The war in Ukraine has shifted thinking — both among politicians and the public — on the need to spend more on defense.

The European public and politicians are in agreement that EU countries should do more to increase weapons production.

That’s according to the results of the latest Eurobarometer poll, obtained in advance by POLITICO Playbook, and a draft of the EU’s Strategic Agenda seen by POLITICO.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago has dramatically shifted the rhetoric around defense spending, pushing it up the agenda across the bloc — often at the expense of other policy areas like tackling climate change.

  • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    They can barely take the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine, you really think they’re gonna invade the rest of Europe?

    • Skua@kbin.social
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      5 months ago

      They’re only struggling because the West is arming Ukraine. The Ukrainians fought hard from day one, but they’d have been overrun and at best operating a guerilla campaign without being given heaps of equipment. Look what has happened while America stopped sending stuff over, and’s while Europe was still sending stuff. Europe’s arms industry is substantial, pretty much on par with the US in terms of value exported, but it’s lacking things like the ability to supply an artillery war like the one going on in Ukraine. Since the US doesn’t seem to be very reliable, Europe is gonna have to cover that base itself if it wants to be able to deter actions like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Putin clearly started to believe his own country’s internal propaganda. Despite being inside the Soviet Union, and actually being part of the systemic lies to project false power, he started to believe what he was being told. As if the systems built on had fundamentally changed after the fall ad his rise to power.

        There were a lot of delays getting international supplies to Ukraine at the beginning of the conflict, yet Russia still couldn’t get close to their goal even with an extended timeframe. Once those supplies began to arrive, Russia was never going to be able to achieve their goal like they thought, but Putin’s ego won’t let him admit he was fooled by his own bullshit propaganda machine.

      • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        Good point.

        Better sacrifice your housing, education, infrastructure, and medical budgets for Raytheon shareholders just in case.

            • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Eisenhower said it well:

              Rest of the quote is even more explicit about it:

              The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

              It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

              It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

              We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

              We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

              This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

              This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

              • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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                5 months ago

                Yeah, great parting speech. Shame he spent his entire presidency letting MacArthur and Lemay do war crimes in Korea and propping up the military industrial complex.

                • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  Shame he spent his entire presidency letting MacArthur and Lemay do war crimes in Korea and propping up the military industrial complex.

                  Yeah, US presidents unfortunately tend to be either hypocrites, liars or open warmongers. Often more than one of the above 😮‍💨

                  • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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                    5 months ago

                    To be fair, the US President doesn’t have nearly as much power to actually accomplish things like many people think, at least domestically. Congress has the actual power, whether they utilize it well or not. The President has to work with Congress to actually get things accomplished, and Congress controls the money.

                    International relations and war, those are things the President more directly controls, and even then Congress has some control of things like approving weapons sales (again, the money).

                    The Legislative Branch makes the laws, the Executive branch implements them (and the modern Judicial decides based on their personal beliefs whether they’ll let it happen, or find some flimsy justification to prevent it).