>What could have changed it is if the Dutch, the Belgians and most of all the Germans had acted like adults in the world. Instead they have been dancing on the edge of a disaster.
Vague and weird words that could mean almost anything.
4. Belgium : 0 (read it straight) 0 MBT. 0. 1 Self propelled gun I think.
These are rich and powerful countries. They have been utterly delinquent for the last 20 years. When you see unanswered Russian aggression in the east it's because these people who should be the core of European power have pretended that everything will be alright if they let their martial capabilities rot.
It's not only their forces (and foreign policy, particularly Germany's and the EU's in Ukraine and the Balkans). The near evisceration of the European military infrastructure and production capability has screwed everyone. Where is the Tornado replacement? Let alone the Eurofighter replacement? How many F35's has Germany bought (spoiler :0) how much more expensive has that made F35 for everyone else (spoiler : alot).
Now the Germans are going >2% on defence - how many years will it take for that kind of money just to repair the barracks? Where is the Dutch emergency budget? (https://nltimes.nl/2022/03/01/dutch-armed-forces-facing-russ... --- let's grow towards 2%!)
Also the wording is an allusion to the first world war.
But what's happening in the Ukranian theatre validates all of that. The Russian military is being revealed as a paper tiger. It makes no sense to invest heavily in defence when your enemy doesn't have any real forces they can deploy.
Unless you choose to believe that the Russian military, for some reason, is throwing green units and third-tier armor into the field - and holding back battalion after battalion of elite troops equipped with elitely-maintaine vehicles - it seems very hard to criticise European levels of defence spending given the reality of the enemy forces it appears to face.
Vague and weird words that could mean almost anything.
Speak plainly.