In 1966, after years of friction with the US over whether France should have its own independent nuclear deterrent, the French president, Charles de Gaulle, withdrew his country from Nato’s integrated command (not, however, from the alliance itself – a common misconception) and asked all US forces stationed in France to leave. In response, the US secretary of state, Dean Rusk, asked de Gaulle: “Does that include the dead Americans in military cemeteries as well?”
In a single weekend, JD Vance’s direct attacks on European democracy at the Munich Security Conference and his meeting with far-right, anti-European political forces in Germany, have given de Gaulle his historic vindication.
There are some things that you avoid saying for as long as you can, for fear that just uttering the words will help bring them into being.
I’ll be honest, I’ve said the same in the past. But Europe is slowly waking up. They are talking about a €700b package for Ukraine which would make the US contribution so far look pretty paltry by comparison. They have some of the best arms manufacturers in the world and can produce anything the US can, often better.
They have a lot larger population than the US and 3x that of Russia. They have a similarly sized economy (10x that of Russia). All they really have to do is scale up more. They’ve already almost doubled their military expenditures in the last decade already. If they pick up the pace, they could be at US levels of military expenditure relatively soon.
It would be a pretty trivial task for Europe to defeat Russia on its own if it set its mind to it.
Thing is that you can’t shoot money. EU tried to ramp up their shell production, and it was an utter failure. Russia is able to produce 3x the shells of all the west combined, and US is by far the biggest western producer. Meanwhile, Europe has consistently struggled to supply even modest arms packages. This is a sobering read on the reality of the situation.
European militaries are in a deplorable state. Here’s what things look like in UK right now.
France and Germany aren’t much different, and these are the major military powers in Europe.
You also seem to be labouring under the delusion that Europe is unified as a single country which it is not. Russia has a state owned industrial complex that is able to produce massive amounts of weapons cheaply. Europe is a bunch of different countries with privatized military industries that produce weapons on artisanal scale.
There is absolutely nothing easy about ramping up military production. Producing things like steel is an energy intensive process, and Europe is in an energy crisis right now. Hence it’s very difficult for Europe to do serious military production on its own.
The reality is that Europe’s looming loss of the US security umbrella exposes a web of existential vulnerabilities, none of which can be resolved quickly or painlessly. The sheer scale of rebuilding self-sufficiency is a decades-long overhaul with no guarantee of success.
First problem is that Europe imports 60% of its energy, with natural gas prices already inflated by post-Ukraine war sanctions and the loss of Russian pipelines. Transitioning to domestic renewables or reviving nuclear power would require trillions in infrastructure investment into grids, storage, and reactors.
As a concrete example, Germany’s Energiewende, launched in 2010, has only reduced fossil fuel use by 15%. Additionally, solar infrastructure relies on lithium and cobalt dominated by China. Without access to cheap energy, Europe faces either energy rationing or permanent deindustrialization as factories relocate to cheaper markets.
Having outsourced its military-industrial capacity to the US, Europe now has to rebuild domestic arms production. Doing so requires massive investments in establishing supply chains and retooling of civilian sectors. However, decades of offshoring has eroded existing technical expertise in Europe. Just training a new generation of engineers and machinists could take a whole generation. Furthermore, creating self-sufficient supply chains is a difficult process with many steps, each step depending on the previous one. A single bottleneck, such as missing rare-earth refinery, can derail entire sectors for years.
Another problem is that Europe lacks domestic access to steel, titanium, and rare earths, forcing further reliance on external suppliers like China. Even if Europe started today, it would take decades to see tangible results, and that’s assuming political unity holds.
The EU member states disagree on everything from debt sharing to defense priorities. Eastern Europe demands immediate rearmament, Germany resists militarization, and France pushes for strategic autonomy. Meanwhile, nationalist parties are gaining ground, threatening to fragment the bloc further. Even if consensus emerged, funding this transition would require further cutting social programs, which is political suicide in countries already reeling from inflation and austerity.
Europe’s security crisis is a slow-motion collapse. There are no shortcuts to untangling energy dependency, reviving industry, or forging supply chains. By the time Europe might achieve autonomy, economic and geopolitical forces might make the whole EU project obsolete.
The funny part about all this is that the notion that Russia would militarily occupy Europe has always been a pure fantasy. However, what’s absolutely certain is that Russia will exploit the political chaos in Europe caused by collapsing living standards, a crisis Europe itself created.
