Great Britain, France, Germany and the United States have lifted restrictions on the types of weapons that can be supplied to Ukraine, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced on May 26. (video)
The move clears the way for the EU to send its most powerful and long-range missiles to Kyiv that can strike targets deep inside Russian territory, something the allies have been reluctant to do for fears of escalating tensions with the Kremlin and possibly provoking a direct clash between Russia and Nato countries in Europe.
"There are no longer any range restrictions on weapons supplied to Ukraine, not from the British, not from the French, not from us, not from the Americans either. This means that Ukraine can now also defend itself by attacking military positions in Russia, for example,” Merz said during an interview on German television. “It couldn’t do that until some time ago, and with very few exceptions, it didn’t do that until some time ago. Now it can. In jargon, we call this long-range fire, i.e., equipping Ukraine with weapons that attack military targets in the rear.”
The decision comes the day after Russia launched a devastating missile and drone barrage on Ukraine over the weekend of May 23-25 that largely targeted civilian targets in Kyiv and many other urban centres in Ukraine – amongst the largest attacks since the war started over three years ago.
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The decision also clears the way for Germany to deliver its powerful Taurus cruise missiles that Kyiv had been asking for, but Berlin had so far been reluctant to supply. Merz didn’t mention the Taurus missiles by name during his interview, but has suggested that unlike former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, he was not against supplying Kyiv with the missile, which can hit Russian targets deep in the rear or could destroy the Kerch bridge connecting Russia to the Crimean peninsula.
That’s not even remotely true. The military budget has no correlation with changes in GDP.
The US has pressured Europe for decades to spend 2% of their GDP on defense.
Trump seems to have finally broken them.
NATO’s Rutte says he assumes alliance will agree on 5% spending target
The MIC is going to be in the money now. Good news for Boeing.
As someone in defense, Boeing sucks.
Regardless, my point was just that spending targets were indeed pegged to GDP.
The EU is not growing its GDP at anywhere near 5% outside of Malta. Average across the bloc is 1.2%
During the boom years of the 90s, Europe (and the US) were cutting defense spending not raising them. It was only during big downturns that we saw them ratchet the military spending up again.
If MIC spending is anything, it is counter-cyclical.
Growth of GDP is irrelevant. The article you linked doesn’t say that they are increasing spending targets by 5%. The article said they are increasing spending targets from 2% of GDP to 5% of GDP. They are increasing spending targets by 150%.
Look, defense spending isn’t a monotonic relationship with GDP. It’s a risk assessment taking into account the value of your assets and activities as well as the size of the threat faced. In the 90s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was basically no large threat to the international US-led order. The US still had to maintain a base level of funding to squash upstarts (pirates, …Iraq), but the safety of high value assets and activity could be insured with much less funding.
Your initial argument was that spending on defense ought to be on par with the value of the threat faced, which makes no sense. Spending on defense is insurance to protect what makes you money. You don’t price flood insurance for your home on the cost of that many gallons of water. You price it based on the value of your home and the likelihood of it flooding.
This was the period during which Vladimir Putin rapidly rose from Mayor of Leningrad, through the ranks of the FSB, and into the Russian Presidency. Seemingly with the full endorsement and support of US business interests and European political allies in the region. It was also the decade during which Islamic-lead reactionary violence was breaking out all across West Africa and Central Asia.
Given the US/EU response following 9/11, I have to assume a large threat existed. Unless, of course, you want to argue the response to 9/11 - and subsequent violent acts committed by Muslim minority groups - was overly exaggerated and unnecessary.
My initial argument was that western terminally online war-hawks love the pastiche of war far more than the prosecution of it. So they’ll clap like seals when they see an image of a $4M warhead striking a $40k homestead, without bothering to consider what purpose terror bombings of civilian targets could possibly accomplish.
You’ve gone through a long-winded argument defending the aggressive uptick in NATO bloc military spending to justify the enormous sums spent on sloppily managed, incompetently executed war-crimes, by tying it back to the need to defend a declining European economy.
We could go back to the 1990s and rethink how the Western states handled their sudden, nearly bloodless, total victory over European Soviet Governments. But it seems the only real lesson anyone is drawing from the collapse of the Gorbachev Era government is “We should have Exterminated the Brutes sooner!”
I’m not here to defend every action of Western militaries or which regional conflicts they paid attention to and which they ignore.
I have a hard time buying your claim that because Putin would invade Crimea some 20 years later, that he should have registered as a threat to the West in the 90s. Even if that were true, then you would simply be finding error in the risk analysis I am asserting is done in defining a military budget, not disproving that it’s done.
Again, the relative value of the bombs to the homes being bombed is still a stupid means of illustrating your point. And everyone in this thread agrees with you that terror bombings of civilians doesn’t work (and is cruel/ inhumane), but they disagree that is the intent of the West/ Ukraine here. So go make that point on YouTube video comments with computer jockeys nutting themselves over drone strikes in Afghanistan.
Yes I think the NATO build up is justified. Russia has proven its willingness to invade its neighbors, so the likelihood portion of the risk analysis is high. Additionally, at least for the US, China’s substantial military build-up portends conflict in the South China Sea and the broader South Pacific. There’s a reason Australia is our new military BFF. None of that means waste/ war-crimes/ Boeing are justified, obviously. But you are trolling, so I think I’m done here.
Lastly, not sure how you are suggesting the West is responsible for or should have prevented the chaos that followed the Soviet collapse or Russia turning into an aggressor state, but it’s all irrelevant to your original point that I took issue with.
Putin’s repression of Russian locals, particularly non-white and non-Christian locals, combined with his invasion of Chechnya and other contributions to the Bush War on Terror, signaled his intent to prosecute a fascist dictatorship through the rest of his rein.
Americans were happy with Russian oligarchs and tyrants working to suppress liberal dissidents and persecute ethnic and religious minorities for a full decade.
They didn’t see Putin as a threat because they didn’t think he would ever threaten their corner of the map, not because they thought Russia was defanged.
When half of NATO is aligning to the Russian end of the map, I can wait to see the consequences.