The EU is setting up a high-level group of political and military leaders from member states, Ukraine and the UK to speed up efforts to close Europe’s defence capability gaps amid rising Russian threats.
You know where to find me.
Based on what is happening in the world today, to compete effectively you need the dumbest minds. You sometimes have to fight fire with fire.
As long as Russia is fighting in Ukraine, it’s no threat. The EU has to make sure that Russia doesn’t win in Ukraine.
I don’t know. Ukraine is only holding up because of the support from other countries, mainly EU. So the EU getting involved in a conflict of their own might be turning the tide for Russia in Ukraine. It might even be Putin’s only straw left.
No, Russia doesn’t have the strength to fight both the EU and Ukraine. Putin is concentrating on defeating Ukraine. The EU must make sure it doesn’t.
Ukraine is not going to win by invading Russia. Best case scenario Russia will leave occupied territories but will maintain weapon production capabilities their ramped up during the war. In a year or two they will restock and will be ready for another war. EU basically has to keep the war in Ukraine going until they are ready to defend themselves, no matter if Ukraine wins or looses.
And even if the war will not end for some time Russia will be able to stage smaller attacks to destabilize European markets and terrorize its citizens. That’s all they need. They don’t have to invade whole EU to cause serious problems.
Russia is just codename for “world powers”, which include the US and China.
EU officials can’t just outright say we can’t trust our main ally anymore.
except they are winning with the propaganda farms, and right wing governments are being funded by them.
The threat is real. Russia is engaging in lots of psyops in central Europe lately, they have lots of hidden agents.
They may not be able to beat Europe with conventional warfare, but they can definitely cause huge chaos to vital infrastructure and influence politics.
See also: the USA
It’s true that the US basically is currently in control of Europe’s entire digital infrastructure, but they did not act on it.
Russia already used NSA backdoors to launch attacks against Europe, see Petya.
Putin won’t provoke Europe too much. Otherwise, Europe might send troops into Ukraine.
They won’t send troops over hospitals closing down due to malware or party/election information getting leaked. Russias plan of action is to destabilize in the long term, not send a missile over to activate defense treaties.
I love seeing the EU operate intelligently while the the global hegemons collectively defecate on themselves. Yes it’s a bit slow, but it does things a lot better than the other major powers.
Are there any bright minds interested in stopping genocide, or is it a lack of bright hearts?
That’s genocide of brown people.
This is about white people being endangered.
Supplying bombs for brown genocide is just being “neutral”.
Stopping genocide by doing what?
By not colluding. By following international law. By not gifting lucrative trade deals and contract to genocidal thugs. By not granting special observer status within the EU to a mass-murdering nation. By not trading with settler-colonial ethnostates. By not wishing “happy international friendship day” to Israel on official EU social media accounts. By doing what semi-decent countries, such as South Africa do when there is a bloodbath.
The human reaction to such atrocities - the holocaust of our time - is not: “how do I get in on this”.
Are you talking about Gaza? You do realize Russian war is far more deadly, serious, globally-impacting and an actual threat to the union? No one wants to get involved in the middle east (except US for whatever reason, constantly) and things there are relatively calm for almost a year now, so that feels like a weird thing to switch over to instead of focusing on Russia
The child abductions in Ukraine, to rob them of their identity, counts in fact as an act of genocide.
This is why I asked. We have ongoing genocide at our doorstep, but people only speak about genocide happening in Gaza.
While it’s true that Russia us a direct threat to Europe and Israel is not, that doesn’t make the genocide okay. Even if we don’t want to actively stop the genocide, we could at least stop stop selling weapons to Israel (and send them to Ukraine instead), and maybe just refuse any kind of trade with them until they stop.
It’s ridiculous how few EU leaders are willing to condemn genocide. Even just the words would help. Right now we are simply complicit.
EU… selling weapons? What? EU doesn’t have some central arms factory they sell weapons from. You’re thinking of some country. Some countries have done a full embargo, including stopping arms trade. There are others who have not (Greece?).
I don’t think you understand EU.
I do. You’re just making up pointless complaints for argument’s sake.
Pointless complaints? Your complaints are illogical in the first place. Israel has not threatened EU markets or safety, there is no legal basis for the EU upper body to tell other countries they cannot trade with Israel. You’re angry at the wrong government because you do not understand how EU operates. Fix yourself and be angry at specific countries. Here’s anology for you - this is like blaming all people of color X because what some in the group did.
and things there are relatively calm for almost a year now
Utterly false.
