Europe could face threats from Russia by the end of the decade, and EU countries need to build up their defence industries to be prepared, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said during an interview published on Welt am Sonntag on Saturday.
  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2623·
    10 months ago

    There’s a war going on right now in Ukraine, helping them win it will make Russia launching a next war less likely and further off.

    • Quacksalber@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1404·
      10 months ago

      This is exactly what I am thinking as well. Russia is clearly threatening the stability of the EU right now. If the EU wants to send a strong signal against aggression and meddling, it needs support Ukraine in a way that makes it clear to any would-be-adversary, that the EU is willing and capable to defend itself and its allies.

      • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.worldEnglish
        76·
        10 months ago

        Not to mention, it makes them less reliant on the US – which as an American, means we can reduce our defense spending. Which means we can finally have really good welfare programs.

        • sailingbythelee@lemmy.worldEnglish
          252·
          10 months ago

          This has been disproven so many times. You don’t lack social programs because of defense spending. Defense spending is only 3.5% of GDP. Your wildly inefficient private health care system, on the other hand, costs 16.6% of GDP and you still get worse outcomes, on average, compared to other OECD countries. If you brought your health care system in line with other OECD countries with a public health care system at around 11% of GDP, you could literally double the size of your military and still have tons of money left over to improve social programs and wipe out all medical debt (only 0.6% of GDP, but devastating to poorer families).

    • intelshill@lemmy.caEnglish
      547·
      10 months ago

      what are the odds Ukraine actually takes back their territory? The vaunted summer counteroffensive was a complete and abject failure

      • galloog1@lemmy.worldEnglish
        233·
        10 months ago

        They stopped and presented most of their combat power when it looked like it was going to be a waste like Russia’s recent offensives. They shifted to an attritional fight. You are right in line with the Russian narrative though.

      • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        6·
        10 months ago

        High on taking back northern regions by Kiev, the northern parts and Odessa, medium on eastern territories, and low on Crimea.

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zipEnglish
        22·
        10 months ago

        Ukraine doesn’t have to take back its territory.

        Russia will be forced by NATO to do that, just like how Germany lost so many territories it conquered after WW1.

        • hydroptic@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          3·
          10 months ago

          You do understand that Russia has nuclear weapons and it’s ruled by psychopaths, which sort of make that sort of stuff very costly for literally the entire planet?

  • mrfriki@lemmy.worldEnglish
    461·
    10 months ago

    My history teacher used to say that over the course of history every generation faces a full scale war that directly impact them. Looking through the last couple of centuries that seems about right. I haven’t been in a war yet and I’m a45 years old so, yeah, I’m kinda scared.

    This same teacher also used to say that the only “good” thing about a civil war is that the country that faces it nerves goes through another one ever again. Seeing how things are good in the United States now I’m starting to think that this teacher might be wrong.

    • thedarkfly@feddit.nlEnglish
      401·
      10 months ago

      Yeah, your teacher seemed to deal in absolutes: “it always happens” or “it will never happen again”. I think that events can always happen (again) but they don’t have to.

      • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        10 months ago

        I was going to say, I’m pretty sure this is just historically inaccurate in addition to the fact that there can always be a first for anything.

    • piecat@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      10 months ago

      We won’t have other one*

      *While the generations affected are alive.

      Once the living memories are gone it’s much harder to prevent, since anyone can argue a stance from a history book.

    • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      10 months ago

      This reminds me of how WWI was at one point known as ‘the war to end all wars’.

      How fucking naive were the people who really thought that!

    • jasondj@ttrpg.networkEnglish
      7·
      10 months ago

      We were in a weird spot after the Industrial Revolution but before globalism.

      Post WWII recovery changed that, when most of the developed world (sans America) was literally in shambles.

      I don’t think we’ll ever see another full out war between major powers. Capitalism and the all-mighty dollar will prevent that. But at the same time it will encourage proxy wars.

      Scarcity is a concern but again mostly for the smaller powers. More than likely it’ll be some sort of indebtedness between impoverished countries and their pimp nations backing them out of the proxy wars they created.

