They are confused fighting their thoughts (Or thier leaders). The freedom will come , when "I don't know" or the world flips.

Gotta launder taxpayers money by giving inflated contracts to weapons producers that the politicians own stocks in. Military spending is the most wasteful spending, mostly just ends up in the pockets of politicians and lobbyists. Punishing future generations now with all this excessive money printing. We're paying with our taxes, then paying again with inflation. Let the scumbag pedophiles fight it out themselves, put the leaders of Europe in a fucking room with Putin and Trump and just let all the stupid fucks fight it out themselves.

Defense spending requires an adversary but we currently don't have any bordering states seeking such conflict. Instead we're propping up our military industrial complex based on lies and stupid propaganda because some EU elites think war is their way out of years of failure, mismanagement and cleptocracy. Of course we're being mocked. "Muh terrorists" blew up our critical infrastructure without which we'll be deindustrialized within a few years and we're not even investigating it for real. Whether it was the US or Ukraine (unlikely), no one cares. Germany is moving towards a war economy without any particular neighbour posing a realistic threat unless we keep on supplying long range missiles or even riskier shit to Ukraine just to poke the bear. It's beyond stupid.

I am definitely a fan of a strong defense being an effective deterrent. That was Western Germany and it worked. If you do not invest enough in defense, you will gain adversaries. You should not wait until the barbarians are at the gates and then scrounge around for bows and arrows. Those bows and arrows have to be ready _before_ the barbarians arrive. And you need to have archers, who are trained to use them. That takes years. You have to be ready years before anyone makes a move. I also think there is no higher form of cowardice and shamelessness than expecting foreigners to protect you, while you lounge around and wax poetic about world peace, climate change, feminist diplomacy, and how you want to spend the money you save on defense on more vacation days, vegan school lunches, and free bus tickets. As the European NATO has done for decades, with the USA. I think that is incredibly outrageous behavior and the US Presidents have _all_ complained about it, and their complaints are entirely justified. The only reason they haven't abandoned us, entirely, in exasperation, is because of countries like Poland and the Scandinavians.

I also fail to follow your logic. We are a protectorate of the world's preeminent military superpower. There are about 100k US soldiers stationed within the EU borders, many near my house in Bavaria. That is why we have no immediate adversaries. Nobody fucks with America. But they want to reduce that protection and refocus on the Pacific. If they leave, we currently have nothing to replace them with. You say, we don't need to replace them, as we have no immediate adversaries. But we don't have them because the Americans are here...

Seeing Europe regain its tradition as a proud warrior assortment of hoards would be nice. I wouldn't.t mind Zerohedge; anti-anything draws eyeballs there. My criticisms of modern Europe boil down to the thread of globalism and socialism all relying on parasitic banking practices. Orban and Meloni seem to be some green shoots though. Not perfect by any means, but a nice change from recent trends. I have a lot more faith in Germans, Italians, Frenchmen, Swedes, and Norwegians than I do in 'Europeans.'

War narratives building up slowly but surely especially since last year. The lack of willingness to engage in political dialogue and negotiations, as well as the schizophrenic negation that political, military and economical actions against another sovereign nation should have any consequences, is leading us towards a dark place The lack of public awareness or even interest in these topics is also no good sign at all

The other thing here is that this is conflating the UK and Europe. "Did you notice that Starmer was purposely vague about how many British troops are in Ukraine?" Ukraine seems, above all, to be the same 500 year war between the UK and Russia that's been going on since the UK found out Russia exists. That anyone else has been dragged into it, be it Poles, Germans, Americans, or really anyone else, lies on our not being suspicious enough of our so called "ally." The shelling for years, the CIA/MI-6 backed coup...this was a war Russia got dragged into, and the sooner it can come to an end, the sooner resources from all of the UK's proxy states can go back to being used to serve their own people. The war's awful for the people of Ukraine, yes (and Russia). Which is why it was wrong for them to be dragged into it by western interests. The idea that Putin should submit to shelling on his border for years and simply allow it to go on is nothing anyone would expect of any other nation, and indeed, the retaliation to it in kind is precisely what we're hearing about why Poland, Germany, and others have justification for their involvement. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Ukraine may not be Russia, but it's also not the UK.