There are still hundred bombs raining down on Gaza every day? Do you not understand the word “relatively”? Why would EU get involved in middle east when they have their own war?
“Just because you’re not interested in politics doesn’t mean politics isn’t interested in you”. Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Western Sahara, etc… these are all countries in Europe’s immediate vicinity and what happens in these countries affects the EU whether we want it to or not. If I’m rich, I’d rather live in a nice neighborhood with neighbors who are doing as well as I am, than in a dangerous neighborhood where all the neighbors see me as a stuck-up rich boy whose car has too many hubcaps.
The STILL ongoing civil war in Libya, for instance, causes a constant stream of migration across the Mediterranean, with a lot of human trafficking, because Libya hasn’t got time to worry about that when Libyans are killing other Libyans.
Morocco intentionally sent refugees into Ceuta for politically motivated reasons.
An unstable Arabian Peninsula is not good for Europe. An unstable North Africa is not good for Europe. Perhaps the USA can cause shitstorms in the Middle East and then blithely walk away back to the other hemisphere, but that shit is on our doorstep.
Why would EU get involved in Middle East.
We are involved - up to the hilt. I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but are you really making comments like this in good faith?
Yes. Why would EU shift focus from themselves to middle east and make themselves the next US (self proclaimed world police) that everyone hates for getting themselves involved in middle east? Answer me.
Answer what? Your nonsense reply ignores international law, not to mention decency.
See my previous answer https://lemmy.world/post/51412614/25621166
Ehh.
It really isn’t that hard to understand the basic geopolitic neutrality concept of “support Israel’s existence and security, support Palestinian statehood and civilian rights, oppose Hamas, and oppose Israeli policies that violate international law”. EU is not a militaristic union, and each country can diplomatically mostly do what they want. Hell, even some states are borderline hostile towards one another. It’s not called “United States of Europe”. There has been fair amount of pushback, from nasty public denouncations, to ending trade deals (including military), etc, but it’s all done by individual countries. Israel has never threatened EU, so EU upper body has no legal right to impose total trade embargo to Israel. Spain even banned fuel shipments which provide other EU countries. Stop thinking of EU like US. Yes, since EU union contains many countries, some would naturally, statistically, lean towards supporting Israel, but if you’re going to then claim entire EU is like that, is basically how racism gets born. We are constantly getting threatened by a much larger and scarier country, with multiple drone incidents already, and now this weird ass mysterious CIA visit (which happened before Russia invaded Ukraine) being like a bad omen, I cannot express how much I would not want to go around pissing off US right now, which could be our strongest ally, just to meddle in middle fucking east. Get a grip.
I’m somewhat skeptical about this and it might mean they are looking for people that can inspire millions of others to throw themselves into the meat grinder and be a meat shield against Russia and anyone else they deem a threat.
Thats a really strange conclusion to draw from this. Throwing people into a meat grinder has been a outdated long term strategy since at least the Napoleonic wars, maybe even before that. And recently russia has confirmed this to be case.
“The idea is to give ideas to member states but also EU institutions of what we should do better and faster — to really have tangible results so that we cover the capability gaps we have identified, considering the geopolitical situation”
“what we should do better and faster” they are looking for improvements, not how to convince people to run into machine gun fire. I don’t know where you got the idea that they are trying to find ways to convince people to do that.
Because it always devolves into that, regardless how they try to hide their end goal.
Incorrect. Investing into defense technologies, making plans, making sure troops have proper equipment and enough of it, reduces casualties. It is not some sort of secret plan to kill millions by sending them to machine gun fire. Its exactly the opposite of that.
That is the PR spin. Casualties were reduced in great extent because of massive use of private mercenaries and “local allies”. Its an accounting trick.
What the hell are you on about? PR spin?
They are investing into technologies that will reduce casualties in the event of war, hopefully will deter war completely, thus making sure there is no casualties, at all. How is that a PR spin? Are you suggesting they are secretly planning to actually kill as many people as possible? Stop beating around the bush and say straight way you are talking about, currently you are not making any sense.
