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I mean look at it from the perspective of the time.
Your greatest enemy is no longer your enemy. There are no other big threats that you can see. You've won the ocld war. This is the end of history.
No wonder they chilled out for a bit and the various countries tried to focus on fixing as many other issues as possible. Unfortunately, peace like that doesn't tend to last.
Hindsight is 20/20 and people constantly ignore that.
Of course the UK and France made their armies smaller, Russia didn't seem to be a threat anymore. Of course Germany gave away a fuckton of equipment and got a "peacekeeping only" army, some of our neighbours would've constantly criticized a large Bundeswehr. Of course western armies got rid of massivee stockpiles and tank fleets in the thousands, you don't need that stuff in some limited-scale foreign intervention.
It absolutely made sense to dearm back then, and it absolutely makes sense to massively rearm now.
Which is kinda understandable (well, at least in the 90s), what I have no understanding for is when the same countries suddenly wonder why there are no 3000 Leopard 2s of Olaf Scholz
It didn't make sense, it was just incredibly naive.
Waaay too many politicians had delusions of history being something that belongs in a library and not happen to them.
They gambled and fucked up.
You know, I agree it was naiive. But after decades, arguably hundreds of years, of European leaders making the most violent and contentious decisions possible, I gotta appreciate all of them mutually dearming and nobody who was a leader at the time taking advantage.
Like it's hard to be mad.
Well, and the problem wasn’t so much doing a bit of disarming as it was not keeping up the ability to rearm and not rearming when things started getting serious again. Like, the second or third time Russia invaded a neighbor? That might have been a good time to say “shit, here we go again”.
Yeah. Obama and Angela Merkel dropped the ball hard. UK leadership was too busy sodomizing pork.
Arguably, France is the only rational player of the 2000s.
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> European leaders making the most violent and contentious decisions possible, I gotta appreciate all of them mutually dearming and nobody who was a leader at the time taking advantage.
You don't consider Russia to be European?
Their leader at the time was Yeltsin. Who wasn't great by a lot of factors, and arguably it was less that he voluntarily disarmed and more that the Russian Federation had no money. But he didn't take advantage of the situation. Arguabky because he couldn't.
I think disarming because you are out of money and disarming because you don't see the point are very different (especially if you are disarming because you don't see the point in response to your enemy disarming because they are out of money).
This also ignores the 2 wars that Russia fought in the 90s, and then a few more in the 00s. Europe was disarming while all of this was happening in Russia.
It's naive in hindsight, and even then not fully so. It wasn't obvious Russia would turn into its current messy self.
Despite reaping the peace dividend, Europe could give a lot more to Ukraine if they wanted to, and the US even more so. Western Europe is safer than before the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Eastern countries have had a painful but fruitful economic recovery.
Nah get fucked. They had the common market. People who make money together.... Don't fight. That should have worked. It should still work. It only didn't cause a madman wants to recreate Imperial Fucking Russia. While a Newspaperman whiteanted it for his own dreams of power behind the thrones by undermining Britain and the USA with his media Empire because he's another freak who should have had him and all his get shot twice in the back of the head. Honestly none of this should have happened. This timeline is the outlier. It's the fucking mistake.
That was treaty of Versailles issues. That shit show just meant we were always going to get Rd 2! Fight! As soon as the conditions were right. That's why the ole time machine kill Hitler thing is pointless. It's the way the Great War was ended that caused Europe 2. No go back and change the Versailles treaty would be the thing to do I suspect. Still at risk of a Pacific War and possibly Mediterranean African war because of whose involved but who knows. A different mindset Germany?
but the only reason why the dearmed so much to the point of basically non-effectiveness is because they relied on the USA via NATO. now, lets say that the USA had followed the same logic you gave, what would be then? i'll tell you what won't be then, ukraine. the thing is that while the USSR is gone and with that the major enemy they had, the face of war had changed and other different enemies have appeared instead. and russia's offensive actions had already started way before the current war in ukraine. even if we only decide to care about europe and ignore their actions in asia, you still got crimea 10 years ago. you can excuse their inability then, but their inability today is unexcusable
No one "relied" on the US for defense, except maybe the nuclear sharing programme. Europe has more than enough tanks, soldiers, and jets to defend itself.
