Trump admin seizes US$120,000,000 owned by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board as stake in an offshore wind project, demands that it be invested in fossil fuel development instead.
Trump admin seizes US$120,000,000 owned by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board as stake in an offshore wind project, demands that it be invested in fossil fuel development instead.
The US actually needs to produce weapons to sell them. Just go look at stuff like missile production rates. The US ran through more than half its stocks in the war on Iran in just a couple of months. They need to replenish thousands of missiles now while they’re able produce the them in artisanal numbers. Since the US still has ambitions of challenging China in Asia, that’s where whatever they’re able to produce will go. They already had to pull weapons from the vassals all over the world like THAAD batteries from Korea. That’s how things are going.
And I don’t see how the rest of NATO will magic factories and logistics chains into being. This isn’t like printing money. Real world infrastructure takes decades to build. You have to train the workers, build factories, engineer machines, and so on. There is no way to produce all that in the foreseeable future in nations that are thoroughly deindustrialized. The skill base isn’t there.
If the US pulled out, the rational thing for smaller countries would be to make deals with other big powers like China to balance the US.
The last point shows that the alliance is not combat effective. So, it’s not going to provide the kind of protection people expect even if it did survive, and magically figured out how to produce weapons at scale.
It’s weird that you keep emphasizing weapons sales. Weapons sales have nothing to do with maintaining NATO, as a defensive alliance. Sure, you need weapons to defend yourself and your allies…but you wouldn’t just cancel the alliance if your stockpiles are low, or your supply chains were inadequate. It also has nothing to do with their current combat effectiveness. Those considerations have nothing to do with maintaining the alliance.
And there’s no “magic” involved when you are scaling up your own production. It takes investment. Not magic. Europe has some of the most advanced military manufacturing on the planet…just not at the scale necessary to cut the US out of the loop. That’s where the investment would come in…to scale up production to meet demand. It isn’t about inventing new capabilities on the fly. Those capabilities already exist.
And no, the “rational thing” would not be to turn to China. They are not a NATO ally. Why would anyone in NATO turn to a potential adversary for their military tech? That’s almost as bad as relying on the US under their current administration. China is notorious for copyright infringement, as it is. Why would anyone trust them to keep highly sensitive military technologies proprietary?
First of all, NATO is not a defensive alliance by any stretch of imagination. This alliance has a long history of invading and destroying countries and it’s responsible for killing and displacing millions of people. NATO invaded Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.
Second, it’s kind of weird that you don’t understand why weapons production is a key part of a military alliance. Who produces the military strength is, in fact, the key question. And read what I actually wrote. What I said was that replacing the US role would take decades. I said there’s no magic way to shortcut that.
We can also see how this investment of yours works out in practice already. Europeans pledged to produce 1.5 mil artillery shells for Ukraine. A bunch of money was allocated to various slush funds, and the shells never materialized. That’s what NATO is actually good at, sucking money out of productive economy and driving austerity to line the pockets of the oligarchs.
And not sure which capabilities you claim already exist. Given how NATO weapons performed in Ukraine and Iran, it’s pretty clear that there is no meaningful capability here.
And why would it matter whether China is a NATO ally or not. China is the only major world power that can contest the US. Why would anybody be imbecilic enough to want to turn China into a potential adversary? What sort of absolute idiocy would that be. Also, what military technology could China possibly steal from countries that are far behind it technologically in every way. What fantasy world do live in? Chinese universities dominate world rankings right now. China has more scientists than all of the west combined. They’re at the bleeding edge of pretty much every technological field.
If anything, it’s NATO countries who would be stealing Chinese tech and not the other way around.
Wait. You think it would take “decades” for some of the most industrialized countries on the planet to start making weapons…that they already know how to make? I don’t think you realize how many of the highly specialised machines that are required for making those weapons, are actually manufactured in Europe already.
Are you talking about this? If so, it seems you are getting your information from questionable sources.
And yes, NATO is a defensive alliance. If you want to get technical about that list of countries that “NATO” attacked…that was actually the United Nations, in every case except for Iraq. And most NATO nations didn’t participate in that invasion. That was the US and Great Britain acting alone, very similar to the current situation with the US and Israel attacking Iran. All the other campaigns you mentioned were UN sanctioned. I agree that some of those should never have happened…but at least place the responsibility where it belongs.
You need to go back and read what I wrote. China cannot be trusted with proprietary military designs. They would be sold to the highest bidder as soon as China was able to replicate the manufacturing process. There is a reason why most of NATO’s weapons are produced in the US, and the rest are produced by NATO allies. You don’t just outsource your highly classified military tech, to people you know will steal it.
I don’t know, man. Ukraine has done pretty well, holding off Russia for the last few years, using NATO’s surplus. Again, I think you’re getting bad information when it comes to the specifics of your argument.