  • Rapidcreek@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    485·
    10 months ago

    Article 5

    “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

    Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.’

    • intelshill@lemmy.caEnglish
      59·
      10 months ago

      each party will take action as they deem necessary

      tbh this reads like the “security guarantees” that Ukraine got for giving up their nuclear weapons: not worth the paper it’s written on

      • FlorianSimon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        72·
        10 months ago

        I guess you’re not used to promises that are actually kept by politicians, uh? It helps that NATO members didn’t sell their country’s war equipment for palace money. Ask daddy Putin to try hitting a NATO member, and see what happens.

        Why else do you think Putin would act scared like a beaten dog whenever he hears about NATO? Seeing him cry like a toddler when Finland and Sweden talked about joining was hilarious. Really dulls the strong man image he’s trying to project.

        • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          51·
          10 months ago

          The signatories of the Budapest Memorandum were Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Russia, the UK, and the US.

          The stipulations of the agreement are essentially as follows:

          1. Respect the signatory’s independence and sovereignty in the existing borders (in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act).

          2. Refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of the signatories to the memorandum, and undertake that none of their weapons will ever be used against these countries, except in cases of self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.

          3. Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

          4. Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they “should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used”.

          5. Not to use nuclear weapons against any non - nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, except in the case of an attack on themselves, their territories or dependent territories, their armed forces, or their allies, by such a state in association or alliance with a nuclear weapon state.

          6. Consult with one another if questions arise regarding those commitments.

          1 is obviously trash, and has been since 2014. Russia has tried using legal fig leaves to cover 2, but basically everyone - including Russia - is fully aware that it’s complete bullshit. 3 is also useless - and has been since the document was signed, considering how much influence Russia has exerted on Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan over the last few decades, but particularly since Putin’s ascent to power. 4 is a non-point because the UNSC is and will continue to be categorically useless simply due to the single-veto structure it has. 5 is what Putin threatens every fucking week. 6 is essentially holding hands around the fire and singing kumbaya, which is manifestly idiotic in this context.

          The current situation:

          • One signatory (Ukraine) is under attack from another (Russia), and those attacks were, to a significant degree, enabled by a third signatory (Belarus), which itself has been effectively subsumed by another signatory (Russia)
          • One signatory (Kazakhstan) can’t feasibly do anything, and is additionally already in a semi-sketchy position with another signatory (Russia)
          • the remaining signatories (US; UK) have repeatedly sought UNSC interventions, which have and will continue to fail to pass due to - as noted above - Russia applying their veto as a rule. This is the only enforcement mechanism in the entire thing, and it is effectively a statement of guaranteed bureaucratic inaction.

          For real: retrospectively, Ukraine (and Kazakhstan and Belarus) should have held out for WAY stronger enforcements clauses, but (and this part is basically and educated guess) the US and UK were in the “woooo Cold War DONE” mindset, and Russia probably had a rough idea of their current situation in mind, and thus had a vested interest in making the defensive arrangements more or less meaningless.

    • suoko@feddit.itEnglish
      132·
      10 months ago

      The usual money flow. What future generation will be able to stop these should-be-retired chiefs?

    • intelshill@lemmy.caEnglish
      442·
      10 months ago

      Berlin will do anything to justify pumping money into their failing industrial sector

        • intelshill@lemmy.caEnglish
          19·
          10 months ago

          cute

          German manufacturing PMI is at like 42. By definition, that means Germany’s manufacturing capacity is contracting.

          • sebinspace@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            10 months ago

            Cool! That number is also ignoring what goods are produced, aswell as the cause of any declines. So to look at one number like that, which isn’t really terribly far below the market of what is considered “in decline” and say “oh they’re failing fucking epically and they’re doing everything they can to improve it!” is kinda, you know… fucking stupid. That’s literally judging a book by its cover, and you’re doing it to connect them to a war with their close neighbors they have every right to be concerned about anyway?

