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Embarrasing and pathetic. It's nice to have all the social programs when Uncle Sam provides for your defense!

It will take time for the world to change policies, but I believe Putin’s actions will cause most countries to ramp up military spending in the coming years. The US economy will likely benefit as a major exporter of these materials/goods. Just reason #278,923 why this invasion was a colossal strategic mistake for Russia.

Instead the world spending on hospitals, schools, space we will be wasting money on stuff which hopefully going to rust in warehouses.

Fucking putin messed up the world.

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I wonder what was EU's plan had Putin's invasion come as planned. In case say, Russian military being indeed competent enough, Ukraine putting little to no resistance and White House being occupied by Trump? Not entirely fictional scenario just few years ago. What was Europe's plan back then?

Don't act like the US doesn't benefit from this arrangement themselves.

I don’t disagree with you. Would be nice to put money elsewhere. Unfortunately, everyone will have LESS money to spend on the important stuff (the things you mentioned).

According to the article Germany is actually doing more than Poland right now.

They had none.. Only mildly verbal reactions. The UE foreign affair is only (/mostly) commercial... And the business was bigger with Russia than Ukraine.

On external affairs, each country play on his own. For example France in Sahel had only token of help... Even when it was to liberate Timbuktu from salafists when Mali asked for help.

2014 was a red alert only few countries besides Ukraine bothered to notice. Human complacency is such an amazing thing sometimes.

I'm pretty sure the EU's plan was to lean on NATO and NATO's plan was always to hold out just long enough for the US to roll in with a half dozen carrier groups.

Nice try with the Poland big thing, almost got past everyone. Lol

Poland big!

Polan stronk!

It's disgusting how that ended with just a few words of condemnation. I feel if there was a strong response back then, we could have avoided this war altogether. Maybe I am wrong but man... it was awful how everyone ignored the red flags. And it was brewing since like 2008 Georgia.

Right, this is why Putin, Xi, Qatar, and MBS' plans were for the Trump family to have the US out of NATO after selling our secrets. Kushner even get paid 2 billion dollars for only the little he did accomplish towards that goal.

One of the most important stuff is defence. If we in Europe had payed 2% of our budget on our defence we would have had far less issues now. Hopefully we have learned our lesson but it will still take a decade to get back at what we need to be to become a serious player to make a country think twice before they start invading someone.

The whole reason we have such a high GDP and have schools, healthcare and everything is because of the global security of free trade. It pays itself back many times to have this world order.

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Just be careful not to swing the arm the other way, and drastically overspend at the cost of losing what you have. The American model is barely sustainable, and hurts the populace. I fell through my attic and was mostly fine, but since we were worried I was seriously hurt, and I had a nail sticking out of my foot, we called an ambulance. They cleaned it, got me to a hospital, they took the debris out and gave me a tetanus shot and let me limp out the door. I've been fighting the hospital, the ambulance service and health insurance since. It was a $2000 ambulance ride, with another $1000 in hospital bills. Insurance covered about a third, after harassing them for months. And the ambulance company and insurance company can't decide whether or not they covered their share yet. That was a year ago. If I hadn't had enough money set aside, I'd be getting buried in late fees, and interest.

That is not the issue of defence spending but America not having a great healthcare system in general. Free market is great in many things if it is regulated to the bone on necessary things like healthcare. I can speak of the Netherlands that we on average spend less per person on healthcare with tax included than the U.S.

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I've got a couple of buddies who are engineers that work in the arms industry and, though they can never really say much about their work. They did recently say at a dinner party that business was booming like none other.

Oh no, I don't disagree, I just wanted to remind you that the arm swings both ways, and a massive defense budget is money that doesn't get invested in public good. We spend roughly a sixth of the budget to maintain our doctrine of fighting the next two strongest countries, while letting our infrastructure crumble, our teachers need to work second jobs, and our hospitals be privatized to the point of excessive costs for minimal aid. Spend more, but don't spend so much it starts to eat into every other aspect of your society, like we do.

Buy Russian gas and sell the new regime Mercs.

