It's also a way to subsidize your own country by subsidizing the arms industry. Pretty much what has happened in the US in the past years (pretty much all "gifts" are subsidies of the arms industry).

Rearmament is deterrence. Unless you have a big enough stick, you can't deter anything.

You don't need to deter what doesn't exist.

Deterrence is usually the reason why a category of nation-state aggression doesn't exist. Otherwise, the fact that we've never had a global nuclear war would be sufficient to prove that we don't need to deter a global nuclear war.

It was you who brought up deterrence...

Makes sense a throwaway account is spreading Russian propaganda and self conflicting within 1 comment of itself.

> We should spend money on deterrence.

Then

> You don't need to deter what doesn't exist.

I guess next you'll say Russia isn't even at war with Ukraine and we shouldn't believe our lying eyes?

??? I'm suggesting europe take the 800 billion they're going to spend on deterrence and instead buy weapons for Ukraine today. This would degrade russias military sufficient to need to spend less on deterrence in the future. In no way is this supportive of russia.

As an example: If europe gave Ukraine enough cruise missiles to wipe out russias Tu 95 fleet that would be a permanent loss. They were built by the Soviet Union and rebuilding them would take a hundred years at least.

What europe fails to see is the massive ROI from supporting Ukraine today.

Europe seems to be doing exactly that.

Things just changed, so it will take a while to see what is actually happening. But they did claim to have increased a lot what they send to Ukraine.

The combination of both is usually optimal.

- Investing in deterrence is cost effective... up to a point.

- Directly sending Ukraine arms is cost effective... up to a point.

Right now, it's fair to say that (relative to Russia) Europe has been underinvesting in defense for a couple decades.

Good news: they seem to have recognized this and invested in recapitalizing their industrial defense base.

It's not just Russia we need to be weary about. America needs to be guarded against.

I agree somewhat but this is also aimed at independence from the US. The US has shown itself to be an unreliable ally that can get you in a dangerous position and then leave you hanging.

So much of that money is going to close the capability gaps.