Summarized: The article discusses former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s views on Europe’s response to the Ukraine war. Marin argues that it is morally and strategically unacceptable for Russia to outspend Ukraine on defense. She suggests that Europe could close the resource gap between Ukraine and Russia by allocating just 0.2% of its GDP. Marin emphasizes that supporting Ukraine is a matter of will and that Europe must take leadership in its own security. She also notes that Europe can no longer rely solely on transatlantic cooperation for its defense. Marin’s comments were made in the context of a report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, where she now works as a strategic advisor.
Well, yeah, but firstly Europe’s gotta come up with the finances, and I don’t believe societies built around yearly 5 week holiday time for their workers, and “free” health care for their citizens are going to allow massive sacrifices in those and so many other social services where the GDP will need to be funneled to purchase and fabricate the weaponry needed to enable Ukraine to continue to defend itself from the Russian war machine. That’s not even taking into account, how much more of their GDP Europe is going to need to divert, to do the same for themselves. Now let’s talk about fabrications and purchasing or weapons, and standing up massive boots on the ground conventional armies, Europe doesn’t have that sort of expertise, or infrastructure, and the worlds largest arms producer is now likely off the table as an arms supplier for any fight with Russia. Europe is at least starting to make the right noises, though little concrete forward movement, still, yet I’, pretty positive it’s already way too late.
The annual return on Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is over 100 billion euros. So there’s that. It’s really not going to impact us if a chunk of that is used to buy weapons. The money is just getting reinvested for a rainy day and it looks a lot like it’s shitting it down rn.
and yet, almost none of that has gone to defense, i mean you folks sure have got the best prisons in the world, and healthcare to beat the band, lot’s of suicide though, but without the us as overwatch, or supplier of future weaponry to be used vs russia even on offer to purchase any longer, and without any standing army of any note, or much in the way of weapons stockpiles, and trump about to institute global reiprocal tarrifs sure to plunge the country and world into global depression (coincidentally) not seen since the 1930’s, i wish you the best of fortune
First off the suicide rate in the Nordic countries (with the very notable exception of Greenland) is actually lower than the states. It’s just higher than other parts of western Europe.
Second, Norway has a larger proportion of the population in active service than the states. Much larger when you include reservists. Also there is national service here so in a pinch a large proportion of the population can be called up.
You have to consider that Norway has a. Population of 5.5m so you should ask how Norway stacks up against Atlanta (met area).
As for the equipment I have no idea what we spend it on. But the navy seems pretty well equipped and the air force uses f35s so I guess it’s mostly up to date. Also Norway isn’t the easiest place to invade geographically. None of the roads are really good enough to drive tanks on. And the whole country is connected by bridges and tunnels which are easily collapsed if necessary.
Also there is very tight cooperation between Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. So you really can’t look at any one of those countries in isolation.
It says right in the summary that it’s 0.2% of the GDP, which shouldn’t impact other services greatly. There’s no need to turn into a dog-eat-dog style war machine to counter realistic foreign threats.
I like NATO as an alliance of countries looking after each other, but no such alliance should fall apart if any one member falls short and I’ve never been thrilled with the US role of world police. Europe needs to be able to defend itself on its own and stepping up their own contribution to NATO (and their own defense capabilities) is a good thing.