    • KISSmyOS@lemmy.worldEnglish
      291·
      10 months ago

      It’s an internal message. The German government just had 60 billion of their planned budget yanked away by a Supreme Court ruling. (They had planned to reroute unused money set aside for covid measures to the general budget. The court denied this, because our constitutional debt ceiling can only be ignored in an emergency, not for general spending)

      Now every department is facing harsh budget cuts and every minister tries to argue why the cuts shouldn’t hit their department.
      Pistorius is saying “if you cut my budget, you might as well start learning to speak Russian”.

    • Pingudiem@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      10 months ago

      Nah dude. It will be refreshing to once not be part of the source of a world war. #fingerscrossed

    • EatATaco@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      I don’t see, after having read the article, how one could consider it a threat. How did you come to question?

    • avater@lemmy.worldEnglish
      314·
      10 months ago

      to russia? yes

      We should make it very clear to enemies like Russia that we do not want a war but are ready for one, if they are stupid enough to start one.

    • Quacksalber@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      884·
      10 months ago

      Pacifism is great and all, but Putin clearly shows that you need to be able to defend yourself, if you don’t want your rights and your freedom eroded away by foreign interests. Granted, no military will help you defend against threats to your rights from within, but it makes it at least less likely that those threats from within get backing from foreign threats.

      • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        764·
        10 months ago

        While I really wish we would do more that Russia loses this war sooner rather than later and their economy is shattered, because that’s the only way I see out of this with Putin losing power, I have to say that Putin only got into the powerful position he’s in now due to mutual escalation for decades. This includes permanent provocations by NATO versus Russia. NATO is a bunch of warmongering pieces of shit, but Putin was so fucking stupid that he basically made the biggest PR campaign that NATO could ever have wished for, and now everyone wants to suck off Jens piece of shit Stoltenberg.

        I despise NATO with every fibre of my being, yet I am fully aware that the stupid fucks have played their cards well enough that now even I see the need for a total econominal crushing of Russia. Only with a regime change we could then try to help the next Russian regime with humanitarian aid to prevent famines etc.

        • Wodge@lemmy.worldEnglish
          542·
          10 months ago

          I want bootlickers to leave. Putin got into power because he was behind a terrorist attack that was blamed on Chechens and he was already a hardline anti Chechnya candidate, it propelled him to power. It was nothing to do with NATO. Countries bordering Russia have chosen to join NATO because Russia is a fuckawful neighbour.

          • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.worldEnglish
            11·
            10 months ago

            see my other comment:

            The time to support a peaceful regime in Russia was 1989ish, with Gorbachev. But that was when NATO chose to fuck over the moderates in Russia and demonstrate that cooperation with the west will be interpreted and exploited as weakness by NATO. So after a few years, we got Putler as a result.

        • Quacksalber@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          483·
          10 months ago

          Not only did Putin do excellent PR for NATO, Putin absolutely validated NATO’s entire existence. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would not be free, indepedent countries today without NATO. They certainly wouldn’t be supporting Ukraine as much as they have. And say what you will about individual countries, but NATO is proving itself once more a defensive pact. With people dying to rocket debris in Poland, russian drones going down in Romania, US drones being downed and UK planes being shot at over international waters, NATO would have plenty of reasons, if they wanted to escalate their rhetoric towards Putin. But they didn’t, because NATO isn’t interested in becoming an active participant in this war.

          • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.worldEnglish
            14·
            10 months ago

            NATO isn’t interested in becoming an active participant because it’s way more profitable to fight a proxy war and let Ukrainians bleed in a war of attrition that hopefully will crush the Russian war machine and economy. If they wouldn’t worry about Russia’s potential and the nuclear arsenal, Moscow would be treated like Baghdad.

        • digeridoo@lemmy.mlEnglish
          302·
          10 months ago

          That’s bullshit and a cop-out. Every country in NATO joined willingly because every country should have some level of self-determination. NATO grew because decade after decade, the Russian government proved that they act in bad faith in nearly every interaction with the international community.

          Maybe if Russia acted in good faith and was willing to be a partner in the region, neighboring countries wouldn’t have felt the need to join NATO, but here we are.