What I’m getting at is two things:
- there was a pervasive opinion that EU defense industry will massively outproduce Russia who has GDP size of Italy. That hasn’t materialized. In fact Ukraine relies on its domestic weapons developed under war conditions to deal serious damage to Russians. Why will now be different? Why wouldn’t they again produce a bunch of high-tech low volume wunderwaffen?
- my next claim is that this high tech and low casualty warfare has been shown to be a myth. In middle east wars stats were padded by local mercenaries and that was the main reason behind politically acceptable low casualty rate. Wars against Russia and Iran have further shown that its foolish to expect low casualty war.
So I’m very sceptical that in event of war we will all be fine. Also I see no conspiracy behind any of the claims.
Furthermore I’m not claiming that there should be no defense spending. It just worries me that things could in fact go out of control like they did in Ukraine for Russians and to lesser extent USA&Israel in Iran.
I think we are pairing defense spending surge with no accompanying strategic policy. Where is EU on Ukraine issue? Iran issue? Its just expected to foot the bill.
there was a pervasive opinion that EU defense industry will massively outproduce Russia who has GDP size of Italy. That hasn’t materialized.
russia has always relied on producing more but lower quality. Comparing them is not a 1:1 thing. But if you do compare them like that, the difference is not as big as one would think. Sure, they produce more, but 1. they are in war economy, 2. they’ve always produced more and 3. the differences is not that big, in fact, I’d argue that russia should be producing way more if they intend to have their material advantage to be any way meaningful
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-nato-weapons-production-us-germany/33482927.html
So I’m very sceptical that in event of war we will all be fine.
That’s not the point. Nobody will be “fine” in the event of a war. The point is to 1. make the probability of war as low as possible, that means having a credible amount of defensive capabilities to make the enemy think real long and hard about attacking. And 2. if war does come, having modern stuff is better than having outdated stuff. But the main thing is to have stuff. And at this point its stupid to start producing stuff from decades ago, might as well keep the current production rolling and investing into modern and new stuff.
Also, talking about wunderwaffes is a bit a disingenuous, nobody is suggesting making invisible space lasers or thinking about building one weapons system that will win the war. The money wont be spent on one or two systems that the leaders wrongly think will be enough. The military planners know that you need combined arms that are proven to work. So unless you have evidence about plans to waste money on stupid bullshit, I’m going to disregard that complaint.
It just worries me that things could in fact go out of control like they did in Ukraine for Russians and to lesser extent USA&Israel in Iran.
I’m not sure what you mean with “getting out of control”. If russia attacks, I consider that “getting out of control” and if that happens, that’s precisely the time we will need all the investment, research and production we can get. Better start preparing now so we don’t have to be caught with our pants in our ankles, swinging our dicks in a vain effort to scare them off.
I’ll believe it when i see it.
It still doesn’t mean there won’t be forced conscription, doesn’t mean you can’t be grabbed on the street and sent to the front lines with minimal training and all that fancy technology won’t save you if you have no experience using it.
Having credible defense capabilities alone is enough to keep russia from attacking. So this investment into military tech and capabilities in on itself will make “forced conscription” less likely. So if that’s what you are afraid of, you should be in support of all this and more investment.
Also, modern militaries don’t send untrained troops to use equipment they don’t know how to use, unless they are extremely desperate. And I mean, about to be overrun and conquered levels of desperation.
I think you have some sort of conspiracy brain thinking going on. European countries and their leaders actually do understand that throwing untrained people into a meat grinder is bad for the country, for the economy, for the elites, everyone really. That is exactly the reason why they are investing in this stuff now. They want to keep doing what they’ve been doing so far, keep getting richer and richer. They don’t want to lose the main resource that is making them all those millions that they love so much. That resource is the population. They want to keep peace and keep reaping in the money, thats where the safe and steady profits are. So they are taking actions to keep that status quo.
So, in conclusion, with these investments, you are much, much less likely to be grabbed off the streets. And even if you are grabbed off the streets, you’ll probably have a few years of warning and plenty of opportunity to escape to a safer place. If you somehow fail to do that, you will still be trained, you can probably get some easy job, like a cook or something. And if you do end up grabbed off the street and thrown into the front lines with no training, the situation is so dire that you might as well go die at the front, since you’d die anyway soon, once the enemy has taken over your home.
Lol.
You say that as if it’s up to the EU whether Russia attacks or not. Then again I suppose it is, insofar as si vis pacem, para bellum.