I have never thought that europeans are stupid beyond redemption. They are just in the sweet spot of robbery. Not smart enough to be free and not dumb enough to provoke an insurmountable chaos to the political class. They could be considered one of the biggest successes of political engineering

What I’d like to know is which state or group is actually posing a significant threat warranting billions in “defense” spending when the last 3 decades of Bundeswehr funding went down the drain already (G36 not shooting straight, Von der Leyen’s Berateraffären, the Puma tank debacle, Bundesrechnungshof warning of basically 0 checks & balances at the Beschaffungsamt, etc). The economy is already nosediving and they had to roll in the previous government last minute just to get that 100 billion funding. Germany is already part of and surrounded by pseudo-defensive NATO. What I see is a systemic drain on many western economies by outside forces that you can’t just send a tank to in order to make them stop because they’re funding the entire enchilada via their moneyprinters and lobbyists. If you know someone serving in Bundeswehr, ask them some time about their assessment of the defensive capabilities of this country. The Bundeswehr hasn’t been a standalone deterrence since it was founded. Changing that by proclaiming some kind of “Zeitenwende” is a pipe dream.

This thread is proof that none took history classes here. Vilifying, then dehumanizing process is interlude to turning someone into a slave or bar of soap, possibly waging a war or extermination of group of peps. I'm looking at you the ones for whom some people are not white enough. Terrifying that some of so-called devs here are just bloodthirsty scumbags. Like Peter the 🐸 for example.

We probably don't actually need that many tanks. We need more software engineers, drone pilots, logistics specialists, anti-missile, doctors and medics, specialized cameras with AI, etc. I agree with you, that a lot of the money is being completely misplaced, and we could probably cut the budget and invest smarter and end up ahead. The size of the budget, and the purchasing of particular, expensive equipment pieces is perhaps an artifact of keeping the American allies pacified by buying their stuff at inflated prices. Like playing homage as a vassal state. I actually have a cousin studying military economics. He talks a lot, about misallocation. This, for me, is a different question than the basic question, of whether we should bother to strengthen our defenses.

I also don't think we need to be a standalone deterrent, but our allies need for us to be earnest and willing to do our part and sacrifice.

French and English look especially trustworthy considering WWII. Just saying.

Sarcasm of course.

Who's put these paedophiles in charge, so-called democracy I presume?

USA - “everyone else is to blame except us”.

I don’t see many allies right now: Biden-era US destroyed the pipelines, Poland applauded, UK/France torpedoed any attempts of ending the Ukraine war, Denmark and Sweden didn’t look too close into the Nordstream explosions until closing the cases. I still don’t know what nation we’re supposed to defend against because we don’t have anything that’d be of interest to the single country that’s being sold as that aggressor. Land? They have plenty. People? Natural resources? Same. Industry? Well, that’s going downhill quickly without cheap gas. Everyone looking into NATO history should be very careful about being willing to sacrifice anything for this organization. We wouldn’t have 90% of historic terrorism, especially from the Right, without their GLADIO stay-behind groups and the political climate would be a lot more relaxed without the regime change color revolutions orchestrated by NATO and affiliated & aligned entities.

Germany sent out a warrant, for a Ukrainian they think blew up the pipeline, and Poland refused to extradite him and the US told us to shut up about it. 😏

Big surprise. Can’t have a patsy say the wrong things in court.

Regime change was more CIA than NATO, as far as I know. Allies are not friends, of course. A nation has no friends. But not having allies is also generally a bad idea. It's easy to say "we have no allies", but having truly no allies...

And that is the USA under Trump. LOL

My curiosity is piqued, tho. I would love to hear the whole thing.

Libya was mostly NATO though.

Well, of course. Always strike a potential threat before they become too large of one.

True.

This is incredibly worrisome, though. Nuclear warfare does seem to be becoming a more imminent threat.

We've been hearing that, nonstop, for three years. It only makes any sense, if you think Russians would sacrifice Moscow, to gain Kharkiv.

And, in that case, they would end up with neither, as everything would just be a lifeless radiation-poisoned desert. This is always the problem with nuclear weapons. It's impossible to use them without losing.

It does. Question is: would they nuke Kharkiv? I don't believe they would since it's too close to some much needed resources, and that would make excavation too troublesome, but who knows with these psychos.

If you have some nukes 😅

"Just a reminder that peace is the ultimate power! 🌍✌️ Let's focus on building bridges, not walls. #ChooseKindness"

I don't think the Russian command are psychos. They are pursuing specific goals I disagree with. That doesn't make them crazy. I suspect things are escalating because a peace deal seems possible, so everyone is trying to get into the best negotiation position possible, beforehand, and get some good photo ops in and launch all of their hail-mary plays. Approaching peace deals can lead to this sort of scramble. Like it's a game of musical chairs and everyone is frantically trying to get the last chair, before the music stops.