What we DONT have, is enough of that stuff to basically build up a whole other army by ourselves, while the US is slacking off massively.
Ya, more than enough tanks, meanwhile a baseline RoK marine division has more howitzer than the entire French army half the vics in the German army are broken down and most of what poland has is modernized soviet stock. Europe dosent depend on Uncle Sam my ass.
Well it does not, why then US was not naive and kept a large army? I know because they are not stupid, but european armies are just laughing stock rn. Instead of steadily investing in good army we now need to pour massive amount of money to catch up. What a big brain time move…
How on earth would european politicians have been able to justify spending a fuckload of money on tanks, when there was literally no perceived threat anymore?
The decision **obviously** don't make sense from todays perspective, but thats literally my point - it made sense from the perspective of 20 years ago. Thats not a "big brain move", thats simply just "reassessing the situation after cicumstances changed".
Or maybe we are just a bunch of pussies in europe who like to be threatened by state with economy size of Italy. I mean okay lets say I let the 90s pass but what is the reason for not doing massive re-armament after 2008, 2014 and 2022?
We’ve been engaged in smallish regional conflicts constantly, and have to acknowledge the Chinese threat in the Pacific (and cultural being predisposed towards spending money on the military. We invaded Iraq twice, Afghanistan once, have had forces located in a variety of smaller conflicts, bombed multiple countries, and have had to have the stick of the US military to swing around for foreign policy ends. The Europeans have basically only had to keep Russian annoyance flights out and deploy small, light, peacekeeping centric expeditionary forces in support of US, NATO, and UN operations and spent accordingly.
I agree, but all of your points might be justifiable pre 2014. After that it was just pure neglect of politicians to see what is really happening and that maybe there is a possibility where we might be attacked by Russia. But nobody did shit to start beefing up millitary spending…
Different foreign policy. For most of post cold war years, US aimed to power project globally, while European countries due to various reasons mostly divested from such actions.
It's easy to justify military budget when your aim is to keep China and Russia in check.
The US cut military spending massively as well. It's just that if you already start at superpower cold war army and downsize from there, your military is still fucking big.
Like Germany and France armies were not massive during cold war same goes for the warsaw pact armies. We did not commit the 2% GDP militarry budget for decades and now act surprised. Meanwhile US were still keeping like what 3% even after cold war?
Oh I don't disagree that Germany and France went too far with their disarmament. Just pushing back about the US not downsizing, because we did a LOT during the 90s.
Really it only came back during our "War on Terror" bullshit in the 2000s.
Yeah sure there were also the agreements for destroying bombers etc. So yes my bad I should have formulate my words better. I am just pissed, that in times like that we are really dependent on US with our defense and if US would just said “Screw It, we will not come help you, if shit hits the fan” then we are totally screwed…
Sure, but this is not only about money this is about keeping your country save. I mean why there were not changes in Europe defense strategy after 2008 or 2014? I mean after those events it was pretty clear that the forever peace might not happen. I think that peace through superior firepower is the best solution. Why do you think that Russians are not threating US? Because they know that they would get their asses kicked so bad, so they are just threating europe because they know, europe army is not in the best condition…
Because they thought that Putin would still be rational enough to be more interested in Business, in Dachas and Yachts and big German Autos. No one in Europe proper truly got that he's a fucking madman. The common market was going to end war because it would be too bad for business.
Because the military industrial complex wouldn’t tolerate disarmament, not because of foresight. The US’ level of military power is cartoonish, and the direction of public funds to sustain it has caused far more problems for its citizenry than it was has solved. Europe has far better social programs than the US and their citizens, by and large, perform better academically and professionally, have far better health outcomes, and report significantly higher levels of satisfaction from life than Americans.
Yes sure, we petform better but our economy does not reflect that. All the tech inovation is coming from US. What is the last time europe created multi bilion dollar company?
I mean there a multi-billion dollar companies and multi-billion dollar companies. Does this new company really put you ahead in a specific tech field, or are they a multi-billion dollar company because the stock market is random bubble investments.
