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"[Putin] does not stop stressing what he's really longing for, like, a renaissance of the Soviet empire," Pistorius said of Putin. "He wants to be the dominant power in Europe. [...]"
Germany's biggest defense contractor, Rheinmetall, and its subsidiaries have won a commanding share of recent government contracts.
Rheinmetall was one of Germany's major arms producers during WWI and WWII.
The Europeans are pissy about Trump treating them as bad as other American vassals but they do not want to go their own way, they simply want to go back to the halcyon days of polite liberal harmony right before Trump was elected.
I would find it easier to believe in the European elite's desire for increased autonomy if all of that military spending went to domestic or third country arms manufacturers but as long as the money is shipped to American and "Israeli" arms manufacturers it is a tribute that reaffirms European subservience to Washington.
Even if European rulers wanted autonomy they would not be able to have it. Europe has made itself too dependent on America, not just in military matters but also in everything from financial systems, IT infrastructure and energy supply to culture and ideology.
That ”buy European” shit is so funny. What do you think is going to have more of a geopolitical impact, some people deciding to BuY EuRoPeAn, or most European countries agreeing to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP because of NATO?
Besides, we saw some of this during Trump's first term (and Bush's time in office too), when a respectable adult
was in office again, all the US criticism evaporated.
The buy European shit is a way western Europeans can be racist to everyone else without being "barbaric racists, like the rural and urban poors" it's just white nationalism with a thick coat of 2016 liberalism
The problem with buy European is what? Europe doesn't produce a stealth fighter like the F-35 currently. As for air defence, SAMP/T's Aster 30 series interceptors are adequate for defence against ballistic missiles, but the radar is inadequate, so Europe has to wait for SAMP/T NG to match PATRIOT PAC-3 and PAC-3 MSE. Air defence against longer range ballistics like Oreshnik, only the US and Israel in the western sphere of influence make systems for that, and Germany has bought the Israeli Arrow 3 because it's cheaper than AEGIS ashore. Europe is not going to buy Chinese weapons for the most part. I guess the plan is to buy US weapons until the European equivalents are online, but that's going to take a decade minimum.