That's true but apart from Poland, all large EU countries have anaemic weapon production and diverted all their military spending into social programs decades ago, which they cannot reverse. They are at their budget deficit limits and are all in territory where if they increase tax rates, tax proceeds go down (along with growth and employment). So the reality is that I don't think there is any chance the EU is a substitute for the US in term of ukraine support.
The question becomes one of politics: how much does each EU member care? I'm reminded about the old joke about the difference between ham and eggs being that the chicken is involved but the pig is committed.
Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states are "committed" in that they regard the risk of a Russian invasion as real, and have seen occasional incursions by Russian flights and even missiles. If it comes to a fight between self-defence and the deficit limit, they're just going to have to break the limit.
Germany, on the other hand, has been very comfortable taking Russian bribes and gas, as well as being uncomfortable with re-arming, so they've been lagging behind on the project.
Maybe there will be another "incident". France has already been reporting attempts of sabotage against their railway network.
The politics of Ukraine war is extremely complicate. After WW2 Ukraine got territories from Hungary (and they are still very mad because of this), Slovakia, Poland and Romania. Then Ukraine had very aggressive policies against the people from these territories and they mostly failed, these minorities speak Russian as the second language, not Ukrainian. This is not something that it is easily forgotten, people in the countries listed above still have family in Ukraine and have first hand experience of the situation.
I don't think that is an option of any sort. Wild guess is Putin bet was on Russia getting some territories opening the door for Hungary and Poland to do the same. No idea what is the atmosphere in Slovakia, but the recent surprise in the Romanian politics makes any prediction impossible. Well, he was wrong :)
That's insane. Of course it's an "option". No one in these countries (outside of a very tiny portion of wackos) cares about the current borders, or dreams of starting a war to move them.
No, full occupation of Ukraine is not an option that NATO will ever accept. With the current state of Russian military and economy, it is a very easy line to draw.
> That's true but apart from Poland, all large EU countries have anaemic weapon production and diverted all their military spending into social programs decades ago, which they cannot reverse.
I would say that is a half-truth. You are right that Poland is an outlier in the EU with regards to its military expenditure and preparation. However, the idea that it is because military spending in other countries was "diverted into social programmes" is a politically charged red herring. Social expenditure and military expenditure are different by an order of magnitude and are not negatively correlated.
Poland's expenses on social programs are within the EU average, and Poland has not made any sacrifices in that regard to maintain its military expenditure. Conversely, the country with the highest social spending in the EU by a large margin (France) is also the 8th in terms of military spending. Meanwhile, some of the countries with the lowest military expenditure (e.g. Ireland or Luxembourg) are also some of the ones with the lowest social expenditure.
No the transfer of defense spending to social spending was an explicit policy in the 80s/90s, that was refered at the time as "the peace dividends".
And the fact that it is diverted into social spendings is also significant, because it is a kind of public spending that is politically impossible to cut back. Even Trump doesn't want to touch that third rail in the US.
France's military spending, though not as low as many other european countries, is still a fraction of what it was during the cold war [1] and so is its military capability. It has big shortfalls of amunitions (a couple of weeks worth in a Ukraine-style conflict), and even though it has in theory advanced techs, it has it in numbers that wouldn't help in an intense conflict like a war with Russia (the number of operational tanks, cannons and planes is just too low and it would be overwhelmed). It is a military that has been downsized to basically two missions: nuclear deterence, and small operations in the middle east and africa against terrorist groups and milicia. That military is completely inadequate to face a threat like Russia.
> No the transfer of defense spending to social spending was an explicit policy in the 80s/90s, that was refered at the time as "the peace dividends".
The idea of "Peace dividend" at no point implied a dichotomy between social spending and military spending. It was referring to the purported trade-off between military spending and the economy as a whole, in all of its aspects: the taxation or public debt needed to maintain a strong military, civilian workforce vs military manpower, civilian industry vs military industry, and yes, military vs civilian government expenditure — of which "social" spending is just one of many.
Note that the idea of the "Peace dividend" was popularised by George H.W. Bush and Margaret Thatcher, hardly proponents of increased social spending.