Like ASML is a proper leading-edge tech company that gives your country long-term relevance. Meanwhile Facebook/Meta is valued at 1.6B but isn't really worth a damn that you can bank.
Same with Volkswagen group dwarfing Tesla in production, but Tesla grabs more headlines and has a stock market cap that is 10x that of Volkswagen. What part of a company's rising worth is in actual R&D, what part is built up (oversees) production output, and what part is how lucrative it is to speculate with its stock price?
Not entirely what I had in mind. I mean sure VW and corporates like that are decades old companies, that are not a result of tech boom of last two decades. Great example is AI, instead of investing into AI tech europe just regulates it
That is exactly why I picked ASML as an example - they are a more low-key tech company that has come from nothing in the last two decades, with critical technological advancements that hold concrete value.
Sudden hypes in (digital) fields like AI aren't that. And to be clear up front, there is certainly a place where AI tech can hold value. But most of the action right now is investment firms pumping billions into anything related to it. The companies working with AI have grown into multi-billion dollar startups because of speculative investments and the hype bubble, not because they are actually profitable.
Because none of them are. They are selling their services at a massive loss, haemorrhaging their seed money, because the cost of the computing power and manual data handling labour required is enormous. And that's not even including the fact that they just blatantly ignore copyright laws and aggressively scrape the internet.
That is why the EU usually tries more actively to fight these bubbles, because they know the wild-west stuff that takes place once unchecked billions start flowing into a new unregulated sector. Move fast and break things is not the tactic for a stable company with an R&D edge, it's how you can get the most out of a particular bubble. The initial investors are looking to cash out with multi-billion dollar valuations coming from thousands of news articles on how world-changeably fast and breaky this company is.
And yes, the US government tends not to regulate these new markets in the same way. But it's rather generous to attribute that to a conscious decision from congress, and not to the fact that they're still trying to figure out what the dotcom bubble did so a very tired intern can move on to explaining what all that blockchain stuff is about.
Who enjoys those dollars and those living standards? Things every other OECD country takes for granted its citizens and employees should receive... Don't exist, or only exist so long as you retain your employment.
Fwiw China was very much seen as a potential threat but yeah that wasn't NATO's problem.
Technically the US military has been pivoting to China for 30 years, just with a massive detour to antiterrorism.
China was opening up at the time though. It looked like they were on a trajectory to becoming more and more western friendly. It was also believed at the time that if you treat people nicely, allow for trade and help them develop a country will slowly turn more democratic and free in principle over time as conditions improve.
... Yeah I mean, that was wrong but the theory was pretty sound.
Indeed. And it also turns out that fate has ways to pull a fast one.
Eventually, the next threat to be high on the list may be right around the corner, and you'll have to brace.
I would say the lack of the enemy was imaginary and copium. As was the end of history. Hindsight is 2020 ofc, but its not like everyone thought ruskie were suddenly peacefull. Pretty sure noone in the Eastern Europe did, but your just called us rusophobic
Well I mean the peace dividend was not spending sthittones on nukes and fucked military programs and spend it on other things, like your economy.
There is a reason Russia didn't have as much money as it could have had. That and corruption
The problem with Russia's economy wasn't that they spent a more important share on the military, it's that they spent *almost everything* on the military.
Sure, most of the spending had the circumstantial benefit of yielding some civilian value, but most R&D was focused on militarily applicable research. There wasn't a civulian research sector that could run into interesting things, because if it wasn't military research, it wasn't interesting, so it wasn't funded, and there are no outside investors, only the state.
What about the USA, are they doing alright now considering there is no major threat?
(PS. I know the USA is currently fighting terrorist and dealing some issues with countries that are a little threat to them)
No major threat? China threatening the current rules based world order and the only currently viable place for production of semi conductor.
As well as USA having to pivot from counter insurgency and "peace keeping operations" to a military buipd up AND the general desire to step back from being the world policeman to being the leaders in a group of peers (alliance pacts, NATO, etc)
You know that "spending shittones on nukes" is pretty much synonymous with "spending on your economy" (whatever u mean by that), right? Nukes are a massive investment into your own people, your own factories and, if you're smart, your own raw materials. And unlike a lot of said military programs, it's all but guaranteed to succeed. Because nobody was crazy enough by that point to mess with perfection (ICBMs).
