The war in Ukraine has shifted thinking — both among politicians and the public — on the need to spend more on defense.
The European public and politicians are in agreement that EU countries should do more to increase weapons production.
That’s according to the results of the latest Eurobarometer poll, obtained in advance by POLITICO Playbook, and a draft of the EU’s Strategic Agenda seen by POLITICO.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago has dramatically shifted the rhetoric around defense spending, pushing it up the agenda across the bloc — often at the expense of other policy areas like tackling climate change.
I think Putin is willing to try.
Putin clearly started to believe his own country’s internal propaganda. Despite being inside the Soviet Union, and actually being part of the systemic lies to project false power, he started to believe what he was being told. As if the systems built on had fundamentally changed after the fall ad his rise to power.
There were a lot of delays getting international supplies to Ukraine at the beginning of the conflict, yet Russia still couldn’t get close to their goal even with an extended timeframe. Once those supplies began to arrive, Russia was never going to be able to achieve their goal like they thought, but Putin’s ego won’t let him admit he was fooled by his own bullshit propaganda machine.
Good point.
Better sacrifice your housing, education, infrastructure, and medical budgets for Raytheon shareholders just in case.
And what makes you think Europe is going to do that?
Where do you think that money must come from?
Every dollar that is spent on bombs is a dollar that doesn’t go into feeding, housing, and educating the people.
Eisenhower said it well:
Rest of the quote is even more explicit about it:
Yeah, great parting speech. Shame he spent his entire presidency letting MacArthur and Lemay do war crimes in Korea and propping up the military industrial complex.
Yeah, US presidents unfortunately tend to be either hypocrites, liars or open warmongers. Often more than one of the above 😮💨
To be fair, the US President doesn’t have nearly as much power to actually accomplish things like many people think, at least domestically. Congress has the actual power, whether they utilize it well or not. The President has to work with Congress to actually get things accomplished, and Congress controls the money.
International relations and war, those are things the President more directly controls, and even then Congress has some control of things like approving weapons sales (again, the money).
The Legislative Branch makes the laws, the Executive branch implements them (and the modern Judicial decides based on their personal beliefs whether they’ll let it happen, or find some flimsy justification to prevent it).