What a clown he is, lucky Europe is so weak so he can asskiss Putler over our heads.
...
I would now immediately cancel all nuclear treaties and invest 50 billion in nuclear arms and the US can leave European soil and maybe ask Putler for bases there and access to his great and powerful market.
And that weakness is self-imposed since our societies dreamt of the end of history and are acting on it to this day, but in the form of the Weimar group (who on earth thought using that name was a bright idea?!?) are trying to get a spot on the negotiating table nonetheless to put in their deluded wishful thinking and hollow objections.
Actually taking it seriously would have meant more than some increase in military spending in some countries with orders that will take many years to
start to be delivered. Expanding European production capacity, reintroducing conscription, renovating infrastructure to be able to support military vehicle weight etc.
Instead we huffed, we puffed and in the end barely lifted a finger from what could have been done, letting the US do more comparative to the EU's population and our combined economies.
The Netherlands wants new bases and storage sites, but the "not in my backyard" mentality is as strong as ever with a complete bureaucratic swamp holding up the process completely. And then we haven't even done the environmental eval yet to see why base X can't be built on site Y because of insignificant forest critter Z or some other irrelevant BS. As a result these bases only exist in the realm of wishful thinking.
To put that into perspective when the government needs locations for asylum shelters they push ahead regardless of legalities, protests and environmental concerns and no money is spared on getting it done as quickly and as refined as possible. And it actually gets done. Imagine that!
The single remaining factory producing generic medicines in the country would have been closed down if it hadn't been for a start-up taking it over. The government didn't lift a finger because they didn't see the point because we have our great friend China to produce vital medicines for us. This was Jan. 2023!
A guy with experience in manufacturing wants to produce small arms ammunition as well as 30-40mm ammo in the Netherlands. Governments on every level are trying to bully him out of the country because in their opinion his business is "morally complicated".
Does that all sound like we're taking it so seriously? It can all be done, our politicians just don't wanna.
European politicians want this war to end just as much so they can go back to neglecting defence and spending the money on things they actually care about instead and win votes through it.
If not they should have done more to make Europe more independent of the US (manufacturing) instead of just using it as fancy talking points and subsequently sitting on their ass doing nothing (just as "much" as they were before).