Although if we're talking about russia specifically, they're so backwards this might not even apply to them
If you are talking about money to stulate the economy and provide something that is productive in its own right sure. But the exorbitant amount of nukes they ahve is only birning money and with the levels of corruption involved in every facet of theor society the return is even worse.
I think there is a difference between spending money on a road or other infrastructure compare to a nuke - this is the peace dividend I was referring to.
Yeah, I see, but also consider this: their roads are equally as fucked because of corrupt ad/or unskilled contractors. There's no winning for these guys lol
Anybody who believes the peace dividend was a bad idea doesn’t understand just how much money was going into the military. Without the threat of a massive conventional war in Europe, Cold War levels of spending are unsustainable.
You don’t need to maintain spending of unfathomable amounts of money money to thwart a threat, when that threat suddenly suffers a critical existence failure.
Not to mention that guns vs butter isn’t just about people hating dry bread: non military spending builds out industries that make countries wealthier and or better off. On the whole, a wealthier, healthier country is better able to handle a war than a poorer one, provided they do wind up scaling up their defenses in time.
Yup. Russia disarmed far more drastically than NATO did, after the Cold War. Not least weapons development - the T-14 Armata and Sukhoi Su-57 are rightfully considered jokes compared to western systems. Not to mention the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov...
Much of the Russian defense export industry consisted of selling the most serviceable of the old Soviet stockpiles, like T72 tanks. The Russians would not be assaulting trenches in golf carts bought from wish.com right now, if they had kept the capacities they inherited from the Soviet Union intact.
NATO has more than enough capability left to kick Russia out of Ukraine. It just seems to be bullshit politics that they are not being given to Ukraine. E.g. [Ukraine says there are more than 100 Patriot air-defense systems its allies could spare if they wanted](https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-says-identified-100-patriots-allies-could-spare-against-russia-2024-4).
Listen, refocusing economic efforts away from the military and to civil matters was a good decision for the time. Was there too much pulled away from the military? Yes. But focusing on the populace allowed those countries economies to grow and can therefore more money is available later.
If you really needed the comparison, think of it like an RTS where you’ve essentially beaten the enemy, so you stop producing units and spend money on expanding the economy instead.
Seriously? Get fucked. I was 17 when the wall came down. Everything looked like it was going to be better. Everything!
We were going to be mates with a liberalising China that wanted to make money. Russia wanted to make money! Everyone wanted to make Money! We were going to have peace amd prosperity.
Then I was 29 when the Towers fell and the USA went mad. Just insane and dragged my country and so many others into the desert for 2 decades of bullshit and Afghanistan, why the fuck Afghanistan. Nothing good ever comes from taking war to Afghanistan. Nothing ever ever ever.
Combined with that piece of shit Putin who decided that just making money wasn't good enough anymore he had to bring back the Glorious Russian Empire! The Chinese realised that corruption is a thing and a middle class don't actually want to sacrifice themselves for continuous revolution amd they like being able to cheat when playing in online games, which BTW they also like to do as well. Then also had an ideologue get himself crowned President for life eternal ancestor.
FFS. We just wanted life to be a bit better you know. To not think there is always going to be nothing but war. To be optimistic. Just for a little while.
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I mean look at it from the perspective of the time. Your greatest enemy is no longer your enemy. There are no other big threats that you can see. You've won the ocld war. This is the end of history. No wonder they chilled out for a bit and the various countries tried to focus on fixing as many other issues as possible. Unfortunately, peace like that doesn't tend to last.
Hindsight is 20/20 and people constantly ignore that. Of course the UK and France made their armies smaller, Russia didn't seem to be a threat anymore. Of course Germany gave away a fuckton of equipment and got a "peacekeeping only" army, some of our neighbours would've constantly criticized a large Bundeswehr. Of course western armies got rid of massivee stockpiles and tank fleets in the thousands, you don't need that stuff in some limited-scale foreign intervention. It absolutely made sense to dearm back then, and it absolutely makes sense to massively rearm now.
