man.
I'm not saying this to be mean or because I dislike Europe (I'm going there next week), but pointing out that Europe has lost it's capacity to fight, lost it's will to fight, and yet it's leaders are committing them to a fight they cannot win in defiance of all reality. And Europe still has not committed to the structural changes that will change any of that.