          Pacifism doesn’t work. We’ve seen it time and time again that it just buys our adversaries time, and we end up where we’re at today.

          • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.worldEnglish
            16·
            10 months ago

            It is sad how many upvotes a warmonger like you can get. You pick an arbitrary point in time and look at the state of things then and pretend the lead-up didn’t happen. That’s either propaganda, or an insane lack of functional brain cells.

              • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                8 months ago

                I had your message marked as unread in my inbox so that I’d eventually watch the video you recommended, but now that I got around to it, I have to say I turned it off after a bit over 2 minutes because - speaking as a non native speaker - the narrator has an insanely annoying slur / mumbling in his voice. How can a native speaker possibly be so bad at English? :(

                • Quacksalber@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  1·
                  8 months ago

                  I guess you’re right. His pronounciation isn’t very clear. The tl;dw is, and I don’t claim it to be all encompassing, watch the video if you really want to know what was said, that Poland and Hungary not only weren’t ‘annexed’ into NATO, not only asked nicely to join, but actively bribed and forced their way into NATO. Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin made a horse-trade, where Poland and Hungary joining NATO was scheduled to happen after elections in Russia, but before US elections, so that both can win their reelection. The ascension of Poland and Hungary was clearly communicated and signed off between both head of states. The issue lies with the rest of both countries. Other politicians, on both sides, stirred more hostility. When Bush and Putin took over, the relationship between both coutries deteriorated even further. Bush’s unilateral push to get Georgia and Ukraine into NATO is, according to the video, the reason why Putin invaded Georgia. However after Bush, Obama took over and made it NATO policy that a country must have full control over its land, excluding Georgia for being partially occupied and Ukraine for having singed a lease on the Sevastapol naval base with the Russians, on top of the majority of Ukrainians at the time being against joing NATO. Obama has mellowed his tone significantly towards Russia compared to Bush. Only with the Euromaidan happening did Russia decide that, actually, Ukrainians are nazis and NATO is encroaching our borders and we need to defend ourselves. NATO enlargement isn’t ‘the US broke all agreements and is pushing for encirclement’, but different presidents having different goals. Clinton wanted to be reelected and Poland threatened to mobilize voters with polish roots for the Republicans. Bush was a warmonger that wanted to steamroll everyone, including Russia. Obama was looking to ease tensions and make alliances. The issue with Ukraine is separate from those presidents however. It was triggered by Putin getting spooked by popular uprisings.

            • el_bhm@lemm.eeEnglish
              12·
              10 months ago

              Russia was at war in almost every decade of every century.

              Anyone with access to a library can confirm it.

          • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.worldEnglish
            13·
            10 months ago

            The time to support a peaceful regime in Russia was 1989ish, with Gorbachev. But that was when NATO chose to fuck over the moderates in Russia and demonstrate that cooperation with the west will be interpreted and exploited as weakness by NATO. So after a few years, we got Putler as a result.

    • fiah@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      373·
      10 months ago

      you’re right, we should just let the aggressors take everything, that way nobody has to die

      • FlorianSimon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        31·
        10 months ago

        That would have been an excellent strategy in 1942! Imagine all the lives that would have been saved. I mean uh… Except if you’re Jewish, gay, a traveller, a commie…

        I had a german student tell this to me to my face once. The irony 😁

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.worldEnglish
      344·
      10 months ago

      This is not Iraq. This is a dictatorship invading democracies. I protested the same as you did, we lost the conservatives won. That doesn’t mean this is our second chance.

    • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      519·
      10 months ago

      This is exactly what this saber rattling is about. But judging by the downvotes, most readers don’t have the mental capacity to see that separately from the need to help Ukraine in the current situation.

      • wandermind@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        12·
        10 months ago

        Really? Is that really what it’s about? Or is there any chance that it might be about a country invading and trying to conquer its neighbor?

        • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          Or is there any chance that it might be about a country invading and trying to conquer its neighbor?

          If it was about that, Ukraine would have gotten tons of long range missiles and F16s and a dozen Patriot systems a year ago.