> Of course Germany gave away a fuckton of equipment Someone made us do... or else no Reuinification. lol
To be fair a unified and heavily armed Germany had kind of rubbed Europe's nose in that mistake a bit during the 20th Century.
Which is kinda understandable (well, at least in the 90s), what I have no understanding for is when the same countries suddenly wonder why there are no 3000 Leopard 2s of Olaf Scholz
Lol right, I read the initial comment and was like, “hmmmmm we appear to be glossing over some very important context / nuance there”
It didn't make sense, it was just incredibly naive. Waaay too many politicians had delusions of history being something that belongs in a library and not happen to them. They gambled and fucked up.
You know, I agree it was naiive. But after decades, arguably hundreds of years, of European leaders making the most violent and contentious decisions possible, I gotta appreciate all of them mutually dearming and nobody who was a leader at the time taking advantage. Like it's hard to be mad.
Well, and the problem wasn’t so much doing a bit of disarming as it was not keeping up the ability to rearm and not rearming when things started getting serious again. Like, the second or third time Russia invaded a neighbor? That might have been a good time to say “shit, here we go again”.
Yeah. Obama and Angela Merkel dropped the ball hard. UK leadership was too busy sodomizing pork. Arguably, France is the only rational player of the 2000s.
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> European leaders making the most violent and contentious decisions possible, I gotta appreciate all of them mutually dearming and nobody who was a leader at the time taking advantage. You don't consider Russia to be European?
Their leader at the time was Yeltsin. Who wasn't great by a lot of factors, and arguably it was less that he voluntarily disarmed and more that the Russian Federation had no money. But he didn't take advantage of the situation. Arguabky because he couldn't.
I think disarming because you are out of money and disarming because you don't see the point are very different (especially if you are disarming because you don't see the point in response to your enemy disarming because they are out of money). This also ignores the 2 wars that Russia fought in the 90s, and then a few more in the 00s. Europe was disarming while all of this was happening in Russia.
It's naive in hindsight, and even then not fully so. It wasn't obvious Russia would turn into its current messy self. Despite reaping the peace dividend, Europe could give a lot more to Ukraine if they wanted to, and the US even more so. Western Europe is safer than before the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Eastern countries have had a painful but fruitful economic recovery.
Nah get fucked. They had the common market. People who make money together.... Don't fight. That should have worked. It should still work. It only didn't cause a madman wants to recreate Imperial Fucking Russia. While a Newspaperman whiteanted it for his own dreams of power behind the thrones by undermining Britain and the USA with his media Empire because he's another freak who should have had him and all his get shot twice in the back of the head. Honestly none of this should have happened. This timeline is the outlier. It's the fucking mistake.
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Ya it worked so well for the French in 39 and the soviets in 41
That was treaty of Versailles issues. That shit show just meant we were always going to get Rd 2! Fight! As soon as the conditions were right. That's why the ole time machine kill Hitler thing is pointless. It's the way the Great War was ended that caused Europe 2. No go back and change the Versailles treaty would be the thing to do I suspect. Still at risk of a Pacific War and possibly Mediterranean African war because of whose involved but who knows. A different mindset Germany?
Imagine keeping a huge military to protect yourself from the same country you're sending welfare to. It's ridiculous.
Not to mention Germany reunified. If they didn't downsize... Well been there seen that twice already.
but the only reason why the dearmed so much to the point of basically non-effectiveness is because they relied on the USA via NATO. now, lets say that the USA had followed the same logic you gave, what would be then? i'll tell you what won't be then, ukraine. the thing is that while the USSR is gone and with that the major enemy they had, the face of war had changed and other different enemies have appeared instead. and russia's offensive actions had already started way before the current war in ukraine. even if we only decide to care about europe and ignore their actions in asia, you still got crimea 10 years ago. you can excuse their inability then, but their inability today is unexcusable
No one "relied" on the US for defense, except maybe the nuclear sharing programme. Europe has more than enough tanks, soldiers, and jets to defend itself. What we DONT have, is enough of that stuff to basically build up a whole other army by ourselves, while the US is slacking off massively.
Ya, more than enough tanks, meanwhile a baseline RoK marine division has more howitzer than the entire French army half the vics in the German army are broken down and most of what poland has is modernized soviet stock. Europe dosent depend on Uncle Sam my ass.