The most likely outcome here is that countries like Hungary and Slovakia exist the EU, and normalize relations with Russia. They might even join BRICS. And that may even happen with the pillars of the EU like France and Germany when RN or AfD inevitably get in power.
Everything you say is true, however, Europe is only fighting Russia here. Russia also started with a deplorable state of production and ramped up. They have been fighting with their Soviet stockpile which is now all but depleted. Europe and Ukraine together can easily outproduce Russia if they put their minds to it. In the most important area, drones, Ukraine already out produces Russia 3 to 1. Artillery is a lot less important when you produce more than a million drones per year.
Yes there are challenges. But Europe is still the 800 pound gorilla when facing Russia. As long as they stay unified (hell they can afford to lose Hungary and Slovakia even), they will manage it. Now of course there is no guarantee for that, but they have been making their contingency plans for Trump for the last 4 years. I think they at least have a decent chance of managing this situation well.
No, Russia didn’t start with a deplorable state of production. Russia mothballed the industry it inherited from USSR, and never dismantled it. That’s how Russia was able to ramp up production so rapidly. Russia is also one of the biggest energy and resource producers in the world which allows Russia to operate this industry cheaply. Furthermore, Russia has a high rate of population going into trades which is not the case in Europe.
That’s absolutely false. Russia has been fighting with weapons and ammunition they actively produce. I’ve already linked you sources above explaining this.
They cannot, Ukraine is unable to have any meaningful industry because Russia can strike anywhere in Ukraine with hypersonic missiles. Ukraine barely has a functioning power grid at this point and imports large amounts of energy from Europe incidentally. If Europe went into a full scale conflict with Russia then same thing would start happening to European factories and power grid.
Furthermore, as I’ve already explained, Europe is not a country. It’s a continent of many different countries that don’t agree on much of anything. Many of these countries want to normalize relations with Russia. Hungary and Slovakia already have governments friendly towards Russia. Before long, France, Germany, Czech republic, and Romania are likely to have such governments as well. The US pulling out from project Ukraine will only accelerate this trend.
That’s again completely and utterly false. Russia outproduces Ukraine in drones. Even mainstream western media was reporting on this like a year ago. Not to mention the fact that drones can now be jammed, and fiberoptic drones have much shorter range. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/07/01/is-russia-overtaking-ukraine-in-drone-production/
Given that Ukraine can’t have large scale factories because they get bombed immediately it’s not clear how anybody would think Ukraine could outproduce Russia in drones. Meanwhile, artillery is far more important than drones in modern warfare. As the article I linked above explains, Russia fires 250k artillery rounds each month which comes out to 3 million rounds a year.
You might want to educate yourself a bit on how modern warfare actually works instead of spewing nonsense here.
It’s very obviously not, and it’s frankly incredible that anybody could believe that.
I think you’re going to be in for a huge surprise.
Outside of artillery (which as mentioned, is matched or outclassed by Ukraine’s drone production advantage), Russias production is not that impressive even today. Once the stockpile is gone, they will have to go to something like 10% of the current rate of use of their armed vehicles. They produce a handful of aircraft a year. We already see them sending donkeys to the front line. They are a paper tiger that Europe can take if they put their minds to it.
That’s pretty weird thing to say that’s completely divorced from reality.
Again, I’ve provided you multiple references showing this claim is false. Evidently you’re just going to continue to ignore that and regurgitate false statements.
It’s pretty clear this conversation is pointless because you don’t actually care about the facts of the situation. You just repeat propaganda you’ve memorized uncritically. Good news is I don’t have to convince you of anything. You’ll see what reality is soon enough for yourself.
Bye.
I only saw one article which speculated about drone production. If you are interested about Russia’s production and drawdown on their stockpile, Covert Cabal produces good videos on YouTube where he uses satellite data to actually count each vehicle.
The guy running Covert Cabal is an utter imbecile. The vehicles they count often end up being vehicles supplied to Ukraine by western countries like Poland who had large stockpiles of Soviet vehicles. These whole “open source intelligence” channels have been long discredited, and it’s incredible that there are people gullible enough to take them seriously. Again, read what actual people with a clue have to say if you want to understand what’s happeing https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/attritional-art-war-lessons-russian-war-ukraine
Of course, we both know that you won’t and you’ll just continue living in your fantasy lala land until you’re forced to grapple with reality. That will happen very shortly. Buckle up.
From your article:
“As conflict drags on, the war is won by economies, not armies.”
Making my case for me. Thanks.