We know for many years our military budget needs to double, but the most ambitious plans call for a 50% increase spread over a decade.
Of course we arent ready, soon we’ll have only 34 fighter jets ( which means about 24 in service while the rest gets maintenance ), no anti air capabilities, no ground forces to speak of and our navy is tiny and without means to do anything more than anti pirate patrols.
At least our medical branch is decent i guess?
Offcourse we are not ready and will probably never be.
What spooks me is how wildly unprepared the Western democracies are, and how clueless the general population of those democracies are.
The world is at a turning point. Either we agree that authoritarian regimes cannot go about invading neighbouring countries, committing warcrimes as they do so, or we give up.
And the only way you stop authoritarian regimes, is by making them lose. You cannot negotiate with them in their terms, because they do not adhere to the sale rule-based world that we do.
Treaties and agreements mean nothing to them, only strength.
If we fail Ukraine, we send the signal that Russia can do as it pleases, making them more bold in Future plans. China will look at Taiwan, and see a realistic target that they could actually invide without Western interference.
Who knows what North-Korea might try, inferior as their military is, they can mobilise their entire population in support of it.
And who knows what is being planned in the Middle east.
I do not believe these things are fearmongering. This has been the way of the world since nation States have been a thing: show strength or pay the price.
This period of relative peace between major powers since the second world war has put us asleep, I just hope we wake up before irreversible damage has been done.
What surprises me is how many people feel like there’s nothing to worry about. This got discussed in De Afspraak on VRT, and one of the guests (I think it was economics professor Paul De Grauwe) was like ‘nah, this is overreacting. How are the Russians going to get to Belgium, with Poland and Germany in between?’.
When the interviewer then said ‘Right, but what about sabotaging our infrastructure?’, he responded like ‘Whatever, we’ll just reboot it in a couple hours tops’. And the interviewer didn’t challenge this at all, letting this statement stand as if it’s some sort of conclusive expert opinion on the matter.
Our infrastructure (energy, telecommunications) is very vulnerable, and I’d say it’s very possible to knock it out for a longer period. If they do it in such a way that they can deny it was them (like the Chinese ship cutting cables near Sweden), then they would likely get away with it without the whole nukes thing.
Learn to fly drones and shoot. Look towards the future.
6 comments
We know for many years our military budget needs to double, but the most ambitious plans call for a 50% increase spread over a decade.
Of course we arent ready, soon we’ll have only 34 fighter jets ( which means about 24 in service while the rest gets maintenance ), no anti air capabilities, no ground forces to speak of and our navy is tiny and without means to do anything more than anti pirate patrols.
At least our medical branch is decent i guess?
Offcourse we are not ready and will probably never be.
What spooks me is how wildly unprepared the Western democracies are, and how clueless the general population of those democracies are.
The world is at a turning point. Either we agree that authoritarian regimes cannot go about invading neighbouring countries, committing warcrimes as they do so, or we give up.
And the only way you stop authoritarian regimes, is by making them lose. You cannot negotiate with them in their terms, because they do not adhere to the sale rule-based world that we do.
Treaties and agreements mean nothing to them, only strength.
If we fail Ukraine, we send the signal that Russia can do as it pleases, making them more bold in Future plans. China will look at Taiwan, and see a realistic target that they could actually invide without Western interference.
Who knows what North-Korea might try, inferior as their military is, they can mobilise their entire population in support of it.
And who knows what is being planned in the Middle east.
I do not believe these things are fearmongering. This has been the way of the world since nation States have been a thing: show strength or pay the price.
This period of relative peace between major powers since the second world war has put us asleep, I just hope we wake up before irreversible damage has been done.
What surprises me is how many people feel like there’s nothing to worry about. This got discussed in De Afspraak on VRT, and one of the guests (I think it was economics professor Paul De Grauwe) was like ‘nah, this is overreacting. How are the Russians going to get to Belgium, with Poland and Germany in between?’.
When the interviewer then said ‘Right, but what about sabotaging our infrastructure?’, he responded like ‘Whatever, we’ll just reboot it in a couple hours tops’. And the interviewer didn’t challenge this at all, letting this statement stand as if it’s some sort of conclusive expert opinion on the matter.
Our infrastructure (energy, telecommunications) is very vulnerable, and I’d say it’s very possible to knock it out for a longer period. If they do it in such a way that they can deny it was them (like the Chinese ship cutting cables near Sweden), then they would likely get away with it without the whole nukes thing.
Learn to fly drones and shoot. Look towards the future.
Can anyone share it? I can’t read it.
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