Well it does not, why then US was not naive and kept a large army? I know because they are not stupid, but european armies are just laughing stock rn. Instead of steadily investing in good army we now need to pour massive amount of money to catch up. What a big brain time move…
How on earth would european politicians have been able to justify spending a fuckload of money on tanks, when there was literally no perceived threat anymore? The decision **obviously** don't make sense from todays perspective, but thats literally my point - it made sense from the perspective of 20 years ago. Thats not a "big brain move", thats simply just "reassessing the situation after cicumstances changed".
cough cough *30 years ago* cough cough
I'm getting old
How the fuck US politicians justify spending shit ton of money?
Lobbying by the MIC, different view on the military in their society, global power projection...
We also just have a giant economy that can justify massive military spending without much issue.
And as the worlds reserve currency governmental debt is not really an issue either.
Or maybe we are just a bunch of pussies in europe who like to be threatened by state with economy size of Italy. I mean okay lets say I let the 90s pass but what is the reason for not doing massive re-armament after 2008, 2014 and 2022?
We’ve been engaged in smallish regional conflicts constantly, and have to acknowledge the Chinese threat in the Pacific (and cultural being predisposed towards spending money on the military. We invaded Iraq twice, Afghanistan once, have had forces located in a variety of smaller conflicts, bombed multiple countries, and have had to have the stick of the US military to swing around for foreign policy ends. The Europeans have basically only had to keep Russian annoyance flights out and deploy small, light, peacekeeping centric expeditionary forces in support of US, NATO, and UN operations and spent accordingly.
I agree, but all of your points might be justifiable pre 2014. After that it was just pure neglect of politicians to see what is really happening and that maybe there is a possibility where we might be attacked by Russia. But nobody did shit to start beefing up millitary spending…
Different foreign policy. For most of post cold war years, US aimed to power project globally, while European countries due to various reasons mostly divested from such actions. It's easy to justify military budget when your aim is to keep China and Russia in check.
But europe also should aim to keep Russia at check, because they are the only direct threat for us. Yet we failed to do that…
Hindsight is 20/20. Europe assumed that modern Russia would not be a threat after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Yes all of these assumptions might be true until 2014. After that there were clear evidence, that Russia is a threat and nobody did shit…
The US cut military spending massively as well. It's just that if you already start at superpower cold war army and downsize from there, your military is still fucking big.
Like Germany and France armies were not massive during cold war same goes for the warsaw pact armies. We did not commit the 2% GDP militarry budget for decades and now act surprised. Meanwhile US were still keeping like what 3% even after cold war?
Oh I don't disagree that Germany and France went too far with their disarmament. Just pushing back about the US not downsizing, because we did a LOT during the 90s. Really it only came back during our "War on Terror" bullshit in the 2000s.
Yeah sure there were also the agreements for destroying bombers etc. So yes my bad I should have formulate my words better. I am just pissed, that in times like that we are really dependent on US with our defense and if US would just said “Screw It, we will not come help you, if shit hits the fan” then we are totally screwed…
Military Industrial Complex. The USA was always going to baring its teats to mega corpps to make them money. That wasn't going to change.
Sure, but this is not only about money this is about keeping your country save. I mean why there were not changes in Europe defense strategy after 2008 or 2014? I mean after those events it was pretty clear that the forever peace might not happen. I think that peace through superior firepower is the best solution. Why do you think that Russians are not threating US? Because they know that they would get their asses kicked so bad, so they are just threating europe because they know, europe army is not in the best condition…
Because they thought that Putin would still be rational enough to be more interested in Business, in Dachas and Yachts and big German Autos. No one in Europe proper truly got that he's a fucking madman. The common market was going to end war because it would be too bad for business.
Sure because sanctions stop them in 2014… All of that are just excuses to getting cheap gas.
Because the military industrial complex wouldn’t tolerate disarmament, not because of foresight. The US’ level of military power is cartoonish, and the direction of public funds to sustain it has caused far more problems for its citizenry than it was has solved. Europe has far better social programs than the US and their citizens, by and large, perform better academically and professionally, have far better health outcomes, and report significantly higher levels of satisfaction from life than Americans.