Defence spending isn't why the US has such a terrible health care system. US public health care spending is way higher per capita than in countries with universal health care. Adopting a universal model would save them money.

No, not that. My question was primarily referring to EU's capability to repel Russian invasion had Putin decided to make his 'rush to English Channel' pipe dream a reality. Given that it takes combined effort of entire EU on top of the biggest European land army to just hold Russia back - how did Europe plan to defend themselves?

That is really a myth to be fair. The U.S spend 3.4% while having a larger GDP per capita than the Netherlands and we spend 1.4% on defence. also a lot of our money we spend on defence doesn't come back in our economy but yours does and even makes money abroad. On infrastructure the U.S. is not as dense as we have so it becomes more expensive to have nice roads everywhere. We are also the europort so we need to have good infrastructure to get the goods to Germany and the rest of Europe. hospitals are also privatized here as well but more regulated than in the U.S. Even we need to regulate more still but that is an ongoing battle that will go on forever anyways and will become more strict or more loose with each time a political party is in charge.

I follow the U.S. politics a bit but they always seem to make a lot of noise for big changes and nothing happens afterwards because it is to big to change in one go. America should do it more slowly and incremental and become a tiny bit less populist on both sides democrats and republicans. We also have our problems to be fair and are not perfect at all.

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Exactly, some people really don't understand history or the concept of soft power.

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The simple answer is: With their military.

Here the much more complex answer:

You can´t compare the reaction of the EU towards the war in Ukraine (a non-ally) with the reaction of the EU if they themselves would have been attacked. There are plans and procedures available that would come into effect in case of war that would cut a lot of the red tape that currently hinders the support of Ukraine. The military would take over, Europe would change into a war economy and start pushing against the invasion forces of Russia. The Baltics would be - most likely in a bad state as any NATO forces stationed there would keep an eye on not being cut off mainland Europe. But Poland alone would have been the first major block for Russian forces. More and more forces would join the battle while all over Europe people would get drafted into arms to join the party. With time all Russian forces would have been neutralized and pushed out of Europe proper.

Even when the US would have left NATO this would have happened. It would have caused more casualties and delayed the date of defeat of Russia but it would not change much until the moment we get to nuclear weapons. But this is a whole different story as conventional armies don´t add anything to those kind of equations.

Because I totally agree, Europe has abandoned its military forces but Russia threw their military out of the window and shot it after it crash landed.

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Also some eu countried have nukes

I agree but then the most imports thing for us all is to be able to waken up in the morning and not have to worry about the security of you own country, this is something we have been able to take for granted for so long maybe we forgot how fragile peace can be ! As much as I hate to have to admit to it we will need to get on board with European security going forward and have a adult conversation about our position in all of this.

That’s not an issue of defense spending, the Federal Government already spends more on healthcare than any other country does, but only covers seniors and the abject poor. The main problem is the layers of bureaucracy that take money the whole way down, from insurance to billers etc.

If we reformed the system to not waste our money paying insurance companies and all sorts of black holes that money disappears into, Medicare could cover everyone without much additional cost. Think about how much extra money people would have in their pockets.

The EU doesn't have any military forces or command structure. The EU wouldn't be involved. It would be down to national governments through NATO.

In honesty, European nations have very credible air assets. With a lot of stand off missiles. The Russian forces would have been hit from the air. Especially their supply depots. Remember the Russian army is mainly supplied by rail. The gauge break on the former Soviet border cuts both ways. All the supply depots on the borders where everything is transferred from rail to road, getting repeatedly hit. They wouldn't get very far.

According to article Germany has sent 18 tanks while Poland has sent 14.

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What it does not say is how many T-72 Poland has sent, About 240-290.

Czech Republic has sent nearly 90 of T-72. They are not even mentioned as tank donors it looks like.

To many westerners T-72 are "dirty".

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NYT is family friendly newspaper - they dont talk about that. What if your Daughter reads NYT ? Would you like her to read about T-72 ?

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Don't forget it started with Brexit.

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US defense budget is interesting. It is roughly 3.4% of GDP but also accounts for more than 10 percent of the federal budget and nearly half of the total discretionary spending. the GDP number is a bit deceptive.