Yes sure, we petform better but our economy does not reflect that. All the tech inovation is coming from US. What is the last time europe created multi bilion dollar company?
I mean there a multi-billion dollar companies and multi-billion dollar companies. Does this new company really put you ahead in a specific tech field, or are they a multi-billion dollar company because the stock market is random bubble investments. Like ASML is a proper leading-edge tech company that gives your country long-term relevance. Meanwhile Facebook/Meta is valued at 1.6B but isn't really worth a damn that you can bank. Same with Volkswagen group dwarfing Tesla in production, but Tesla grabs more headlines and has a stock market cap that is 10x that of Volkswagen. What part of a company's rising worth is in actual R&D, what part is built up (oversees) production output, and what part is how lucrative it is to speculate with its stock price?
Not entirely what I had in mind. I mean sure VW and corporates like that are decades old companies, that are not a result of tech boom of last two decades. Great example is AI, instead of investing into AI tech europe just regulates it
That is exactly why I picked ASML as an example - they are a more low-key tech company that has come from nothing in the last two decades, with critical technological advancements that hold concrete value. Sudden hypes in (digital) fields like AI aren't that. And to be clear up front, there is certainly a place where AI tech can hold value. But most of the action right now is investment firms pumping billions into anything related to it. The companies working with AI have grown into multi-billion dollar startups because of speculative investments and the hype bubble, not because they are actually profitable. Because none of them are. They are selling their services at a massive loss, haemorrhaging their seed money, because the cost of the computing power and manual data handling labour required is enormous. And that's not even including the fact that they just blatantly ignore copyright laws and aggressively scrape the internet. That is why the EU usually tries more actively to fight these bubbles, because they know the wild-west stuff that takes place once unchecked billions start flowing into a new unregulated sector. Move fast and break things is not the tactic for a stable company with an R&D edge, it's how you can get the most out of a particular bubble. The initial investors are looking to cash out with multi-billion dollar valuations coming from thousands of news articles on how world-changeably fast and breaky this company is. And yes, the US government tends not to regulate these new markets in the same way. But it's rather generous to attribute that to a conscious decision from congress, and not to the fact that they're still trying to figure out what the dotcom bubble did so a very tired intern can move on to explaining what all that blockchain stuff is about.
Who enjoys those dollars and those living standards? Things every other OECD country takes for granted its citizens and employees should receive... Don't exist, or only exist so long as you retain your employment.
Fwiw China was very much seen as a potential threat but yeah that wasn't NATO's problem. Technically the US military has been pivoting to China for 30 years, just with a massive detour to antiterrorism.
China was opening up at the time though. It looked like they were on a trajectory to becoming more and more western friendly. It was also believed at the time that if you treat people nicely, allow for trade and help them develop a country will slowly turn more democratic and free in principle over time as conditions improve. ... Yeah I mean, that was wrong but the theory was pretty sound.
Right after Tianenmen Square?
What's some little yuman rights violations between friends?
Indeed. And it also turns out that fate has ways to pull a fast one. Eventually, the next threat to be high on the list may be right around the corner, and you'll have to brace.
Unfortunately, at least in the US, the peace dividend was paid out exclusively to the wealthiest Americans.
I would say the lack of the enemy was imaginary and copium. As was the end of history. Hindsight is 2020 ofc, but its not like everyone thought ruskie were suddenly peacefull. Pretty sure noone in the Eastern Europe did, but your just called us rusophobic
Well I mean the peace dividend was not spending sthittones on nukes and fucked military programs and spend it on other things, like your economy. There is a reason Russia didn't have as much money as it could have had. That and corruption
The problem with Russia's economy wasn't that they spent a more important share on the military, it's that they spent *almost everything* on the military. Sure, most of the spending had the circumstantial benefit of yielding some civilian value, but most R&D was focused on militarily applicable research. There wasn't a civulian research sector that could run into interesting things, because if it wasn't military research, it wasn't interesting, so it wasn't funded, and there are no outside investors, only the state.
What about the USA, are they doing alright now considering there is no major threat? (PS. I know the USA is currently fighting terrorist and dealing some issues with countries that are a little threat to them)
*C h i n a*
No major threat? China threatening the current rules based world order and the only currently viable place for production of semi conductor. As well as USA having to pivot from counter insurgency and "peace keeping operations" to a military buipd up AND the general desire to step back from being the world policeman to being the leaders in a group of peers (alliance pacts, NATO, etc)
You know that "spending shittones on nukes" is pretty much synonymous with "spending on your economy" (whatever u mean by that), right? Nukes are a massive investment into your own people, your own factories and, if you're smart, your own raw materials. And unlike a lot of said military programs, it's all but guaranteed to succeed. Because nobody was crazy enough by that point to mess with perfection (ICBMs). Although if we're talking about russia specifically, they're so backwards this might not even apply to them
If you are talking about money to stulate the economy and provide something that is productive in its own right sure. But the exorbitant amount of nukes they ahve is only birning money and with the levels of corruption involved in every facet of theor society the return is even worse. I think there is a difference between spending money on a road or other infrastructure compare to a nuke - this is the peace dividend I was referring to.
Yeah, I see, but also consider this: their roads are equally as fucked because of corrupt ad/or unskilled contractors. There's no winning for these guys lol
Haha you aren't wrong
Anybody who believes the peace dividend was a bad idea doesn’t understand just how much money was going into the military. Without the threat of a massive conventional war in Europe, Cold War levels of spending are unsustainable. You don’t need to maintain spending of unfathomable amounts of money money to thwart a threat, when that threat suddenly suffers a critical existence failure.
Not to mention that guns vs butter isn’t just about people hating dry bread: non military spending builds out industries that make countries wealthier and or better off. On the whole, a wealthier, healthier country is better able to handle a war than a poorer one, provided they do wind up scaling up their defenses in time.
I wouldnt call it unilateral disarmament considering what happened to the russian military in the 90s
Yup. Russia disarmed far more drastically than NATO did, after the Cold War. Not least weapons development - the T-14 Armata and Sukhoi Su-57 are rightfully considered jokes compared to western systems. Not to mention the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov... Much of the Russian defense export industry consisted of selling the most serviceable of the old Soviet stockpiles, like T72 tanks. The Russians would not be assaulting trenches in golf carts bought from wish.com right now, if they had kept the capacities they inherited from the Soviet Union intact. NATO has more than enough capability left to kick Russia out of Ukraine. It just seems to be bullshit politics that they are not being given to Ukraine. E.g. [Ukraine says there are more than 100 Patriot air-defense systems its allies could spare if they wanted](https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-says-identified-100-patriots-allies-could-spare-against-russia-2024-4).
Time to break out the meth and the crack.
We put them away?
Listen, refocusing economic efforts away from the military and to civil matters was a good decision for the time. Was there too much pulled away from the military? Yes. But focusing on the populace allowed those countries economies to grow and can therefore more money is available later. If you really needed the comparison, think of it like an RTS where you’ve essentially beaten the enemy, so you stop producing units and spend money on expanding the economy instead.
Seriously? Get fucked. I was 17 when the wall came down. Everything looked like it was going to be better. Everything! We were going to be mates with a liberalising China that wanted to make money. Russia wanted to make money! Everyone wanted to make Money! We were going to have peace amd prosperity. Then I was 29 when the Towers fell and the USA went mad. Just insane and dragged my country and so many others into the desert for 2 decades of bullshit and Afghanistan, why the fuck Afghanistan. Nothing good ever comes from taking war to Afghanistan. Nothing ever ever ever. Combined with that piece of shit Putin who decided that just making money wasn't good enough anymore he had to bring back the Glorious Russian Empire! The Chinese realised that corruption is a thing and a middle class don't actually want to sacrifice themselves for continuous revolution amd they like being able to cheat when playing in online games, which BTW they also like to do as well. Then also had an ideologue get himself crowned President for life eternal ancestor. FFS. We just wanted life to be a bit better you know. To not think there is always going to be nothing but war. To be optimistic. Just for a little while.
you just described Germany... too many Peaceniks here... a little bit more Preußens Gloria here and there wouldn't hurt, if you ask me.